[elric]

Looking at this book, it seems very similar to how I was taught in the late 80s early 90s. We were forced to use fountain pens, and would get berated if we got ink on our hands.

I'm not sure if I can tell the difference between Tamblyn's business penmanship" and "looped cursive" and any other type of cursive to be honest. The difference in individual handwriting seems to be much larger than the difference in overarching styles?

[noosphr]

The shape of the letters is largely irrelevant, the source of motion is the important part. In regular cursive it is the fingers that move the pen. In business penmanship it is the shoulder that moves the hand which is incidentally holding a pen.

Here is a video that gets most of the basics right: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TWpFsv9Ib0

Here is one that gets it wrong: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vCPPcweLKWQ

The reason why the letters have the shape they do in business penmanship is for legibility and ease of motion. There are several variants of most letters you can choose from. The standard alphabet as given in that book is a very good compromise. The reason why newer cursive hands that use finger movement have a lot of the same shapes as business penmanship is cargo-culting.

[rasengan0]

>it is the shoulder that moves the hand which is incidentally holding a pen.

Yes, arms instead of fingers, thanks for the great ergonomic video link, this was the most surprising finding when I got into fountain pens and feels like a totally different skill from the school days of handwriting cursive: https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/372976-recomm...

[taeric]

Really enjoying that first video. Thanks!

[pier25]

I attended French school (I'm not French) and up until high school I was forced to use fountain pens too.