Handwriting Worksheet Generator

How to make it

1. Type your practice textPut one practice line per row in the text box. Long lines wrap onto the next row by themselves, so a full sentence is fine.
2. Set size, rows and styleChoose a letter size for the age, how many tracing rows and empty rows each line gets, and print, slanted print or a school-style font.
3. Print or save the PDFPress Print and pick Actual size, or use Download PDF. Copy link keeps this exact sheet, with its sheet number, for next time.

Why the tracing letters look the way they do

Many free handwriting sheets are made from a dotted font, often an outline broken into dashes, so a child traces around the edge of a shape. That teaches very little about how the letter is built. On this sheet the print letters are drawn from our own stroke data, one letter and digit at a time, so the dots run down the middle of each stroke, exactly where the pencil should travel.

Every stroke has a green dot where the pencil goes down. A pink arrow shows which way to move, and when a letter needs more than one stroke, numbers show the order. Circle letters such as a, c, d, g and o start near the top right and go counter-clockwise, and letters such as a, b, d, m and n are drawn in one movement, the pencil pushing back up the line instead of lifting. Straight lines are pulled down from the top. Cross strokes on t and f come last. These are the habits many US kindergarten and first grade teachers model at the board, and the sheet shows them the same way every time.

The first row of each line is a solid dark example with no arrows, so the child sees what the finished letter should look like before tracing it.

Letter size by age

Letter size here means the distance from the top line to the baseline, so a 1 in letter b is one inch tall and the bump of the b fills the lower half. Young children need room: their pencil control comes from the shoulder and elbow before it comes from the fingers, and small rows force cramped, pressed-hard letters. As control improves, smaller rows fit more practice on the page and start to look like the lined paper used in class.

Use the table as a starting point, not a rule. A kindergarten class of 22 will usually span two sizes by spring, and it is fine to print the same text at 1 in for some children and 3/4 in for others. If a child keeps running past the top line, go one size up for a week.

How many tracing rows before writing alone

Each practice line can have one to six tracing rows and up to four empty rows. The default is a dark example, three tracing rows and one empty row, and the opening sheet, My name is Sam., is that one practice line followed by empty writing rows down to the bottom of a single page. That rhythm of see it, trace it, write it is common in early writing lessons because the empty row shows you, at a glance, whether the tracing transferred into the child's own hand.

With Fade the later tracing rows switched on, the second and third copies print lighter than the first. The child leans on the guide less and less within a single line, which is a gentle step toward independence. For a brand-new letter, three or four rows with fading works well. For review, one tracing row and two or three empty rows is usually enough.

Repeat across the row fills each row with copies of a short word, so a single word becomes a full row of practice. Fill the rest of the page with empty rows, on by default here, turns the leftover space at the bottom into extra writing lines instead of blank paper. Each line's block, from the dark example to its last empty row, stays together on one page, and a long sentence wraps into balanced parts, so a single word is never left alone on a row of its own.

When to switch off the arrows and start dots

Stroke arrows and numbers has four settings. First row, the default, puts arrows and stroke numbers on every letter of the first tracing row and on the first letter of each later row. First letter marks the first letter of every row, Every letter marks them all, and None hides them. Start dots are on every letter by default and can be cut to the first letter or hidden. Every letter is the right setting when a letter is new or when a child keeps starting in the wrong place. First letter is a good middle step: the reminder is there, but the rest of the row has to come from memory.

Watch the empty rows. When the letters there start in the right spot and go the right way three or four days running, turn the arrows off and keep only the start dots. When those are no longer needed, hide them too. If an old habit comes back, such as an o drawn clockwise from the bottom, switch the arrows on again for that letter only. Going back is normal and takes a day or two.

Print, slanted print or a school-style font

The Handwriting style menu has two print styles with arrows. Print, ball-and-stick is upright, with straight lines and round circles. Print, slanted with tails is a D'Nealian-style manuscript leaned slightly to the right, with small exit tails on letters such as a, d and n that later turn into cursive joins. Both draw a, b, d, g, h, m, n, p, q, r, u and y in one movement without a pencil lift, and both write the 1 as a single straight line. The slanted modern print sheets page explains that style in more detail.

Below those are 14 school-style fonts modeled on the styles taught in the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland and South Africa, for example the NSW Foundation style sheets. Fonts are traced as a dashed outline and do not carry stroke arrows, because a font only knows the shape of a letter, not the order it is written in. Guide lines follow each font's own x-height. If you are not sure which style a school uses, the guide to handwriting styles by country compares them.

Printing at true size on Letter or A4

Paper size is set from your browser's language and time zone, so most visitors in the US and Canada see US Letter and most elsewhere see A4. You can change it in the Paper menu. Margins are 0.5 in on every side, which suits home inkjet printers as well as school copiers.

When you press Print, choose Actual size or 100% scale and turn headers and footers off. Fit to page shrinks the rows and a 3/4 in line becomes something smaller than you chose. Download PDF builds the file in your browser, which is handy for a copier queue or for sending to a parent. For a pack of rows with no text at all, use the blank handwriting paper maker instead.