How to make your handwriting more beautiful

How often have you admired the penmanship of others and wondered why you drew the short straw when it comes to handwriting skills?

Many people believe they are stuck with the handwriting they currently have, but this is far from true.

In fact, with just a little practise and persistence, you can improve your cursive skills in weeks — or even days — leaving you to produce the kind of letters, cards and envelopes you’ve always dreamed of.

While we love all handwriting here at The Pen Company, in this article, we have gathered together a few techniques and ideas you can try out to elevate your handwriting to a new level.

Choose a quality pen

First and foremost, you need to choose a quality pen to write with; even the most attractive handwriting can look less aesthetically pleasing when produced by a poor-quality, scratchy pen.

You don’t need to spend a fortune on a new pen; there are plenty of affordable pens on the market that write nicely.

To find your perfect match, experiment with pen types — will your ideal writing tool be a ballpoint pen, a rollerball pen, a fine liner, or a fountain pen?

Test various brands of each pen type until you find one that feels just right and provides a consistent flow of ink for uniform letter creation.

For ease of writing, you might find a rollerball a good starting point, and the Lamy Safari is a good fountain pen for those who are looking for a smooth but straightforward fountain pen experience.

Take your time

Don’t rush when you are practising your handwriting. If you’re serious about improving your penmanship, then dedicate regular time to it in which there are no distractions.

As you practise writing, it helps to say each letter out loud as you form it. You may feel a little silly doing this, and it will take some getting used to, but it helps you to concentrate fully on each individual letter and therefore make fewer mistakes.

Write on lined paper

However much flair it has, and however natural it looks, beautiful handwriting is always controlled in some way. The best and easiest way to facilitate control when writing is to use lined paper.

With a guideline, you can write without worrying about if the words are in a straight line or not; something that can instantly ruin some otherwise perfect handwriting.

With one less thing to worry about, you can instead concentrate on your letter formation, consistency and spacing.

If you don’t have any lined paper, you can use plain paper and either draw feint lines on it beforehand with a pencil (to erase later) or place a lined sheet underneath the top one.

Work on the small details

Handwriting will only look neat if it’s uniform, and to achieve that all of your letters need to be of a similar size and written at the same angle.

Alongside this, each word needs to be spaced out evenly, and each line of writing needs to have the same amount of space between it also.

On top of this, if you make an effort not to let your tails (on g, y, j, etc.) drop onto the line of writing below, this will also help your writing look ‘cleaner’ and make it easier to read.

Write from your shoulder

If your hand tires after writing for a while, then this means you aren’t writing from your shoulder — and a tired hand means scruffier handwriting.

To improve your handwriting, aim to keep your hand and wrist inactive and let your shoulder and forearm guide the pen and form the letters.

Being mindful of your posture when writing can help with this.

Research handwriting styles

Take a few minutes to look at your handwriting, then do some research on Pinterest and elsewhere.

Find examples of handwriting that is similar to your own but, in your eyes, prettier. Then analyse the samples to see what small changes you could make to your own cursive to improve it.

It could be as simple as changing the way you form the letter ‘a’ or how you cross your ‘t’!

Do you have any other tips for producing neater or prettier handwriting? Let us know in the comments!