Letter formation is the ability to create correct, recognizable letters.
Two important parts of letter formation are:
- the route of the letter: which strokes to make (undercurves, overcurves, straight lines), and especially: in which order to make them, in which direction to make them, and knowing which part of the letter consist of overlapping strokes.
- the size of the letter, or more specifically, the size of the strokes. Where do thestrokes begin and end relative to the lines (baseline, midline, headline) on the paper.
The problem of visualizing letter routes
The size of the letter is easy to observe by if the letter is shown on lined paper. But the route of the letter is difficult to infer. It's not obvious from the ‛end result’ (the complete letter) where strokes overlap and what the direction of the strokes was. This is a problem for both the studentand the teacher. The students needs to know what route to follow to create a letter. The teacher needs to know whether the student is actually following those routes.
Both teachers and people who create worksheets and other handwriting material suffer from the curse of knowledge. When we see a letter chart with a few arrows to indicate the route, they think this can only be interpreted in one way. But that's because we know general principles for forming letters and for interpreting letter charts. We are often not aware of how children can misinterpret these charts.
For example, the arrows placed outside this (manuscript) letter m appear to be helpful:
But if a student doesn't have a firm grasp on the principle ofnot lifting your pen, these arrows may promote an incorrect route for the letter, as shown in the picture on the left:
And when I asked my 5-year-old son to trace an outline letter l,he did this:
A lot of the principles of letter formation are the same between lowercase cursive and lowercase manuscript. So if you're teaching cursive in third grade to students with a firm grasp on manuscript, some of the mistakes and principles I explain here may seem silly or trivial. Feel free to skim those! But if you have a student who struggles, hopefully this article can help you pinpoint what the student needs to work on.
Finally, the best way for you to teach the route of a letter is to write the letter while the student is watching you, or if that's not possible, by showing avideo animation.Images with arrows, numbers or colors are a poor substitute. Images should not be used to instruct, but only to remind the student of what he has already been taught.
Why correct routes are important
Why do we want students to follow the correct route when writing a letter? There are multiple reasons:
- Incorrect routes often involve pencil lifts, with are inefficient, and are also an source of errors (between which lines do I need to put my pencil down again). If incorrect routes do not involve pencil lifts, they may involve tracing over the same spot multiple times, more so than in the correct route.
- Incorrect routes only work some of the time, not all of the time, and students use theminconsistently. A clockwise start to the letter acan more-or-less be made to work, but becomes problematic for the letter d. Students may use a correct route if a letter occurs at the beginning of the word, but use an incorrect route if a letter occurs in the middle of the word. Because the student's process is soinconsistent,it's almost impossible for the student to reflect on the resulting product and improve.
- Incorrect route cause problems when connecting letters. With correct routes, letters end on the right and are ready to be connected to other letters. With incorrect routes, letters can end up all over the place and connections often involve pencil lifts.
- For all of the above reasons, incorrect routes cause incorrect shapes and illegible handwriting. A child who makes some of their a's and o's clockwise instead of counterclockwise is much more likely to turn an a into an othan a child who consistently follows the correct route.
- Incorrect routes usually don't get automated (because they are not and cannot be used consistently).Forming the letters will take up a lot of the student's working memory and the student will not be able to pay attention to spelling or composition.
Size is important too!
The letters e and l have the same route, as dob and f. But the sizes of their strokes are different. Only if both the route and the size are correct do we get recognizable letters. Size is not as hard to observe as route, but to direct students' attention to it, we need to use lined paper. Don't let students letters write ‘in the air’ with their finger, let them trace on lined paper instead. Name the lines (baseline, midline, headline) and use these names when verbalizing the letter route: instead of ‘undercurve’say ‘undercurve to the midline’ or ‘undercurve to the headline’.
Letter routes from easy to hard
Below, I've grouped and ordered the lowercase letters based on how transparent or opaque their route is: how easy it is to infer the route from a written letter, and how much opportunity there is for misinterpretation. Note that I've ignored other aspects of letter formation difficulty, such as the length of the route and the presence of ascenders or descenders.
Easiest letters: i, r, v
With these letters, there's only one way to get from the beginning to the end. OK, maybe there's two, if you don't know which is the beginning and which is the end. There are some changes of direction and even a reversal in the letter i, but the overlap between the strokes is so limited that students are unlikely to lift their pencil or otherwise misinterpret this reversal.
General principle: go from left to right and don't lift your pencil.
How to visualize these routes: Indicating the starting point with a dot or arrow should be enough. Additional arrows may cause some confusion about whether or not to lift the pen. But since additional arrows are needed for more complicated letters anyway, we might as well use them, and explicitly tell students that they indicate a change of direction and that they shouldn't lift their pen.
Other considerations: the letter v ends at the midline. Connections from the letter v to the next letter are complicated, since the entry stroke from the baseline disappears. The letter vshould probably be introduced much later.
Self-intersecting: e, l, j, z, b, x
These letters have strokes that intersect. Very young children may take a wrong turn at these intersection, but children who have already learned to write manuscript will generally do OK.
General principle: go straight ahead whenever possible.
How to visualize these routes:a dashed stroke is very helpful; it shows the stroke direction around intersections, in a way that a dotted or a continuous stroke can't.
Other considerations:
- The letters e and l have the same route; attention to size and position is required to distinguish these letters.
- The letter b ends at the midline.Connections from the letter bto the next letter are complicated, since the entry stroke from the baseline disappears. The letter bshould probably be introduced later.
- The letter x can be considered a simple self-intersecting letter if and only if the second stroke of the x is straight: x.If the second stroke is curved, the slopecan get close to vertical around the intersection: ϓÐѢ. Such a letter shape makes the route quite opaque and ambiguous.
Simple overlapping strokes: c, n, m, h, t, u, w, y
These letters have overlapping strokes that are relatively simple to understand. The points at which the pen reverses and starts the overlapping stroke are isolatedand not touching any other strokes. When you reach a reversal point with your pen, there is literally nowhere you can go except for back.
General principle: don't lift your pen means that sometimes you have to go back.
How to visualize these routes:Make certain that arrows are placed at the right location: at the reversal point itself, not at the point where the overlapping strokes diverge from each other. If we can use color, different colors for each stroke can make the overlap more obvious; to be able to show multiple colors (strokes) in the same place, we can use dashed strokes.
Other considerations: most reversals are vertical. In this group the c is an exception, but horizontal reversals also occur in the letters a, d, g, q and o. It can make sense to postpone the introduction of c so that it can be grouped with the other counterclockwise letters and serve as an introduction to them.
Overlapping strokes with somewhat opaque reversal points: p, s, f, k, d
These letters also have overlapping strokes, but the reversals points are no longer isolated; they are touching another stroke. In this group of letters, the ‘other stroke’involved extends past the reversal point in both directions, and is perpendicular or nearly perpendicular to the reversing strokes. The route of these letters is less transparent than letters in which the reversal points are isolated, but not as opaque as letters where two reversal points overlap each other.
General principle: There are no straight or obtuse angles in lowercase cursive (between consecutive strokes), only acute angles and reversals. While theoretically, you can work out the correct route using that principle, it's not useful in teaching. Just teach these routes letter-by-letter.
How to visualize these routes:Make certain that arrows are placed at the right location: at the reversal point itself, not at the point where the overlapping strokes diverge from each other. If we can use color, different colors for each stroke can make the overlap more obvious; to be able to show multiple colors (strokes) in the same place, we can use dashed strokes.
Other considerations: Some of these routes are quite long, which also adds to their difficulty. Note that in some fonts the reversal in the letter d is more parallel rather than perpendicular to the downstroke, in which case the letter route should be considered more opaque, and grouped with the next group of letters below.
Overlapping strokes with overlapping reversal points: a, g, q, o
In D'Nealian style cursive, these letters have reversal points that overlap each other. In other fonts, these letters have other difficulties that make their route very opaque. Students who misinterpret these letter routes tend to not stop at the reversal point but continue in a clockwise (instead of counterclockwise) direction. The letter o is the most opaque of all, because of how easy it is to continue straight aheadthrough the first reversal point.
In D'Nealian style cursive, the letter shapes don't allow you to go clockwise around the letters a, g and q with a smooth stroke. However, nothing stops students from going clockwise anyway and changing the letter shape to make it smooth. Students have probably been exposed to plenty of print, manuscript and possibly even cursive fonts that use very round, circular shapes, which allow for such a clockwise construction.
General principle: These letters - as well as c and d - all have counterclockwise ovals. However, p is clockwise, and loops below the baseline go both ways (j and gclockwise while q and fcounterclockwise) so it's not a general principle. But it is useful to group the letters c, a, d, g, q and o together.
How to visualize these routes:Many letter charts will offset the overlapping reversal points from each other, thereby obscuring the fact that they reversal points are in fact overlapping. I prefer to be precise and actually show that these points overlap, which is why I place my arrows inside the outline.
Other considerations: If the first reversal point on a is positioned rather low, emphasize the resemblance with c, and teach a before d. If the reversal point is at or very close to the midline, teach d before a.
What if you don't use entry strokes from the baseline?
Some curricula teach the counterclockwise letters (c, a, d, g, q, o) without an entry stroke from the baseline: c, a, d, g, q, o. I don't think that changes much about the relative difficulty of understanding the letter routes. Having the starting point of the letter a overlap with a reversal point is a bit easier than having two reversal points overlap, but still quite opaque. And when you start connecting letters together, these starting points become reversal points anyway. Without entry strokes from the baseline, these letters become a bit easier to teach individually, but you'll have more work to do to teach connections between letters.
Letter formation resources on this site
- You can watch animations of how to write the lowercase cursive letters here.
- You can purchase letter cards and alphabet charts that demonstrate letter formation in various ways. In addition to the ‘single image’ instructions withcolored arrows that were used in this article, this resource also contains step-by-step instructions that use up to four images per letter to make correct letter formation even easier to understand!
- You can also download full size outline lettersfor free from my TpT store and add your own instructions with colored pen.
