News

Constitution Day 2025

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We’re partnering with
Handwriting the Constitution
for National Constitution Day, 2025

At Handwriting Success, we are celebrating Constitution Day on September 17, 2025 by joining the ongoing events of Handwriting the Constitution. (Read the NYTimes.com story here.) Find out more about this non-profit organization created by Morgan O’Hara, and organize your own event www.hanwritingtheconstitution.org.

See below the event that is being sponsored by Handwriting Success in collaboration with Handwriting the Constitution. It is free and open to the public. Spend quality time getting to know this foundational document of self-governance by copying it out by hand, either at this event, on your own or in a group, in public or in private.

You can find out more about how to participate, or create your own local event at www.handwritingtheconstitution.org.

Handwriting the Constitution for Constitution Day event:

Wednesday, January 22, 5:30pm to 7:30pm. Multnomah County Library Midland Branch, 805 SE 122nd Avenue in Portland, Oregon. More information and updates: https://multcolib.org/events-classes/handwriting-constitution

Press Release

A PDF of the complete up-to-date text of the U. S. Constitution can be found here.

Getty-Dubay Italic has earned the 2025 Modular Learning Award

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Getty-Dubay® Italic has been selected as a 2025 Modular Learning Award winner!

This recognition is part of Modulo’s 2025 Guide to Homeschooling Programs, which features 1,000 carefully vetted resources across 116 categories. The award highlights the very best programs that meet the highest standards for homeschooling families, including:

  • Uniquely innovative and not designed just for test prep.
  • Kids love them and find them highly engaging.
  • Error-free and grounded in accuracy.
  • Foster critical thinking without hidden bias or indoctrination.
  • Secular and welcoming to all families.
  • Built on thoughtful, child-centered pedagogy.
  • Encourage self-directed learning and exploration.
  • Highly recommended by families with domain expertise and personal experience.

Getty-Dubay® Italic stood out among tens of thousands reviewed, reflecting its exceptional quality and impact on learners. The 2025 2025 Guide to Homeschooling Programs is designed to be a trusted resource for families navigating the ever-growing world of homeschooling programs, showcasing outstanding options like Getty-Dubay® Italic.

Learn more at https://www.modulo.app/all-resources/homeschooling-programs-2025.

Handwriting Day 2025

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We’re partnering with
Handwriting the Constitution
for National Handwriting Day, 2025

Every year, on John Hancock’s birthday, the United States celebrates the amazing cultural phenomenon of handwriting. Handwriting communicates — it expresses ideas, emotions, thoughts, instructions. Handwriting organizes — by making lists, plans, goals. Handwriting teaches — it helps us to learn and to think. And it connects us to thousands of years of cultural history.

There are many ways to celebrate Handwriting Day, and they all involve exercising that basic literary skill that you probably don’t remember learning for the first time. You can write a letter, postcard, or just a note to a friend or family member — a thank you, a get-well-soon, a love letter or a business letter. You can learn a new handwriting style, or brush up the one you use. You can write out your favorite poem, quotation, or document.

At Handwriting Success, we are celebrating Handwriting Day 2025 by joining the ongoing events of Handwriting the Constitution. (Read the NYTimes.com story here.) Find out more about this non-profit organization created by Morgan O’Hara, and organize your own event www.hanwritingtheconstitution.org.

See below the event that is being sponsored by Handwriting Success in collaboration with Handwriting the Constitution. It is free and open to the public. Spend quality time getting to know this foundational document of self-governance by copying it out by hand, either at this event, on your own or in a group, in public or in private.

You can find out more about how to participate, or create your own local event at www.handwritingtheconstitution.org.

Handwriting the Constitution for National Handwriting Day event:

Wednesday, January 22, 3pm to 5:30pm. Multnomah County Library Hillsdale Branch, 1525 SW Sunset Boulevard, Portland, OR 97239. More information and updates: https://multcolib.org/events-classes/handwriting-constitution

Press Release

A PDF of the complete up-to-date text of the U. S. Constitution can be found here.

New FREE letter-tracing apps

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Learn and practice how to form lowercase letters!

From the makers of the Handwriting Success App, Letter FUNdamentals with Getty-Dubay® Italic is a fun way for young students to practice individual letters on your Apple or Android touchscreen device.

Pick a letter family, then choose a letter to practice. Provides lowercase and capital letter formation practice through four educational steps: following, tracing, tracing and drawing, then freehand drawing.

Getty-Dubay® Italic is a handwriting style that is fun to learn, easy to teach and natural to write.

The Letter FUNdamentals apps develop these skills: 

✔︎ Recognition of letter families based on similar shapes or width
✔︎ Motor memory of correct letter paths
✔︎ Knowledge of starting points, stroke sequence and stroke direction
✔︎ Fluency of letter formation

And use a progression of scaffolds:

✔︎ Following – watch the prompt trace the letter path
✔︎ Leading – move the prompt along the letter path
✔︎ Leading and drawing – move the prompt and draw along the letter path
✔︎ Free drawing – draw the letter path without a guide

Letter FUNdamentals I
Lowercase Precursive game

For ages 7 and up

iPhone & iPad  |  Android

Letter FUNdamentals II
Basic Italic Capitals game

For ages 7 and up

iPhone & iPad  |  Android

Help Desk: Edged pen writing for lefties

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You have taken the first best step by purchasing a left-handed nib set, which has a nib angle that slopes to the left (rather than the right) as viewed from the face of the pen. Alternately, you can use a neutral edged nib, which does not slope.

At https://handwritingsuccess.com/videos-gdic/ the author Inga Dubay has a video example of how you might consider using the broad edge pen (see screenshot). Note that the paper is at 90 degrees and the writing is done with the hand moving toward you. The advantages of this method is that the wrist can maintain a relaxed position, and that you can see what you have written without smudging the wet ink you’ve just laid down.

Even though the author is using a neutral (not angled) fiber-tip pen in this case, the rational is the same: broad edged pens like to be pulled, but not pushed. 

Using an edged pen can be a challenge at first for any writer. The two important aspects are

  • maintaining contact of the nib to the paper along the entire nib edge, and
  • maintaining the appropriate pen-edge angle with respect to the baseline (usually 45 degrees for lowercase and 15 degrees for capitals).

Regarding the first item above, as you draw warm up lines with the pen, you can experiment with rocking the pen back and forth gently and minutely to get a feel for how it is contacting the paper. Then, as you write, move slowly enough so that you can feel this contact throughout the stoke. Your eye will also provide feedback as you watch the line thickness and edges. You will also want to make sure that your hand is not directly over your writing, but rather that the pen slopes away from your hand as it would if you are using a monoline tool (see image).

Having said all this, you are doing the right thing by experimenting patiently. If there is one constant for left-handed writers, it is that they all eventually find what works for them.

Help Desk: What flavor “pizza”?

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You may be asking about the use of the lowercase letter ‘z’ in cursive italic handwriting, specifically what are appropriate joins into and out of the letter ‘z’ as in the word ‘lazy’.

As you can see from the examples on the webpage about cursive italic handwriting, the authors’ example joins out of ‘z’ but not into it. 

The ease and legibility of italic handwriting comes from the fact that the print and cursive modes use the same letterforms. So, for example, the letter ‘z’ does not change from print to cursive, unlike other styles of cursive writing (see chart below for letter ‘Z’ from our Style Comparison resource).

The authors Getty and Dubay recommend no joins into ‘f’, or ‘z’ and no joins out of ‘g’, ‘j’ and ‘y’. This is because if you do, legibility will suffer — the extra lines will likely make it hard to read and/or awkward looking. See the example of ‘pizza’ below written in looped cursive, italic and italic with joins into ‘z’. We feel that line two (with the green check mark) is the most legible.

These recommendations not to join are standard practice for many variations of italic handwriting, and come from the 500-year history of the italic style.  

However, it is your handwriting, so you are welcome to join wherever you wish — just remember to be extra careful with these joins, if you do make them. Also, these joins probably won’t make your handwriting faster. Research tells us* that students write faster when they pick up the pen sometimes instead of always connecting letters.

*Graham, S., Weintraub, N., & Berninger, V. W. (1998). The Relationship Between Handwriting Style and Speed and Legibility. The Journal of Educational Research, 91(5), 290–297. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220679809597556.

Font credit: Looped cursive example Learning Curve font; Italic examples with Getty-Dubay Joined font.