Handwriting and fonts

[kittywitty]

My 9 yo is using Getty Dubay Italic. I would like to be able to help her with her handwriting but it is sooooo different than mine. I hear complaints a lot from people about people using Italic not being able to read other cursives and helping them with it being hard if you don't know Italic. We are having that problem. I thought about getting an Italic font but I looked one up and it was $50!

Are there cheaper sites for fonts?

Are there any handwriting techniques similar to Italic but that help the user with reading other cursive writings?

[mangopassion]

I really liked Getty Dubay because my handwriting is very similar. Almost like a cross between printing and cursive. I guess we all develop our own style. (We ultimately switched to Handwriting Without Tears at my daughter's request.)

The first font that comes to mind that reminds of Getty Dubay is Lucida Handwriting Italic. I have it and I can email it to you if you'd like. I uploaded a print screen of it here so you can see it.

[mangopassion]

I forgot to list font sites! These should all be free.

dafont.com is one of my favorites
font garden
scrap village
kevin and amanda free fonts

As far as curriculum goes... if I were still using Getty Dubay with my child and my handwriting was different but I was happy with Getty Dubay, I'd probably just do the curriculum right along with my child. There are CDs that you can buy (through Rainbow Resource is where I saw them) that are student worksheets of the Getty Dubay curriculum and you can print as many as you need. That way you can print worksheets for your child to practice and for yourself. That's what I would do... I have no idea if that's feasible for you though! I'm just one of those people that like to doodle and practice my handwriting whenever I can!

[moominmamma]

We've had absolutely no trouble with the kids learning to read other cursive fonts, and we use Getty Dubay for their writing. Reading a variety of cursive styles just takes a little practice. I used to write my kids little secret notes using a loopy D'Nealian style or something more chicken-scratchy or old Palmer font like their grandma's style. It was fun for them. Sometimes I'd put together clues, or just little messages or stories.

I don't think you need a program to learn to read cursive. Just a bit of experience. For my kids it came quickly.

Miranda

[PGTlatte]

This one is supposed to be a hybrid that can start as italic and then be joined later. It is not free though. But they have materials to go with it as well as a font to download (not free - is $25).

http://www.bfhhandwriting.com/fonts.php



Back to report that I just downloaded the Jarmon font for free from A to Z Home's Cool:

http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/...andwriting.htm

It's in Word and working great, joining the letters and really pretty.

There is a dot version of the Jarmon font for tracing as well. The Jardotty I downloaded from A t Z would not install but I downloaded Jardotty from here:

http://www.fontspace.com/christopher-jarman/jardotty

And it is working great, and I am going to make some worksheets for our DS1 and ask if he wants to switch to italics today.....

[kittywitty]

Thanks, everyone. My 9 yo can read italic handwriting fine, but can not read any other sort of cursive. I also do the half cursive, half print thing when I write normally (unless helping the kids). I have considered working on my own handwriting. But I want to do Spencerian.

I just looked at a lot of those and most look ok for Windows, but I have a mac. hmmmmm....

[Kidzaplenty]