My handwriting evolution

I’ve gone a long road to get to what my handwriting is today. From the illegible handwriting of a 5-year-old to also illegible cursive, a handwriting that wasn’t my own, and finally my handwriting today.

My first handwriting is probably as you expected. Completely impossible to read. There’s no way to know if that’s a p or an a or a b, they all look the same. I was writing from a young age though. I learned to read when I was only a few years old and to write when I was not much older. These were the seeds of my handwriting today.

Next came the cursed cursive, that lasted an unfortunate amount of time. In about 2nd grade, I learned cursive and I was hooked. The unfortunate thing was that I was awful at it. 2nd through 6th grade me had no idea, and so continued to write things that were illegible to even me. My cursive got better, but I realized I had to stop in 6th grade when my peers asked me what my paper said.

After that was handwriting that was not my own. During a free time during 6th grade French class, I watched a video on how to have good handwriting with my friend. The woman in the video had lovely round, even handwriting, and so for months, I was replicating it. But it felt wrong. It was lovely handwriting, sure, but it was not my own. It made my hand hurt and it was incredibly inefficient.

My natural handwriting in print is tall, slim, small, and not particularly pleasant to look at. I was always jealous of other people with lovely handwriting (shoutout to a friend with amazing handwriting who’s name I will not mention, but you know who you are). So after I watched that video and tried to write with someone else’s handwriting, I learned something.

I wanted my handwriting to look good, but I wanted it to be mine and I wanted it to be efficient and legible. So I watched that handwriting video one more time and came up with my own handwriting. It was tall and slim like my old handwriting, but it was rounder, less sharp edges, and all the letters were clearly the same handwriting.

It was my handwriting. And I still write with it today!