Writing at your natural size

Write the size you would write on paper. The surface is large so it fits every hand, including the largest. It is not asking you to fill it.

Why it matters

Handwriting changes shape when you scale it up. Enlarge your writing and the curves open out, the slant relaxes, and the joins stretch. What you get is a careful poster version of your hand rather than your hand.

Small writers feel this most. If your natural writing is neat and small, filling a big surface means inventing letterforms you have never used.

Inkling handles the size for you

Your letters are measured and scaled to a common size when the font is made, so a small hand and a large hand both produce a properly proportioned font. Writing bigger gains you nothing — it only costs you your real letterforms.

What to aim for

• Write as if jotting a note to yourself.
• Let the letters sit on the baseline, with tails and stems crossing the lines freely.
• Use the same size throughout. Consistency matters more than any particular size.

Very small writing

If your writing is so small that the strokes get shaky on a touchscreen, size up a little — but only enough to write comfortably, not enough to fill the surface. A finger on a phone needs a bit more room than a pen on a tablet: see Finger or stylus.