# Forum General General Discussion  Russian handwriting - feedback and examples wanted!

## Pretty Butterfly

Здравствуйте! 
I'd appreciate it if you could check out my russian handwriting and offer feedback. Are there any bad habits that I need to break asap? Does it look strange or normal? You can also see a little bit of my latin script in the title, if you want to compare. 
Also, I'd be very interested to see other examples of handwritten Russian, particuarly if you are a native (although I'd love to see other non-native's writing too). I've never shown anyone my Russian cursive before, and I've never seen anyone else's so it'd be great to share!

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## Hanna

Good work. I am not a native speaker but  I think you did the right thing taking the time to learn it (LOTS of people seem to have some kind of phobia for Russian handwriting..)  Looks fine to me.

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## Seraph

Looks fairly close to the textbook examples I have seen.  Actually it looks extremely close. 
Other less formal script is sometimes easier to read.  Л и М with deeper initial stoke makes for easier reading, more like Greek mu and lambda.  I make my и more sharp in the dip, to accentuate the difference from script u. 
(I make my б more like old fashioned caps print, and I don't confuse it with Greek lower case delta, which is sometimes used in Cyrillic instead of the script you show.  This type of curly delta you will sometimes see in википедия.  One is almost the mirror image of the other.)

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## chaika

Wow! It's great, wish mine were as good. One thing I missed was the horizontal lines above and below on the т  and ш. Ссылка к одному из моих любимых каллиграфов, Виллу Тоотс -- http://www.callig.ru/node/27/

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## Selexin

*Pretty Butterfly*
Yikes!
My nine-year-old son's handwriting is just the same!

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## Basil77

As a native I can write, say, the same text and post here if you are interested, but I'll give you a *warning!* My handwriting is incredibly bad, in Russia we say: "как курица лапой" (like it's written by chicken's paw).

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## Crocodile

> Are there any bad habits that I need to break asap?

 I like your writing, it's much better than mine anyways. I noticed you forget to put the dots over Ё, but otherwise it looks not bad.

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## Pretty Butterfly

Thanks for the feedback everyone!   

> (I make my б more like old fashioned caps print, and I don't confuse it with Greek lower case delta, which is sometimes used in Cyrillic instead of the script you show.  This type of curly delta you will sometimes see in википедия.  One is almost the mirror image of the other.)

 Not sure exactly what you mean here - can you link to any examples?   

> Wow! It's great, wish mine were as good. One thing I missed was the horizontal lines above and below on the т  and ш.

 Thanks! I don't use the horizontal lines personally because I don't have any difficulty differentiating between ш and т. I understand that most Russians are lazy like me and don't include them either. I do however tend to get mixed up with л, м, и, ц, ш and щ when a lot of these letters are all grouped together (for example лш and ми look pretty much the same as each other in my writing).   

> Yikes!
> My nine-year-old son's handwriting is just the same!

 Is that a good thing or a bad thing? It kind of makes sense as I did learn using resources designed for children. That is my "neat" writing - when I'm writing out my exercises I tend to get lazy and not always join everything properly.   

> As a native I can write, say, the same text and post here if you are interested, but I'll give you a *warning!* My handwriting is incredibly bad, in Russia we say: "как курица лапой" (like it's written by chicken's paw).

 I'd love to see it. I could set myself a challenge and see if I can make out what it says... 
I'd love it if someone else would share their writing!

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## Basil77

> Originally Posted by Basil77  As a native I can write, say, the same text and post here if you are interested, but I'll give you a *warning!* My handwriting is incredibly bad, in Russia we say: "как курица лапой" (like it's written by chicken's paw).   I'd love to see it. I could set myself a challenge and see if I can make out what it says...
> I'd love it if someone else would share their writing!

 Well, I'v even asked my family to help a little.   ::    So, there are fragments of the same poem, written by..  *My wife:*    *My seven-year-old son:*    *And finally me:*

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## kamka

Basil, yours is the most difficult to read, yet the most interesting to look at, for some reason, looks a bit artsy!

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## alexB

> *And finally me:*

 You’re not a doctor, are you?  ::

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## it-ogo

Hey, Basil's handwriting is very clear in comparison to mine. Unluckily my scanner is too old to provide a proof.

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## Selexin

> [quote:2lb7n13c]Selexin писал(а):
> Yikes!
> My nine-year-old son's handwriting is just the same!

 Is that a good thing or a bad thing?[/quote:2lb7n13c] 
Pretty Butterfly, of course it's good. Your handwriting is very legible and easy to read unlike mine.

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## Scrabus

Мои каракули   ::   
P.S. Took the picture by the cell phone, so quality is far from perfect, but I hope it's still acceptable.  
P.S2. Native lame handwriting   ::

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## Seraph

I see that I made something a little confusing.  I did not say it properly. 
Can see italicized forms sometimes in Russian wikipedia.  In math we call the ital. little d, curly d.   http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...nonitalics.png 
The Greek little delta is sometimes used, but is a headache, because of similarities shown below.  http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._Cyrillics.png 
Delta here:  http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._uc_lc.svg.png

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## kamka

I think you might be a worthy opponent of Basil in terms of illegibility, Scrubus   ::  
btw, I absolutely adore how all of the natives write letter "б", somehow I just can't pull this off.

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## SAn

Basil77, я где-то слышал, что если человек делает верхние части букв большими (как у твоих «_д_», «_в_», «_б_»), то он мечтатель. А если нижние части большие — то приземлённый прагматик. 
Признавайся.

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## Basil77

Ну, это только теория. На мой взгляд, необоснованная. Какие-нибудь исследования проводились? Статистика есть? Скажем, если бы 1000 человек заполнили анкеты, с помощью которых можно было бы выявить степень их склонности к прагматизму, а затем сравнить полученную иформацию с образцами почерка, тогда можно было бы говорить о какой-то взаимосвязи (в случае, если бы таковая чётко прослеживалась).

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## Pretty Butterfly

Thanks to Basil & family, and to Scrabus, for sharing their handwriting. Since I already know what they say I can read them all although I think I would be able to struggle through most of it even if it was something unfamiliar. I work in a hospital so have plenty of practice reading doctor's handwriting!

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## chaika

I like how you have letter alternatives that are significantly different. I am thinking of т and з. I personally always used the т that looks like a т and not an m. Being a lefty, I am challenged by any normal script that was designed for righties.

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## kamka

What's the alternative of з?

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## ExiONEe



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## sperk

Прекрасный! Даже я могу читать.

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## E-learner

> I don't use the horizontal lines personally because I don't have any difficulty differentiating between ш and т. I understand that most Russians are lazy like me and don't include them either.

 I don't include them just because nobody taught me that (I'm not saying I'm not lazy  ::  )   

> Прекрасн[s:16pmld7t]ый[/s:16pmld7t]o! Даже я могу читать.

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## alexB

> Прекрасный! Даже я могу читать.

 Nearly all the letters that have circumference in them look like they’ve been screwed up and corrected later on. That was my impression before I understood it was merely the author’s peculiar way of putting words on paper. 
So far I think the winner is the Basil77’s wife with Pretty Butterfly – a close second.

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## Ramil

Попробовал я. Вообще-то писал прямо по экрану стилусом, поэтому немного не похоже на мой обычный почерк:

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## Scrabus

> I think you might be a worthy opponent of Basil in terms of illegibility, Scrabus

   ::  . Thanks, I know when I start off and write fast it gets hard to actually understand what am I writing atm. If it's not the case my handwriting may look decently enough.   

> Thanks to Basil & family, and to Scrabus, for sharing their handwriting. Since I already know what they say I can read them all although I think I would be able to struggle through most of it even if it was something unfamiliar. I work in a hospital so have plenty of practice reading doctor's handwriting!

 You're welcome. Not so sure you can struggle through my texts but I'm certain you can give it a shot). Even my teachers had a hard time when I took my school classes-). In case you're interested I can send you off something else of it, so you can decipher.   

> Originally Posted by sperk  Прекрасный! Даже я могу читать.   Nearly all the letters that have circumference in them look like they’ve been screwed up and corrected later on. That was my impression before I understood it was merely the author’s peculiar way of putting words on paper. 
> So far I think the winner is the Basil77’s wife with Pretty Butterfly – a close second.

 Doesn't look like that to me any bit, more like a health writing from ExiONEe. Btw, what are criteria to evaluate the winner in handwriting? The most incomprehensible/distinct, beautiful/ugly? Hopefully, I would win the less intelligible   ::

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## gRomoZeka

The quality of my handwriting depends on many factors, in this example you can see that even lines written by pencil (the first verse) and by pen differ slightly. 
And in terms of "readability" it can vary from almost perfect to undecipherable. This is something in between:

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## Seraph

Wow what a great thread.  I can see so many different б и д styles.   Спасибо большое всем!
Now I feel a little better about my letters.

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## capecoddah

Baisil77: (like it's written by chicken's paw)   ::  "paw"  ::  
"Chicken scratch"  
My script is horrible at best.
A couple summers ago, on a very quiet night at the motel, I was trying a Russian script lesson. 
The two Russian kids were having a great time watching me until one spoke up. "Don't. No one can read your English writing. When you print like architect or engineer, people can read it, but please stop this lesson."  ::   
Last summer, on a very quiet night at the motel, I tried the same lesson.
The two Russian kids were having a great time watching me until one spoke up. "Stop this! No one can read your writing, even the Americans. You print like a machine, please don't write script.   ::   
OK, I can take a hint...

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## aldebaran

Sorry for bumping this thread from ages ago, I landed in this thread while I was looking for Russian handwritings, and I just wanna ask if my handwriting is any good, do I need to improve on anything?  ::

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## maxmixiv

> Sorry for bumping this thread from ages ago, I landed in this thread while I was looking for Russian handwritings, and I just wanna ask if my handwriting is any good, do I need to improve on anything?

 I noticed a few similar mistakes, so it could be the tendency. I am speaking of "литературното", "художественното", "культурното".
The correct endings have always to be "-го": "литературноГо", "художественноГо", "культурноГо". The "glyphs" are quite clear, no problem found.

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## Hanna

I love seeing examples of peoples handwriting.  
Remember the top reason for learning Russian according to "my" poll on MasterRussian   

> "Russian´sounds cool and I like Cyrillic letters"

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## aldebaran

Well that was embarrassing. I guess that's just because I wrote too quickly and didn't notice г became т. They do look the similar though. Thanks!

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## heartfelty

I got fairly good marks for handwriting. But it took several times for my teacher to correct.

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## Deborski

All of the examples looked much prettier than my handwriting  ::   By the way - in case anyone is interested, in addition to occasionally butchering the Russian language, I can also do handwriting analysis if anyone is interested.  The writing samples can be in Russian or English.  Either way, you are writing directly from your brain and it can reveal a great deal about your personality. 
Feel free to test my knowledge on this  ::   It is a lot of fun.

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## kerygma

There is one letter which I always have a difficult time with: ж 
Can someone please tell me the exact sequence of how to write this character, when and where the pen should be lifted from the page as it is written?  
Thanks. 
K

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## Doomer

> There is one letter which I always have a difficult time with: ж 
> Can someone please tell me the exact sequence of how to write this character, when and where the pen should be lifted from the page as it is written?

 You shouldn't lift a pen
it's supposed to be written with one stroke but it's hard, so you can cheat with lifting, the letter consists of three parts, click on the image to see j.jpg 
Here is Russian прописи in 4 parts - http://naotlichno.info/2011/05/propi...-4-x-chastyax/
The image has been taken from part 4
Прописи is the most helpful way to learn Russian handwriting

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## Hanna

> You shouldn't lift a pen

 it's supposed to be written with one stroke but it's hard, so you can cheat with lifting, the letter consists of three parts, click on the image to see 
Just a correction: "You shouldn't lift THE pen. Gosh, this definite article is so hard for Russians, isn't it! I absolutely can't explain why it should be "the" and not "a".  
Anyway, there are some Russian letters that don't connect well with the letters following it. Like "б" for example. So it is not possible write completely "flowing" in Russian.  
But the average Russian person has excellent handwriting  - Judging from the examples here, they must be excellent at teaching penmanship in Russian schools!

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## Doomer

> it's supposed to be written with one stroke but it's hard, so you can cheat with lifting, the letter consists of three parts, click on the image to see 
> Just a correction: "You shouldn't lift THE pen. Gosh, this definite article is so hard for Russians, isn't it! I absolutely can't explain why it should be "the" and not "a".

 Thank you for the correction  :: 
I understand my mistake but only because I heard examples not because I know this exact rule, which is bad. Does anybody know the rule?    

> But the average Russian person has excellent handwriting  - Judging from the examples here, they must be excellent at teaching penmanship in Russian schools!

 Yeah, handwriting becomes bad in universities  ::

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## kerygma

Another question I have for you who are Russian: I am left-handed, and I'm wondering whether Russian educational systems allow their students to write left-handed, or do they try to make them write with their right hands. I am sure that nowadays no one is forced to write with his right hand.  
K

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## Doomer

In USSR it was "strongly suggested" to students in elementary schools to use right hand only
The idea comes from the way classes were built, windows in classes were always located on the left side of the rooms. Thus left-handed people would cover light with their hands while writing which is bad for vision and carriage

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## zxc

My handwriting in both English and Russian are terrible, I think.  More than anything it's erratic--my letters end up looking differently sometimes, even within the same words.  
Some things my Russian teacher hated me for:
* Sometimes my о looks like an а (like the first o in молчи). 
* Sometimes I tend to leave out the connecting tic (before л and м).
* No lines over ш and т.
* Uneven height of letters.
* Sometimes I write letters that are similar but not exactly the same as Latin letters as the Latin letter instead of the Cyrillic one (e.g. capital В).
* Sometimes I don't accentuate the loop in е and я to where it's even visible (the e in мечты or звезды).
* I often don't close my a's and o's all the way (а in скрывайся, пускай (this is definitely bad, looks like an и now that I think about it), etc). 
This was my writing quickly, though.  I could probably get it a little neater if I took my time. 
My English cursive is dreadful.  I wrote down an English translation of the poem (this isn't even as fast/messy as when I'm taking notes, mind you):   
These look so thick because they're so blown up--another thing people who read my writing hate me for is that I write very small.

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## kerygma

In old books of Russian grammar the character д is often written as ∂. In more recent texts, it is written as g. Are both symbols still used in Russian cursive?  
K

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## kerygma

> Sometimes I write letters that are similar but not exactly the same as Latin letters as the Latin letter instead of the Cyrillic one (e.g. capital В).

 I don't see a problem with this. For example, the Latin B versus the Cyrillic B -- the differences are negligible. Also the letters A and C.  
K

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## Dmitry Khomichuk

> In old books of Russian grammar the character д is often written as ∂. In more recent texts, it is written as g. Are both symbols still used in Russian cursive?

 Yes, both symbols are still used. Originally "Д" was only used as capital, and lower-case variant was "∂". But nowadays "д" is used more. Handwritten variant: Untitled.png

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## Doomer

> In old books of Russian grammar the character д is often written as ∂. In more recent texts, it is written as g. Are both symbols still used in Russian cursive?

 The second is most common in modern handwriting

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