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Earth Day 2022

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Handwriting Success, LLC is proud to support 1% For The Planet as a Carbonfree® Small Business Partner.

Handwriting Success has a strong environmental commitment, and invests in making its products more sustainable, including using wind-powered printing, soy-based inks and recycled paper content in the production of books, solar-powered warehousing, as well as digital content delivery and print-on-demand to reduce paper use and shipping.

Owner Jonathan Dubay says, “At Handwriting Success we take to heart the Chief Seattle quotation that is in our handwriting book for 10-year-old students: ‘All things are connected.’ To us, that means education and environmental stewardship go hand-in-hand. We want to make certain that we are preparing the best future in every way possible for the next generations.”

The 500th anniversary year!

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The first handwriting instruction book made its debut 500 years ago.

Cover page of Arrighi’s La Operina, 1522. Source: Library of Congress.

Vatican scribes of the Italic Renaissance had invented a legible, versatile and beautiful hand based on the proportions of the golden rectangle and ancient Roman capital letters. The cancellerescha style of writing, now known as Italic, spread rapidly and became the model for new styles of type as well. It was the handwriting style of Michelangelo, Queen Elizabeth I, and countless others since. We assume that the popularity of this style was what inspired Ludovico Vincentino Arrighi in 1522 to publish his La Operina, a book of handwriting models in the new chancery style to be used for copywork.

This renaissance Italic became the progenitor for the handwriting styles —and styles of type — that we use today across the globe wherever the Latin-based alphabet is written.

Italic is the basis for many type styles today.

Handwriting instruction by copying and tracing has been around for thousands of years. Students in ancient times used tablets of clay or wax, marking the surface with a stylus and then smoothing it over to write again.

One telling example of this is from a letter dating from the 7th century BCE, where the King of Assyria scolds his daughter-in-law for not doing her homework, literally saying, “Why are you not tablet-writing?” 

Here is a much later example of student tablet writing from 2nd Century Egypt (written in Greek).

2nd Century wax tablet that contains teacher (top) and student writing (bottom). Source: The British Library.

But Arrighi’s book presented two new ideas: Standardized instruction and literacy for the general population.

Today, we have a different sort of tablet and stylus, and no shortage of handwriting methods. And yet, literacy levels in schools across the US have remained stagnant and low, and there is an uneven distribution of handwriting instruction. New research suggests that handwriting is an integral part of the science of reading, literacy and college readiness. In other words, we write to learn.

At Handwriting Success, we’re connecting the dots with Getty-Dubay Italic handwriting that brings the spirit of Arrighi, and his handwriting, into the 21st century. Not only has the Getty-Dubay Italic Handwriting Series for K-6 been helping provide legible, practical handwriting to hundreds of thousands of students for over 40 years, it is now available for tablet and stylus. Our Handwriting Success App provides stand-alone year-long handwriting curricula in seven ebooks that students can write in.

So, are you tablet-writing?

Free cursive handwriting font by Handwriting Success

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The official Getty-Dubay® Italic Fonts have been 500 years in the making — so that you can make your worksheets in seconds.

We’ve created our very own join-as-you-type cursive handwriting font families that you can download for use at home or school. Visit our Fonts page to try a sample font for FREE.

The four Getty-Dubay® Italic Font families are modern descendants of the Italic handwriting style from the Italian Renaissance, when master scribes designed a fluid and graceful hand inspired by the proportions of the golden rectangle and ancient Roman capitals. 

The Italic style has been in constant use since then. In modern times, it has been celebrated by Alfred Fairbank, Lloyd Reynolds and many others including authors Barbara Getty and Inga Dubay in their Getty-Dubay® Italic method. The four Getty-Dubay® Italic monoline handwriting font families provide a replete resource to effectively model the highly-legible and beautiful Italic handwriting style.

All four font families come with the same scaffolding that the Getty-Dubay® Italic method books and apps provide (dashed lines, arrows and ruled lines) to allow for the time-honored learning process of copying and tracing by hand. The Getty-Dubay® Basic Italic and Smallcaps font families also come with starting dots for younger students. There are 72 fonts in all!

Research suggests that handwriting instruction plays a pivotal role in literacy and language skills. In other words, students write to learn. The Getty-Dubay® Italic fonts allow for the easy creation of supplemental handwriting materials to make handwriting an everyday part of classroom instruction.

Download your free Getty-Dubay Joined SAMPLE font, and purchase our entire collection of 72 fonts here.

The New Handwriting Success App

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Your iPad and stylus are now your tools for teaching handwriting.

All seven of the popular Getty-Dubay® Italic Handwriting Series books are now available in one app as ebooks that you can write in. Now available on the App Store and Google Play.

The Getty-Dubay Italic Handwriting Series Books A – G are the popular workbooks for students age 5 and up.

Use the instructional pages over and over by tracing and copying, then digitally erasing as needed. Practice to your heart’s content!

The app content takes you step-by-step through the print alphabet (basic italic) and numbers, then goes on to join these letters for flowing, legible cursive italic writing. Students can start with the book at their age level — they don’t need to complete the previous book to begin learning the italic style.

The apps are simple to use. Try before you buy with a free download of the app and sample books. Subscribe to the Getty-Dubay Italic Handwriting Series ebooks using the in-app bookstore. Turn pages, scroll, navigate and create bookmarks in the same way you would with an ebook.

The fun comes when students touch their stylus to the screen. Now they can select the color, width and opacity of the pen line. They trace and copy the handwriting models, reading the instructions and tips as they go. Then, they can erase their work and practice more by selecting the eraser icon to change the stylus function to erase mode, or by erasing the writing on the entire page at once. There are extra practice sheets at the end of the book, too. Students can document and share their work via the tablet native screenshot function.

These apps replace the need for the paperback workbook, which means you’re saving paper and the resources that would have gone into producing and shipping the product.

Read More…

The Getty-Dubay app

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It’s so easy and natural to have good handwriting, even with a stylus.

It’s the first complete handwriting instruction app made for adults who write with a stylus: the Getty-Dubay Handwriting Success App for iPad or Android tablet.

The Getty-Dubay
Handwriting Success App

Now available

Available on the App Store and Google Play

WRITE NOW: the Getty-Dubay® Program for Handwriting Success is our popular handwriting workbook for adults, and this app brings it to your tablet so you can use it just like a book — only better. You’ll be able to trace and copy over and over. Practice to your heart’s content. Touch up your handwriting wherever your are, when it is convenient, on your iPad, Chromebook, Pixel Slate or Android tablet. (Minimum tablet width: 7.5 inches.)

This is not your grandparents’ handwriting.  For over 40 years, the authors Barbara Getty and Inga Dubay have been teaching legible, handsome handwriting without the loops and curlicues of conventional cursive.

It’s real handwriting, for real life.

Use your stylus with confidence and ease to produce notes that you feel good about sharing, and that you, your colleagues & friends (and your handwriting recognition software) can read.

See our successful Kickstarter campaign!

The app is optimized for:

  • Apple Pencil (or similar paired stylus) with iPad Pro 12.9″, iPad Pro 11″, iPad Air 10.5″ or iPad 10.2″;
  • Android tablet with paired stylus, minimum screen dimension 7.5″ (width or height, whichever is longest). Recommended device: Google Pixel Slate with Google Pixel Pen, or tablet with similar processor speed and memory. Many Android tablets can run this app, but slower devices may experience latency. Stylus must have palm-rejection capability.
Available at the App Store and Google Play

Learn more about Getty-Dubay Handwriting Success App.

WRITE NOW | italic handwriting | Getty-Dubay products

The Instruction Manual gets a new look

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An old favorite gets a new look. Our Instruction Manual form the Getty-Dubay® Italic Handwriting Series has a new cover image, and a new lay-flat binding style. Teachers and parents will appreciate the new type of perfect binding that allows the book to remain open on a desk for easy reference.

The other Books A-G in the Series have cover images taken by photographer Tony Midson, highlighting scenes from nature in Oregon, the authors’ home state. The new Instruction Manual cover image continues this aesthetic, with a view from an old barn near Dufur, Oregon looking North across the Columbia river gorge to nearby Washington.

Although the Getty-Dubay® Italic Handwriting Series Books A-G are complete and ready to use in the classroom or homeschool, either as a set or individually, the Instruction Manual provides many additional resources.

In it you’ll find:

  • a background philosophy of italic handwriting
  • classroom management plans
  • detailed notes for teachers for each of the seven workbooks A – G
  • best practices for letter formation
  • assessment tools and forms
  • scope and sequence
  • tips on reading conventional looped cursive
  • additional student activities
  • and so much more!

Some parents wonder if they need to buy the Instruction Manual for their homeschool. No, it is not necessary have the Instruction Manual in addition to the workbooks in order to teach Getty-Dubay® Italic. But, if you do buy it, you’ll be happy you did!

The Instruction Manual is included in the complete series set that contains all the Getty-Dubay® Italic Handwriting Series books and two desk strips for $95.00.