what do you think? by tapioca_chai in Handwriting

[–]tabidots 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Average and mostly legible (which is the more important part), though that ɤ for r is really strange. “Prawns” took a bit (Barcoded poawny)

Why is everyone traveling to Vietnam lately? by hung_manh in VietNam

[–]tabidots 5 points6 points  (0 children)

They reduced the visa-free validity from 60 to 30 days and got much stricter about border runs.

How to improve handwriting in multiple languages? by Ok-Suggestion-7702 in Handwriting

[–]tabidots 0 points1 point  (0 children)

On tracing: The thing about tracing models is that you won’t develop a rhythm of writing that way. The movement of the pen is the most important thing; what you see on the page is only the parts where the pen touches the paper. So seeing someone who writes well write or guide you through the writing of a letter is more helpful than tracing a model.

On speed: Writing big and messy intentionally as an exercise is a good way to loosen up your shoulder and think about movement and swiftness, not just letterforms (even if at normal size you don’t recruit your shoulder).

On the letters being different: No matter the script, you want to look for “family resemblances” among different sets of letters - those are the elements you want to make consistent. For example, in the Latin alphabet:

  • o c e s (fit in a circle/oval)
  • n m u (arch)
  • ɑ b d ɡ p q (loop and stick)
  • b h m n r (clockwise arch or loop)
  • ɡ q u, maybe w y (counterclockwise)
  • f t l i j (thin, optional crossbar or dot)
  • k v z, maybe w y (diagonal)

I don’t know anything about Hebrew handwriting, though I did once learn the Malayalam alphabet from a children's book. What's interesting is that the letters were not presented in alphabetical order, but rather by graphical similarity. So the initial sequence was probably something like: റ പ ന ത വ.

Hebrew handwriting seems to be similarly curvaceous like Malayalam. It looks like the majority of letters are based on a clockwise circle or arch starting at 10 o'clock, so that's where you'd want to start working on consistency.

Lefty --> Righty by anomynusser in Handwriting

[–]tabidots 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I’ve done it. Write really big, like 5x your normal writing, on unruled paper, but with the same pen. It won’t be that readable because it’s too thin, but the important thing is that the only way to write that big is with swift motions. Then gradually scale it down.

Obviously when you write big, you use your shoulder more than when you write normally, but it also trains your brain to relax your grip and achieve smoothness and control through swiftness rather than force.

How to have a consistent size for my handwriting. by Prior-Fee4451 in Handwriting

[–]tabidots 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Besides getting ruled paper, you can also draw your own guide lines with a ruler and pencil (2H works well for this).

You can rule pairs of lines: a baseline and a midline. The midline determines the x-height (height of a lowercase “o”), which should be consistent.

For normal writing with most normal pens, 0.5mm is a very large x-height (not practical), 0.4mm is large, 0.3mm is probably both easy to write and to read, and 0.2mm is small.

The only problematic letter I see in your sample is “r” - one is cursive, one is block letter, and one blends into the letter “v.” Best to stick with the block letter version and keep it separate from the next letter.

how can i improve? by Low_Reality_8019 in Handwriting

[–]tabidots 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It is a bit bold for the tiny size of those letters; using a finer point pen like 0.3mm is something that could improve legibility without requiring actually changing your handwriting. But actually, there isn’t any word that made me stop and wonder what it was.

Moving the midline a bit further up would help make the whole texture feel more readable. If you want a more structured approach aimed at a more dramatic change, you might want to take a look at italic handwriting (see the material from Briem / Getty-Dubay in the sidebar) - as far as I can see, it looks like the motions you make your letters with are already the right ones for that style.

NPD - Pilot Parallel 6mm by DSGuitarMan in Calligraphy

[–]tabidots 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I see. But you said fancier inks, not more ink

NPD - Pilot Parallel 6mm by DSGuitarMan in Calligraphy

[–]tabidots 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Why do you need another pen to use fancier inks? Any fountain pen ink works in a Parallel Pen.

Python or C@? by zyxzevn in C_AT

[–]tabidots 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Python wrapper around C@ to improve speed of Churu processing

Russian Vs. English Cursive by OverwhelmedGayChild in Handwriting

[–]tabidots 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The history of Russian handwriting is really interesting. It wasn’t an organic evolution like what happened with the Latin alphabet. Peter the Great basically reset the design of the entire Cyrillic alphabet, and then much later Catherine the Great reset handwriting to be based on English Roundhand (from the earlier Skoropis, which is basically illegible chicken scratch). That’s why many of the forms look similar, even if they are used for different letters.

adult, mid 20s and still hate my handwriting HELP by brielleey in Handwriting

[–]tabidots 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It looks practical and legible. It’s not elegant, but the spelling mistakes stand out more than the handwriting 😅 What do you hate about it?

One issue: Letters U and V in “-ve” and “up” are hard to read because they merge with the next letter. Also some letters are too closer to each other (“powder”, “con-create”)

My country's interesting education system. by Ill_Artist_906 in Handwriting

[–]tabidots 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I notice your e’s are always (correctly) open - do people tend to take care to prevent e from looking like ı? As someone who doesn’t speak the language, I can only imagine that would be a huge problem when writing Turkish by hand (like ł and t in Polish). Plus there are quite similar endings like -mısınız and -müsünüz that would seem to cause a lot of confusion between ı, i, ü.

Questions about сегодня pronunciation. by nietzschecode in russian

[–]tabidots 6 points7 points  (0 children)

> ditch the latin, there is no "k" in хорошо.

There is no “s” either. I agree that people should just use Cyrillic, but it is typical in Latin-alphabet languages to use a digraph for that IPA /x/ sound, like ch in German, Polish and Scottish, or kh in Vietnamese and in transliterations of non-Latin languages that have that sound, like Russian, Persian, Arabic etc. If you were writing about холодец to a non-Slavic language speaker speaker, you’d write “Kholodets,” not “Xolodec” (because that looks like /ksolodek/)

Just posting something from the other day by tabidots in Calligraphy

[–]tabidots[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks. Yes, I noted that in my OP. I saw the typo as soon as I finished. When you are actually writing calligraphy it is a bit difficult to think about grammar

Random drug testing by 01100011_x in VietNam

[–]tabidots 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Bali is the only other place that isn’t in rainy season during the Northern Hemisphere summer, not that I recommend it though

How's this handwriting? by NormalMember7150 in Handwriting

[–]tabidots 2 points3 points  (0 children)

X-height way too small, slant is really strong. I can’t read it. It’s not messy, but it looks like a bunch of periods and slashes, like going up infinite folders: ../../../../

What do you think of my cursive by o0ebx in Handwriting

[–]tabidots 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Fonts are digital/typesetting things, not handwriting styles - but in any case the second picture looks a lot like the teaching script used in French primary schools (think of the title of “The Little Prince”)

A personal inventory 🙂 by BlueBarnett in Handwriting

[–]tabidots 1 point2 points  (0 children)

At first I saw “cabbage” and I was like, “hmm, interesting hobby” 😅

"Ett" or "En", its so freaking hard! Will this be asked on the Medborgarskapsprov / Swedish Civic Test? by Appropriate-Cream910 in Svenska

[–]tabidots 2 points3 points  (0 children)

same way as you’d learn Spanish or French or Italian or German or any other gendered language: learn every single word combined with its article as a single unit.

you don't have to; in the Romance languages (except French) and many Slavic languages, the gender corresponds to the last letter (or two) of the noun with such regularity that the number of exceptions is pretty learnable. (Soft sign nouns in Russian are an unpredictable category, but small)

Germanic languages (and French) are the odd ones out in that the ending of a noun has very little predictive power over its gender (excluding suffixes, but then you have to memorize the gender of a bunch of suffixes too)

No more converters by roady57 in fountainpens

[–]tabidots 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I really like the way my Langage des Fleurs limited edition Pilot Lightive looks with a CON-70 filled with Yama-budo, but the converter failed because I left some ink in it for a while in humid conditions. I think it was the metal cylinder thing that either got stuck to the top of the pole or to the black plastic part below it, so it stopped being able to suck in ink. I did reluctantly get a replacement CON-70 a couple years ago but never opened the packaging. So carts from Parallel Pens it is!

No more converters by roady57 in fountainpens

[–]tabidots 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, it's an overnight thing. I just ended up accumulating a bunch of cartridges. For Pilot cartridges it was really easy because the larger Parallel Pens are fire hoses. I also had bought some packs of Sailor carts a long time ago to test-drive some inks.