Italic Handwriting Series Book A

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Genre: General; Architecture;

Average Review: 5 stars

Review: Easy to teach, easy to learn, easy to read : Italic handwriting is the most traditional style still in use. Originally developed in Italy in the 1500s to be an extremely clear, easy to read and write style, it spread and became a dominant form of handwriting until the 1700s, when the simple, clear style was rejected in favor of elaborate, almost Rococo styles that emphasized elegance over communication and legibility. The difficulty in reading documents written in the various "loopy cursives," as they are commonly called, was a problem from the beginning, and later systems trying to correct the problem by introducing new ball-and-stick prints and simplifying the loops did little to help. Fortunately, italic has been rediscovered. It is the style most commonly taught in adult handwriting remediation programs--in hospitals, for instance, where messy handwriting can kill--and it has many advantages over the self-consciously ornate "loopy cursives." First, it is built upon natural hand motions. No ball-and-stick that, at the best of times, looks juvenile and is exceedingly slow and is usually badly distorted at higher speeds. No more loops flying in ever direction, distorting the shapes of the words. Instead, the entire system is based upon a few, very simple stroke patterns which are combined to form well-shaped and highly legible letter. Second, learning cursive is simply a matter of joining the letter-shapes already learned in standard ways. No spending a year or two of painful memorization and then readjustment. The result is a handwriting style that is easy to learn and easy to read and that looks adult. Why would you teach your child a style of handwriting that looks immature when it is done "right" because it is so unweildy that no mature writer retains it? The Getty-Dubay Italic series has neatly packaged an italic handwriting style in a way that is very easy to teach and learn. They present the letters in a logical order and provide many tips and pieces of advice broken down in a sensible fashion along the way. Rather than spending hours and hours teaching them a style of handwriting that will, more likely than not, result in a mess and then RETEACHING them again when it comes time to switch to cursive, teach them beautiful, clear handwriting from the start and use the extra time teaching typing or something worth while. There is no Getty-Dubay font that I know of, but there are two freeware italic fonts, Jarman and Jardotty. Search for them on the web--they are available in several places. I believe that there are two letters that are formed slightly differently than in the Getty-Dubay style.