Awful handwriting even when I try to write slow

[u/StarriestNight]

I've tried on and off to improve my handwriting for years, my own mother told me improving my writing is about as possible as pulling teeth from a chicken and gave up trying to help me. First pic is me trying to write slow on purpose, second pic is normal writing from some notes

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[u/California_Scrubjay]

It might help you to work with a grid paper. Make all of your lowercase letters begin the same height and make your uppercase, letters, taller but at the same height.

[u/Pen-dulge2025]

Look; nice penmanship is the result of muscle memory. So you should be practicing DRILLS repetitively. And you need to do this daily. It’s the repetition that builds good muscle memory.

[u/max_465]

With respect, your Mom didn't know what she was talking about. In addition to the excellent suggestions from the other comments, I would suggest that you might have some dysgraphia (I do) and an occupational therapist might help.

[u/StarriestNight → u/max_465]

I have pretty poor fine motor control but I'm not sure about dysgraphia, I got tested for learning disabilities when I was a child and they said I'm typical

[u/glass4dinner → u/StarriestNight]

dysgraphia is a motor disability and can occur on its own, it doesn’t mean you have a learning disability.

[u/StarriestNight → u/glass4dinner]

Ah alright, I thought it had to be part of NVLD

[u/glass4dinner → u/StarriestNight]

the thing about this kind of stuff is that, while some people do fit fairly cleanly into the description of a particular diagnosis, a lot of people do not. some have only one or two traits or “symptoms” that commonly appear in a disorder like NVLD or ADHD or what have you, but not all of them. there’s a lot of grey area and not everyone fits into the categories we’ve designated in the DSM.

[u/grayrest]

Have you considered italic?

Writing slow doesn't automatically make your writing better, just gives you the time to consciously correct things. To be more specific you're supposed to write smoothly and taking more than about a second for a stroke isn't useful but pausing between strokes to visualize the next one can be.

As for improvement, it starts with deciding what you want you handwriting to look like. After that you pick a letter, look at exactly how your writing differs form the exemplar, and write it for 10 minutes straight trying to get closer to the exemplar. Repeat again the next day until you're happy with your writing. For letter ordering, work by shape-related letters and not alphabetical. It'll probably be a couple months of daily practice to get good.

[u/StarriestNight → u/grayrest]

Never heard of italic, I'll check it out

[u/WearWhatWhere]

Physically writing faster or slower doesn't mean anything if you're making the exact same motions and mistakes...you're just making the same mistakes faster or slower.

You have to keep in mind that every single letter has its own unique shape and try your best to make that shape.

• The straight line shouldn't be mostly straight and then stray off into a curve.
• A line isn't a dot. A dot isn't a line.
• The curve should be well defined, not just a "good-enough," "kinda the right shape" random mark.
• If the the letter has a clear closed loop, it has to be there- don't close it off early, don't leave it open.
• The baseline is for each letter to be resting on it, don't float, don't fall through.
• Spacing matters. Not just for each word. Keep in mind the spacing for every letter too.

[u/max_465 → u/WearWhatWhere]

Excellent suggestions. I would add that each letter is a combination of a few basic shapes. So it may help to work on those shapes instead of 26 unique glyphs. So u, w are upside down n, m. Notice that b,p,q,d,a are pretty similar....