Handwriting Books

Handwriting books for teachers

1. "The BBC Adult Literacy Handbook" — edited by Chris Longley [94 pages: BBC 1975]
2. "BBC Writing and Spelling" — edited by Catherine Moorehouse [96 pages: BBC 1979]
3. "Teaching English as a Second Language" — Sandra Nicholls & Julia Naish [96 pages: BBC 1981]
4. "Adult Literacy: A Handbook for Development Workers" — planning a small-scale teaching & literacy programme [185 pages: Oxfam Academic 1995]
5. "The Phonics Handbook" (photocopiable) — for teaching reading, writing & spelling to young children, by Sue Lloyd [218 pages: Jolley Learning 1992]
6. "The Child and the English Language Arts (p245-286 are on 'Handwriting')" by Mildred R. Donoghue [474 pages: W.C. Brown 1989]
7. "Parents' Guide To Handwriting" — by Christopher Jarman [28 pages]
8. "The Development of Handwriting Skills": A Resource Book for Teachers by Christopher Jarman [136 pages]

Handwriting practice materials for learners

For adults (also suitable for most teenagers)

1. "Start By Writing" — suitable for Arabic language backgrounds — John Naunton [88 pages: Longman 1985]
2. "Basic Handwriting in English" — suitable for Arabic language backgrounds — Bernard Hartley & Peter Viney [62 pages: Nelson 1982]
3. "Handwriting: Work Book" — Bright and Piggot [32 pages: Cambridge 1976]
4. "Handwriting: Teachers Book" — Bright and Piggot [34 pages: Cambridge 1976]
5. "Practical Punctuation" — Ian Gordon [80 pages Heinemann 1978]
6. "Collins Good Punctuation" — Graham King [192 pages: Collins 2004]

For young learners (aged 12 to 16)

1. "Rainbow 2000: Beginning Handwriting Skills" — young learners within an Arabic-world context [24 pages: Macmillan ELT 1991]
2. "English Punctuation" (Usborne Better) — well illustrated rules and practice for young learners aged 12 to 16 [32 pages: Usborne 2003]

For small children (aged 5 and 6), including early reading / synthetic phonics

1. Handwriting Skills: Copybooks 1 to 6 (Paperback 1994) by Christopher Jarman [32 pages: Nelson Thornes Ltd 1994]
2. "Learn Cursive Writing" — Jillian Harker & Geraldine Taylor [32 pages: Ladybird 1994] - National Curriculum English Stage 1 (children)
3. "Learn Reading Skills" — Jillian Harker & Geraldine Taylor [32 pages: Ladybird 1994] - National Curriculum English Stage 1 (children)
4. "Learn Phonic Spelling" — Jillian Harker & Geraldine Taylor [32 pages: Ladybird 1994] - National Curriculum English Stage 1 (children)
5. "Oxford Reading Tree: Stages 1 to 6: Songbirds Phonics" by Julia Donaldson.
6. "Get Ready!: Handwriting Book Level 1" — for very young children — Felicity Hopkins [32 pages: Oxford 1988]
7. "American Get Ready!: Handwriting Book Level 1" — for very young children — Felicity Hopkins [32 pages: Oxford 1990]
8. "Get Ready!: Handwriting Book Level 2" — for very young children — Felicity Hopkins [32 pages: Oxford 1988]
9. "American Get Ready!: Handwriting Book Level 2" — for very young children — Felicity Hopkins [32 pages: Oxford 1990]

Producing handwriting practice materials

You can also download two useful handwriting fonts: JARMAN and JARDOTTY as non-commercial freeware.

I used the JARMAN font on this website to produce the handwriting practice exercises:

The JARDOTTY font allows learners to trace texts by joining up the dots.

These fonts will work under both Windows and Mac operating systems (i.e. in Microsoft Word or Pages) if you manage to move the downloaded fonts into the appropriate font folders.

To get them to display on a website, you need to embed your JARMAN or JARDOTTY as a layer of TEXT within a GRAPHIC IMAGE.

To do this, choose FILE and NEW within a graphics application such as Adobe's Photoshop Elements. The default setting is usually a white background. Set the WIDTH as 9 inches, the HEIGHT as 0.5 inches and the RESOLUTION at 72 dots per inch. This will give you a white strip i.e. a graphic image into which you can embed a layer of text. Select the TEXT icon and set your handwriting Fonts (e.g. Jarman 30 point or Jardotty 24 point) within the graphics application where your white strip is displayed. Add just one line of text. Select 'FILE' and 'Save for Web' and save as a low-quality JPG file.

To produce the graphic content for a handwriting web page which will print onto a single sheet of A4, you will need no more than seven of these strips or graphic images, each with one line of text (in your handwriting font) embedded.

7 lines of text is quite enough to occupy learners in need of basic handwriting practice for a good session.