Write now
by Barbara Getty · first published 1991
12mentions
7recommended by
8HN commenters
2008–2026first – last mentioned
88% recommend13% neutral
Why HN recommends it
A workbook introduction to Getty-Dubay italic handwriting, designed for adults who want to rebuild their handwriting. It aims to make writing more legible and, for some learners, faster.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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If you want to do something about the problem I highly recommend: "Write Now" by Barbara Getty and Inga Dubay [1] It is a workbook-style introduction to "italic" handwriting. I worked through it a few years ago and to this day my handwriting is still legible. (It was not prior;…
on “Ask HN: Has your handwriting suffered from years on the keyboard?” ↗+1 to italic handwriting. I used and found helpful this book: http://www.amazon.com/Write-Now-Complete-Self-teaching-Handw...
on “Is Cursive Dead? Not on Your Life” ↗…keyboard layout, which reduces the awkward twists/bends that qwerty forces on us. 5. I stopped writing with ballpoints, rollerballs, or any type of pen other than a fountain pen. 6. I purchased the book Write Now by Barbara Getty and Inga Dubay and learned their italic and cursive italic handwriting, which is much better for the hands than how most of us were taught to write in school. 7. I keep mousing (esp.…
on “Ask HN: Dealing with ganglions/RSI” ↗Drop loop cursive and get the book Write Now which teaches Getty-Dubay italic to adults. https://handwritingsuccess.com/
on “I found my Grandpa’s notes 20 years after he died (2020)” ↗In terms of improving the legibility, you can try this method: http://www.amazon.com/Write-Now-Complete-Program-Handwriting... Personally, I find it's a tradeoff between legibility and speed. I also found, back in my school days (when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and "portable computers" still…
on “Ask HN: How to handwrite faster? To get into Stanford.” ↗I used this book (I see that it's now out-of-print, though) to improve my handwriting by using italic. You can see some examples inside the book. https://www.amazon.com/Write-Now-Complete-Program-Handwritin...
on “Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)” ↗Oh, but everything I know about learning mathematics tells me that doing problems, on paper, is key. That means writing them out. I'm sorry you think you're not a good hand writer, may I recommend Write Now: The Getty‑Dubay Program for Handwriting? You're probably not bad at it, but could use a little refinement. It really helped me improve and speed up my handwriting.
on “How to learn mathematics: the asterisk method” ↗I think tablet handwriting is fine. I had some six weeks of down time a while back and took advantage of it to go through the Getty-Dubay book Write Now: the Getty-Dubay Program for Handwriting Success to improve my handwriting legibility. There's a website now https://handwritingsuccess.com/ and for your purposes even more relevant, there's a mobile…
on “Writing by Hand is Good for your Brain” ↗I had band handwriting and spent some time with Write Now! which is a book teaching the Getty-Dubay italics method to adults. It helped quite a bit, but I’ve been meaning to revisit it and I think it would be great to pull PDFs into something like ReMarkable…
on “ReMarkable tablet open source tools and hacks” ↗If you're seriously motivated to improve your longhand, get a copy of Write Now: The Getty-Dubay Program for Handwriting Success and go through the exercise. My handwriting wasn't awful as a whole but certain letters and letter combinations were disastrously unreadable. I also wasn't…
on “The benefits of note-taking by hand” ↗I ordered http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0876781180?psc=1&redirect=t... a long time ago. This: http://www.amazon.com/Write-Now-Complete-Self-teaching-Handw... seems to be updated.
on “How the Ballpoint Pen Killed Cursive” ↗…writing they were taught is, they might give real handwriting a try and love it as much as we do. :) Note: The italic and cursive italic we learned was Getty-Dubay italic -- I used the grown-up book "Write Now", and my son is learning with the first-grade book. Their web site is: http://handwritingsuccess.com/
on “Is Cursive Dead? Not on Your Life” ↗