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Why My Handwriting Sucks: A Typographical Analysis

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Re: Why My Handwriting Sucks: A Typographical Analysis

#21

Post by kelnos »

jawbone3 wrote: post #11

My god, programmer typography! It's like the author only just discovered font weigths. The only possible defence for using bold allcaps five times in a paragraph is if it is a name that is being typeset that way. here there is no such defence and the author deploys a further five instances of bold italics in the very first paragraph, the one small mercy being not deploying any bold all caps underline or making itrain…

I know this is meta, and generally frowned upon, but can we please discuss content rather than presentation? Ranting about presentation does not change anything or meaningfully add to the discussion.

As an aside: I love how you're criticizing, but in your post made (at least) one spelling error ("weigths"), missed a space between two words ("felttired"), missed capitalizing the first word of a sentence ("here"), and spelled/spaced two words differently ("allcaps" and "all caps"). (Also I'm not sure if "itrain" is a word; Google didn't help in deciphering that one.) Pot/kettle/black.

Re: Why My Handwriting Sucks: A Typographical Analysis

#23

Post by vanderZwan »

SamBam wrote: post #12
vanderZwan wrote: post #7

> I am sure the last time I wrote I did it as a novelty. I did it because I was penning down something that held a certain value to me or maybe I just thought that actually writing it down will make me feel more connected to it. Even as I type down the word “writing” the first thought that comes to my mind is actually typing on a keyboard. Whenever I have to write something down I use a KEYBOARD. This honestly sounds…

I'm not sure why it sounds like a humblebrag to you. I believe many people, especially those of us on our computers all day, go days at a time without writing with a pen once, except maybe to scrawl their names on receipts. I used to keep a pad next to my desk to work out difficult programming concepts. I probably used it once a month at most. I write more now because I try to keep handwritten notes of to-dos, but ev…

> go days at a time without writing with a pen once, except maybe to scrawl their names on receipts.

Sure, but would you call that "doing it as a novelty"? (in bolded italicised text no less- I find that kind of writing style horribly annoying too; as if the author trying to "idiot proof" their writing and/or distract you from other, weaker parts of it, by SHOUTING the bits they want you to focus on)

Re: Why My Handwriting Sucks: A Typographical Analysis

#24

Post by kelnos »

AkirIkasu wrote: post #14

The irony of this is that the only problem he really fixed was making his handwriting more regular. While it does help, the real problem is his malformed glyphs. His lowercase 'q' has such a large tail that it adds an extra space between the word, and his 'o' is written slightly different every time he writes it. The base of his problems seems to be that he writes with a mixture of different scripts, and if he taught…

That's sorta what I was thinking. My handwriting is terrible. Sure, the irregularity of spacing, height, and width contributes, but the real reason it's hard to read what I write is because the glyphs themselves are sloppy and inconsistent.

Re: Why My Handwriting Sucks: A Typographical Analysis

#25

Post by rbonvall »

jlg23 wrote: post #20
soared wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of imrpoving my existing (sloppy but fast) handwriting I learned a secondary way to write that is much slower but very clear and easy to read. It was fun and I'm glad I did it. I only did about 20 minutes of practice everyday for a week or so. I chose architect style handwriting and it looks really cool. I only use it for filling out forms or other similar things where other people really need to see every le…

At least in Western Europe architects have to follow an industry standard that governs fonts and stroke width (afaik 2 different widths, depending on context). 40 years ago, learning to write in this style was even part of the curriculum in the GDR.

Note that handwriting styles are not called fonts, but hands. A font is basically a set of prefabricated letters.

Re: Why My Handwriting Sucks: A Typographical Analysis

#26

Post by manibatra »

SamBam wrote: post #12
vanderZwan wrote: post #7

> I am sure the last time I wrote I did it as a novelty. I did it because I was penning down something that held a certain value to me or maybe I just thought that actually writing it down will make me feel more connected to it. Even as I type down the word “writing” the first thought that comes to my mind is actually typing on a keyboard. Whenever I have to write something down I use a KEYBOARD. This honestly sounds…

I'm not sure why it sounds like a humblebrag to you. I believe many people, especially those of us on our computers all day, go days at a time without writing with a pen once, except maybe to scrawl their names on receipts. I used to keep a pad next to my desk to work out difficult programming concepts. I probably used it once a month at most. I write more now because I try to keep handwritten notes of to-dos, but ev…

Thanks. The author here. It was not intended as a humblebrag like you said. I had just noticed that the only things I ever wrote where things that meant something special or something I really wanted to actuallise.

You are one step ahead of me that you are trying to write using a pen.

Re: Why My Handwriting Sucks: A Typographical Analysis

#27

Post by manibatra »

taeric wrote: post #17
SamBam wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why it sounds like a humblebrag to you. I believe many people, especially those of us on our computers all day, go days at a time without writing with a pen once, except maybe to scrawl their names on receipts. I used to keep a pad next to my desk to work out difficult programming concepts. I probably used it once a month at most. I write more now because I try to keep handwritten notes of to-dos, but ev…

Agreed that it isn't a humblebrag. The humblebrag, to me, was that the person's handwriting wasn't that bad. :)

Haha you are kind. I assure it looks much more prettier enlarged on a screen.

Re: Why My Handwriting Sucks: A Typographical Analysis

#28

Post by manibatra »

jawbone3 wrote: post #11

My god, programmer typography! It's like the author only just discovered font weigths. The only possible defence for using bold allcaps five times in a paragraph is if it is a name that is being typeset that way. here there is no such defence and the author deploys a further five instances of bold italics in the very first paragraph, the one small mercy being not deploying any bold all caps underline or making itrain…

I did just learn about typography. And it was a conscious decision to just go all out and I did debate whether to keep it the way it is as it was looking at times all over the place. I just wanted to try something different. I promise I will learn.

Re: Why My Handwriting Sucks: A Typographical Analysis

#29

Post by manibatra »

libertymcateer wrote: post #15

>The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog . That was bugging the heck out of me.

Author here. And to think of it that I wrote it over two days. Two days. Made a couple of my friends read it. I am embarrassed and will fix it by tonight.

Re: Why My Handwriting Sucks: A Typographical Analysis

#30

Post by manibatra »

pacaro wrote: post #8

So leaving aside the fact that tools for converting your handwriting into a font already exist. The way the Latin alphabet is typeset is really inimical to this. Arabic is a much better match, because the font shaping engines understand that letters have different forms in different parts of a word, and that the strokes need to align. Maybe you could do this with learning pairs and glyph substitutions, but I doubt ma…

Author here. I agree the tools do exist. Learning about typography ( the technical details ) is very much outside of my comfort zone. Plus I am learning a lot while deploying this as an app. Is there is any book/resource you could point me towards to further my understand? Thanks.
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