C. P. Zaner Writing Live
A photo of C. P. Zaner poised for penmanship at his writing desk.
Have you ever wished you could watch the penmen of old write with arm movement?
Arm movement writing is notoriously difficult to learn, a fact understood by penman both historic and modern. The teachers of old left detailed instructions: through books, magazines and even samples of actual writing. But for such a physical act, how much better would it be to sit next to them as they wrote?
The search continues for a vintage film showing arm movement writing… but we may have discovered the next best thing.
The Handwriting Movement
Dr. Frank N. Freeman in 1930
In 1918 Dr. Frank. N. Freeman, an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Chicago, published “The Handwriting Movement: A Study of Motor Factors of Excellence in Penmanship”. The book was the culmination of three years of intensive study into the mechanics of writing. Freeman wished to determine what differences existed between good and poor writers, and to find and test means of training a poor writer to become a good writer.
Freeman’s methodology was fascinating for its time. In order to accurately measure the detailed physical movements of each subject, Freeman installed a motion picture camera directly above the writer at a desk. A clock was placed next to the paper facing up toward the camera. By running the camera at 25 frames a second, he captured a detailed record of the movements each writer employed.
Later, Freeman’s assistant would project the film on a large piece of paper and advance the film one frame at a time. As the writer progressed through the word, the assistant would trace the course of the pen on the large piece of paper and put a tic mark for each frame of film. If the writer paused, the assistant would write the number of frames for the pause next to the tic mark. Using this system, they could determine exactly how long it took the writer to make each stroke.
An example of C. P. Zaner’s penmanship marked up to show the pace of the writing.
Recreating Zaner’s Penmanship
To capture the highest standard of penmanship, Freeman filmed a renowned master of the craft: C. P. Zaner. Luckily for us, he used copies of Zaner’s writing marked up by his assistant to explain his methodology.
Using this diagram and the animation software Adobe After Effects, I was able to animate Zaner’s writing almost exactly [1] the way he wrote it over 100 years ago.
In-progress screenshot of matching each portion of a stroke to a keyframe in After Effects.
We still have to imagine the movement of Zaner’s arms, hands and fingers. However, seeing the writing happen in front of you engenders a visceral experience, very different from the static, finished product.
Following this research, Freeman was closely associated with the Zaner-Bloser company and helped author many penmanship instruction manuals.
Learn more about Dr. Freeman’s research:
[1]: A technical note: in order to animate the writing smoothly on modern screens, I chose to animate it at 24 frames a second instead of 25. 24 frames a second is the same frame rate used for modern cinema. Computer and phone screens are specially calibrated to play back video at 24, 30, and 60 frames a second. The pacing of the writing is exactly the same, even if it is slightly slower than the original.