Handwriting is one of those skills that you generally learn as a

kid, and then never try to actively improve as you grow up.
However, being able to write faster has some significant
benefits, which are especially important for people who
often need to write things by hand, such as university
students. These benefits include:
 Increased automaticity, which lessens the burden on
working memory. This means that you don’t have to
actively concentrate on the act of writing itself, and that
you can instead focus on thinking about what to write.
 Increased overlap between the mental generation of
output and the consequent production of text relating to
that output. This means that you can write your thoughts
down immediately as you are forming them, without
suffering from a delay which hinders your thought
process.
 Improved performance in various academic tasks, and
especially those that require a lot of handwriting under
time constraints, such as taking notes during lectures or
writing essays during in-class exams.
Below is a collection of tips and strategies, which can help
you learn how to write faster by hand. Some of these can be
implemented immediately with no effort, while others require a
bit of practice.
You don’t have to do everything that’s listed here; it’s fine to
pick out even just one or two things that you want to focus on
while writing. Doing this will require only a minimal amount of
effort on your part, and will still allow you to gain a significant
improvement in your writing speed over a short period of time.
 
Table of contents
 Fix your handwriting technique
 Maintain good posture
 Hold the pen whichever way feels comfortable
 Avoid gripping the pen too hard
 Use a good writing implement
  Improve your handwriting style
 Use a shorthand writing system
 Summary and conclusions

Fix your handwriting technique

Improving your handwriting technique is a good way to improve
your writing speed.
 Good handwriting technique involves using your fingers
as guides, and moving the pen using your forearm and
shoulder muscles. This allows you to write quickly,
without tiring out or getting cramps.
 Bad handwriting technique involves drawing the letters
using your fingers, moving your wrist constantly, and
repeatedly picking up your hand from the paper in order
to move it across as you write. These issues slow down
your writing, and cause your hand to tire out and cramp.
How to get your technique right: in order to get a sense of
which muscles you should use, try holding your arm in front of
you, while writing large letters in the air. Use the guidelines
above in order to see which technical practices you should
follow, and which you should avoid.
Once you get used to these movements, try to implement them
as you write on paper, while making sure to keep the technical
guidelines in mind, and to check up on your technique from time
to time as you write.
 

Maintain good posture

Maintaining good posture is an easy way to improve your
writing speed, while also helping you stay healthy and feel more
comfortable while you write.
To help improve your posture, you ideally want to be seated
with your feet resting flat on the floor, and with your hips and
lower back supported by the chair. At the same time, your
knees should be flexed to approximately 90˚, and your elbows
should be slightly flexed, with your forearms resting
comfortably on the desk surface.
You should avoid slouching over the paper while you write,
since doing this puts unnecessary strain on your arm, which
makes it more difficult to write.
In addition, make sure to set the height of the desk and the
chair properly, in a way that encourages proper posture, based
on the guidelines that we saw above. When the desk/chair
combination is set with improper heights, you will find that it’s
more difficult to maintain good posture, which hinders your
writing.
 

Hold the pen whichever way feels

comfortable
Research shows that your grasp (i.e. the way you hold the pen
in your hand) doesn’t have much of an impact on your writing
speed. Furthermore, note that when writing for extended
periods of time, it’s natural to sometimes vary the way you hold
the pen, so this is not necessarily indicative of a problem.
Therefore, as long as you feel comfortable while writing, you
can hold the pen or pencil whichever way feels comfortable for
you.
However, if the way that you naturally hold the writing utensil
feels uncomfortable or causes you to cramp, and you decide
that you want to improve it, it’s generally advisable to go with
the commonly used dynamic tripod grip, which is shown in the
image below.
 
 Source
 
Using the dynamic tripod grip means the following:
 The pen should be pinched between the thumb and
index finger, slightly above the area where the sharp end
of the pen meets the shaft.
 There should be an open space between the thumb and
index finger.
 The pen should be resting against the middle finger.
 The ring finger and little finger should be tucked into the
palm.
 

Avoid gripping the pen too hard

People tend to grip their pen or pencil too hard, especially when
trying to write quickly. The problem is that doing this slows you
down, and causes your hand to tire.
The best way to avoid this is to consciously check up on
yourself while you write, and make sure that you’re not gripping
the pen too hard. It’s okay to hold it firmly, but you don’t want
to be actively crushing it with your hands.
If you consistently correct yourself over time and avoid gripping
too hard, then eventually you should be able to maintain the
appropriate grip strength naturally.
Note that if you find yourself constantly gripping your pen too
hard, it’s possible that you need to get a new one, that better
fits your hand. You’ll read more about this in the next section.
 

Use a good writing implement

Using a good-quality writing implement that fits your hand
properly can make a huge difference in your writing, without
requiring much effort on your part. There are three main things
that you should pay attention to:
 Thickness– pick a pen that isn’t so thin that you end up
having to squeeze it tightly, or so thick that it ends up
being uncomfortable to hold. If necessary, you can
increase the thickness of a pen by putting a small rubber
grip on it. The right size for a pen depends on how big
your hand is and on your personal preferences, so
experiment and find out what works for you.
 Tip size– pick a pen that has a tip size that you feel
comfortable with (e.g. 0.5mm versus 0.9mm). Which one
works better for you will again depend on your needs
and preferences, so you should experiment and find out
what works for you.
 Quality- use a good quality pen, that doesn’t require you
to press hard on the paper in order to get the ink out.
This alone can make a huge difference, and a good pen
doesn’t cost more than a few dollars, so there’s no reason
why you shouldn’t just buy one.
 

Improve your handwriting style

You can increase your handwriting speed by making a few
simple modifications to your handwriting style, and specifically
by simplifying the way you write the letters. This means that
you should try to get rid of excessive marks and styling, as long
as omitting them has no impact on the legibility of your writing.
It’s also possible to modify the size of your letters, and in theory,
if you decrease the size of your letters, you will need to move
your arm less when you write, which should enable you to write
faster.
However, this is not necessarily true in practice, and reducing
the letter size might end up slowing you down, by making it
more difficult for you to write the individual letters. Since this is
also something that varies from person to person, you can
experiment and see what works for you.
 

Use a shorthand writing system

 

 
Shorthand writing systems use various unique symbols, which
can replace letters, common letter combinations, sounds, or
frequently-used words, in order to save time as you write. You
can either learn an existing shorthand system, or develop your
own. Commonly used shorthand variants include Gregg, Pitman,
and Teeline.
One of the ways to benefit from the use of shorthand without
having to put a lot of effort into learning a full shorthand writing
system, is to focus only on a small number of words which
appear frequently in the language, such as ‘the’ and ‘to’. It’s
relatively easy to simplify these words, and doing so can lead to
a significant improvement in your writing speed, while still
keeping your writing fairly legible.
 

 
Finally, keep in mind that the more you rely on shorthand, the
more difficult it will be for others to decipher your notes. This
can be either an advantage or a disadvantage, depending on
your preferences.
 

Summary and conclusions

 Improving your handwriting speed can have
significant benefits, such as increased automaticity,
increased overlap between mental generation of output
and the consequent production of text, and improved
performance in academic tasks.
 There are a lot of things you can do in order to improve
your handwriting speed, and you can pick which aspects
you want to work on, as each of them will lead to notable
benefits by itself.
 In terms of writing technique, make sure to use your
fingers as guides, and move the pen using the forearm
and shoulder muscles, while maintaining a good posture.
Avoid drawing the letters with your fingers, moving your
wrist constantly, repeatedly picking your hand up from
 the paper, gripping the pen too hard, or slouching over
the paper.
 Make sure to get a good writing implement that is
convenient for you to write with, in terms of not being
too thin or too thick, and in terms of having a
comfortable tip size. Furthermore, make sure that the
pen is of high-quality, and that you don’t have to press
too hard on the paper in order to write with it.
 Finally, in order to increase your handwriting speed, you
can also choose to simplify the way you write the letters,
or use a shorthand writing system. The greatest benefits
of using such systems come from simplifying frequently
used words (such as ‘the’), which saves you a lot of time
while requiring relatively little effort.