Member-only story
Hate your handwriting? Try this.
The simple tweak that will transform how you write, journal, and take notes
My handwriting sucks
Deciphering my illegible script is painful, not just for other people, but for me. Especially for me.
At the same time, I love notebooks, pens, paper. I love the idea of journaling and longhand writing. I am a writer, after all.
To improve my bad handwriting, I tried many things:
I slowed down my cursive, making sure to complete all the loops and dot all the i’s (and in the right places). But after a line or two, my impatient hand would inevitably speed up and cut corners.
I wrote in print. I mixed print and script.
I bought nicer and more expensive notebooks. I used a fountain pen.
I even bought a pen that would digitize my writing when synced to a computer. (First I had to train it to understand my writing; I never even got that far.)
Despite everything, my writing remained unappealing to look at, let alone read.
Finally, last summer, I stumbled upon the secret to beautiful, clear handwriting. And it turned out, I could do it all along. No training, extra effort, or special equipment required.
The solution: all caps
On that June morning, I dusted off my Moleskine, in which I’d been plotting a novel, and looked through my notes after a break of several months. I felt dismay and disgust.
I’d hit a wall in the plotline and my handwriting wasn’t helping. I needed to change things up.
I laid down my blue ballpoint pen and reached for a thin black marker.
Prompted perhaps by the marker, I recalled something my UX designer colleague had said in a brainstorming workshop a few months back: Write in capital letters.
We were writing on Post-It notes that would go up on the whiteboard. Writing in all caps, he said, would make it easier for everyone to read the notes. In these workshops, we also used fine-point black markers. Presumably, so the writing would be easier to see from a distance and appear more consistent.
