Penmanship? No — Slow down.

How fast do you write?

Are you comfortable holding a pencil / pen?

If your hands are a bigger size (mine are tiny), then holding a proper pen or pencil may do you good.

If you feel like a stylus for a phone is way too tiny, then opt for pens that are thicker, so you don’t feel like you’re going to snap it in half by accident.

Try not to go for super skinny pens! Pencils are harder, but if you find a mechanical pencil with a thicker body and decent grip, that might help you too.

Now, about your writing.

Slow down!

The best advice I ever got from some well-known bullet journal influencer who was very good at hand lettering was that.

If you slow down and pay attention to what you are writing, chances are it will look better than the speed-writing you may be prone to doing.

If you have like a scrawl, see if you can focus on making each line distinct.

A would have 3 lines, right? C is one line, technically.

Instead of perfection, just go for readability.

I know that architects tend to write in all caps. Try that.

All caps makes things look a lot bolder and neater, and it doesn’t look “girly” so that’s a plus. I’ve done it. All caps. It looks good. Can’t complain.

If you want the actual architect alphabet, you can probably find it online, but I believe if you make all of your horizontal lines to go higher on the right side, you’ll get it in no time. So the E would have all 3 horizontal lines reaching for the upper right hand corner at a slight tilt. Try it and see.

Training your hand for all caps is fine and probably good, if you are most concerned about readability.

If you are right-handed, you can put your hand to learning hand lettering if you want, just to get good headings for your bullet journals or even in your sketchbooks, because calligraphy and hand lettering are both designed for right-handed people. If you are a lefty, you can still do it, but I can attest to it being a challenge as I’m left-handed too.

If you are really concerned about your writing being legible, you can always type too. We’re not going into old 3rd grade cursive writing assignments here. It’s too late for that. You need to read what you wrote now.

If you don’t know how to write in cursive, all you need to practice is your name, first and last. Yes, you can do like the first letter and a squiggle for both, but you should know, because that’s a life skill.

You can find a cursive font on Microsoft Word, for example. Type your first and last name, and see what it looks like. You can literally imitate that until it feels natural, and then you’re set. All good!