Free Cursive Handwriting Fonts

[Sara Legath]

Thewebsite & the PDF file are, obviously, written in French, not in English.

I resorted to using my usual online translation tool to decipher the sentences for which my exceedingly-rusty memory of my second-rate High School French was insufficient! ?

Fountain Pens: Pelikan Souveran M805, Pelikan Petrol-Marble M205, Santini Libra Cumberland, Waterman Expert II, Waterman Phileas, Waterman Kultur, Stipula Splash, Sheaffer Sagaris, Sheaffer Prelude, Osmiroid 65

Merci beaucoup.

I am surprised that, even though I didn't attended school in France, model A is quite similar to what I've been taught. Maybe my teacher in primary school was using this standardized cursive writing. If I applied myself more I would still write mostly like this. This gives me an incentive to practice my penmanship.

I've gone off on one recently to improve my increasingly illegible scrawl and I'm trying to learn some of the French style of cursive in the hope that a bit of it will take root permanently. I found some books via Amazon's French website (luckily I did modern languages for a degree and one of the two I focused on was French). Also bought some Seyes ruled paper, which is exactly what I need to get my ascenders visible again! The books haven't turned up yet so I can't review them, but the ones I got were:

It always helps to have something to aspire to.This would cost our government nothing, but would be immensely prestigious.The Americans, Australians, and lots of others would I'm sure join in the fun even if they thought their scripts were superior.

Someone, here or on another forum commented that accents have are becoming 'homogenized by exposure to American TV shows. That begs the question do people want 'accented' handwriting at a time when their speech is losing it?

Well, if you're looking to use a cursive font (or any custom font), I recommend using Go under the "fonts" section at the top of the homepage, and there are different categories that you can choose from. "Cursive" is the one you want, I believe. Click the font you want, and download the .zip file. Extract it and such, and convert it to a .woff file using (trust me, it needs to be in a .woff format for webpages. I've experienced rage and suffering from this...) Hope this helps!

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The problem with font-family: cursive is that it seems that Chromium (and presumably derived browsers) do not display a "cursive", i.e., handwritten-like, font, which is why I came looking for this question. Aside: Firefox does show a cursive font (at least on my browser). Perhaps the worst part is that Chromium shows a sans-serif, non-italicized font when you specify "cursive", which is obviously not what you want if the purpose is to simulate a handwritten document. So on Chromium (and Firefox) the best solution, short of downloading custom fonts, is to specify font-family: cursive, Times, serif; font-style: italic;.

I changed my handwriting font years ago for precisely this purpose, and I have continued to tweak my letterforms over the years, using the algorithm of changing the form of whichever letters seem to generate the most confusion. Here is my current font:

It's crucial to have versions of a, b, d, p, and q that can be written using a single stroke. If you draw your circles and stems separately, they will constantly get disconnected, which vastly decreases legibility.

I often omit the bottom "tail" on the f when writing it in the middle of a word, but I always include it when it's part of an equation. Similar statements hold for the top curve on the i. I will also draw a 1 as a simple vertical line if I think it's clear from context.

The l (ell) is my newest letter, and I'm not really sure about it yet. I tried using a cursive $\ell$ for a while, but it never looked good inside of words, and it still wasn't very legible as a variable. At present, I am often omitting the top and bottom curves when the l is part of a word.

In general, I've had bad experiences with vertical loops. I've tried loops on $\ell$'s, g's, j's, d's, and q's, and all of them seemed to make the letters less recognizable. (This is probably because such loops hardly ever appear in computer or typewritten fonts.)

The initial curve on the x is absolutely essential. This will be one of your most used letters, and it really helps to get it right. Curves on any of the other three stems don't seem to improve legibility, and make the letter annoying to write.

Edit: By request, here are my capital letters. Unlike my lowercase letters, my capitals are really quite standard, and I don't have much to say about them. I've also included by Greek letters.

Here are what my alphabet and numbers have ended up looking like. For the sake of clarity, I've included a stroke order chart, where the first stroke is red, the second green, the third blue, and the fourth cyan.

I try to make distinctions between every character, but I agree with those above who have noted that "o" is, in general, a terrible name for a variable. I tend to only use the "O" with a flourish where I have to make a distinction between "o" and "O".

I use the double-story "g" to distinguish from "y", and "S" with a serif to distinguish from "5". I use serifs to distinguish between uppercase and lowercase ("c" and "C", "s" and "S", "k" and "K", "v" and "V", "w" and "W", "p" and "P"), but where I don't have to make that distinction, "c" and "s" get serifs to distinguish from "(" and "5", respectively.

I would like to add a point that I've not seen explicitly mentioned in the other answers. That is that context can often be your aid in clarifying your lettering. As a trivial example, no one is going to misread they as +hey. So the "special alphabet" is primarily for mathematics in your lectures. (That said, you should cultivate a clear hand writing for normal text but it doesn't need to be as extreme as for the mathematical part.)

On the other hand, scale is often hard to see on a board so X and x are not easy to distinguish. It can be awkward to avoid using these together (consider the common desire to have $x \in X$) and distinguishing them visually can be difficult, but then context can help.

Go in to a large lecture hall, write some random equations on the board, and then go to the back and try to read what you wrote. Then modify your handwriting until you think it is clear. This won't be perfect (since you know what you wrote), but it'll at least be a lot better than not doing it.

Say what you write as you write it, and make sure that before you write anything on the board then the students are at the same point as you so that they are paying attention to what you say as you write it.

Cultivate writing "the wrong way". It's a bit trickier for those not blessed with sinister tendencies, but if you can learn to write so that you do not stand in front of what you just wrote then it will be much easier for the students to see what you write as you write and say it. This doesn't mean writing with your left hand, it is possible to do this with the right hand but the body position takes a bit of getting used to. This has the added bonus of making you more turned towards the students as you write.

It isn't as minimalist as some of yours, but I have never had anyone tell me they had trouble reading my writing. I make it clear which letters are which by using size and giving attention to negative space.

I find that using big loops and serifs is really good for board work, where it can otherwise be difficult to distinguish capital letters. (Spencerian cursive is actually pretty good for board work too, just not for equations.)

I think you need to fix any problems you have by modifying a letter or two of the way you write. For example, I used to write my y's in two separate straight strokes, but they would get confused with my x's if I wasn't careful about where the stroke stops. To correct this, I started writing my y's more like the way you write a g, with a curly bottom. I also stroke my z's with a cross to keep them separate from my 2's.

As others have suggested, adding a serif can make a big difference. I write my y's like g's, and I also stroke my z's through the middle. Lower-case l's are written cursive-style, with a loop, and I make sure to make the 'tail' of my q's big enough to ensure there's no confusion with 9's.

The key is neatness. I am a student, and I take for granted that my lecturers will use neat handwriting. I don't like it when a lecturer's handwriting is scrawled hastily and messily because it makes it difficult to read. I also don't like it when a lecturer neglects to write down something they have said, or something that is helpful with understanding what is being communicated (e.g. writing "Proof" before a proof to let the class know that the theorem has ended). Below I have given some pictures of the best handwriting that I have encountered.

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