My Journey into Spencerian Cursive

I decided to learn Spencerian cursive as my new daily method of writing. I am essentially making this thread as more of a journal to post my findings and improvements of learning this new method of writing. I was taught the Palmer method back in elementary school so this experiment is a welcome change of pace. As a quick note, I am not learning the "true" Spencerian, but instead I am removing the the shading and making this a business type of Spencerian. I am open to any suggestions or tips from those who already know Spencerian as the book isn't crystal clear about some letters and movements.

My books of choice to learn from are the "Spencerian System of Practical Penmanship" reprinted by Mott Media. It can be easily found on Amazon with all of the copy books for practice. I am also using my fountain pens rather than a dip pen for practicality reasons.

Hopefully this journey of mine will potentially inspire others to learn as well as simply educate myself and others in a form of cursive that many have forgotten.





Day 1:
Today was essentially learning how to properly sit, hold the pen, and move the pen about the paper to form simple principles and the letters i and u. It was difficult to comprehend the idea of not planting my wrist to the table and holding the paper at such a steep angle, but I soon became accustomed to such practices. It seems that as far as writing is concerned it isn't much different than my current method. You use your muscle in front of your elbow as a pivot and your fingers mostly to form the principles of each letter, while using the forearm to slide across the paper while writing. It currently takes me about 20-35 minutes to complete one page of the copybook because of paying close attention to my grip and wrist placement. So far so good.

I downloaded the .pdf and I'm doing the same thing. Your practice pages look much better than mine so I guess I have a lot further to go toward improvement.

Awesome! Will be following your progress.


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I am using Spencerian cursive when I write to pen pals . I have two.

But it is modified. I have been using cursive my entire life.

Day 2:
Today I only did two pages. Both working on "iu" and "iw". These exercises helped me learn start learning how to move my forearm while writing with my finger in what the theory book calls a "combination motion". I am sure this will be a very important aspect once I start writing full words. Even with these exercises being as bland as they are, I'm still finding pleasure in the experience of writing with my Lamy 2000 and learning!

Looks great! My book is not quite as filled out, but I'm getting there!

With Spencerian, how does "arm movement" work? It seems strange and unnatural that you would move your whole arm on a letter or combination of two letters.

Granted, I am a printer except for signing my name, but I basically plant my wrist on the page and use my fingers to form characters. When needed, I move my wrist over. Do you take more a light approach where you don't plant your wrist and use your whole arm to move the pen?

According to the theory book im using. You keep your wrist off the table and rest your third and fourth fingernails on the paper. Using the muscle above your elbow as a pivot, you write with your fingers and move across the paper by moving your forearm to the side to continue writing. There are a few occasions when the entire arm is off the table and used such as certain capital letters like "O".

For me, this method allows me to write slightly lighter or at my normal "pressure". This is much easier than when I planted my wrist on the table. I still tend to write with my normal writing pressure, but I play with lighter writing on occasion.

[MENTION=45780]shaving[/MENTION]Electricity

Thanks Andrew, good explanation.

Day 4:
I didn't have time yesterday to do any practice sheets, but today I finish "ni" and "m". These exercises introduced a different principle of letters in the practice and was quite interesting to see the difference in my old "m" to the spencerian version. My old style of writing produced a much more compact letter whereas the Spencerian takes up more space. I have also noticed that Spencerian requires a very fine line to be exact, however I'm not concerned with this as I am making a business script out of the lessons. I though would say a German fine such as the Lamy 2000 is the broadest I would want to go in the copy books.

Excellent. Keep up the good work. I have the copy books myself, and you are inspiring me to dig them back out and finish.

I've been meaning to try something like this but just not willing to make the time commitment. But I enjoy checking on the thread - keep at it!

[MENTION=99513]Traveling Man[/MENTION] Thank you for the support and glad to hear I'm inspiring someone else. Spencerian truly is a beautiful script.
[MENTION=47702]SAPed[/MENTION] Thanks for the support and I completely understand the time commitment. Each of these pages take quite a while to finish.

Day 5:
Today I worked on "x" and "v". The x was rather challenging to get just right, but I found the v rather easy. The lowercase x was difficult because of trying to get the spacing just right between the outer and inner principles. I think both pages came out rather well and look forward to the next two pages!

awesome work andrew, soon you shall be writing pages and pages of perfect loops and lines with mechanical precision

Day 8:
Today I worked on my "o" and "au". The "o" wasn't that difficult, but the lowercase "a" gave me some difficulty because I am more found of the look of a wider a than the one shown in the book. I decided to go with the larger version of the spencerian "a" and modify the script slightly to better fit my personal preferences. That is what I love about cursive writing, the writing is an extension of one's self and it reflects you as a person.



Thank you everyone for the amazing support on this journey of learning and knowledge of skills that many see as useless in today's "modern" society!

When the question is asked, how do you write with your arm? The answer is, we have been doing it for centuries but the ball point ruined technique. No longer do you have to hold the pen properly to get the pen to stroke a line. There is a video of a sign painter painting letters and it shows beautiful technique. It reminds me of what these books are teaching us on steroids. Once you master the arm movemnet, you can write for hours and your hand does not cramp.

Beautiful handwriting. The curse on left handed people. I am a hook writer whilst my mum is an underwriter with very nice penmanship. Written language, at least cursive, is designed for a right handed person.

Phog Allen said:

Beautiful handwriting. The curse on left handed people. I am a hook writer whilst my mum is an underwriter with very nice penmanship. Written language, at least cursive, is designed for a right handed person.

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I understand your situation. My manager at work is left handed and detests writing because he always gets ink on his hand and his writing tends to be illegible. I, however, do think it's all about practice and patience. If you just practice and focus on finding a technique that works for you there will be improvement. Thank you btw for the compliment!

Day 21:

After a long hiatus from working on Spencerian, I finally got some time to work on my cursive. I practiced "e", "r" and "s" today. I decided to keep my Palmer style "c" because with my fountain pens it's very hard to tell the difference between the "e" and "c". The "s" was rather simple and felt very natural to form and the "r" was also quite easy. I decided to use the rest of my Noodlers Liberties Elysium in my TWSBI Eco because I want to clean it out good and refill it with some Pelikan 4001 Brilliant Red. Worked out well on these notebooks!