The Right Hand Margin

When I was at school we were taught to write so that the final letter on each line were in line vertically. I have been trying to remember how this was done, I think it was by drawing a feint pencil line, one inch from the right hand edge and then adjusting your spacing between each word on the line and therefore avoiding (as opposed to eliminating) the need to break a word with a hyphen on to the following line. I think we used an eraser to remove the pencilled line.

Whatever skill I amassed at this writing finesse at age 7 has long since departed.

If you are successful at justifying the right hand margin, please share.

Not successful at it but the paper I used in school had red margins on the left side and showed thru on the right.

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Originally Posted by RobJohnson

When I was at school we were taught to write so that the final letter on each line were in line vertically. I have been trying to remember how this was done, I think it was by drawing a feint pencil line, one inch from the right hand edge and then adjusting your spacing between each word on the line and therefore avoiding (as opposed to eliminating) the need to break a word with a hyphen on to the following line. I think we used an eraser to remove the pencilled line.

Whatever skill I amassed at this writing finesse at age 7 has long since departed.

If you are successful at justifying the right hand margin, please share.

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Hi, RobJohnson.

I've given this a bit of thought and, for the life of me, I can't see how one can pre-visualize a full line of cursive writing ahead of actually writing it. This isn't saying that it's not possible with lots and lots of effort, but for a youngster of 7, it's hard to comprehend.

What's possible is to write the material quickly and then, using that as a guide, re-write and s t r e t c h those lines that need it.

The only other alternative I can think of is to slow down at roughly the 3/4 point in a line and consider what word changes, if any, are needed to justify the line.

Regards, and thank you for posting a most interesting question.

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Originally Posted by Torus34

…I can't see how one can pre-visualize a full line of cursive writing ahead of actually writing it. This isn't saying that it's not possible with lots and lots of effort, but for a youngster of 7, it's hard to comprehend….

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Yes, but will the young malleable mind quickly learn the technique while my decades old brain resist the very thought?

Justifying handwritten lines wasn't taught in any school I attended. But we did learn several rules for hyphenating the last word to avoid running over the right margin.

This is all from memory but as I recall we had a six inch space between the margins and worked on the basis that a six letter word was one inch and that the space between each word was two letters, that allowed you to +1 or -1 to adjust the length of the line. Planning ahead was essential and knowing what you intended to write, not easy in dictation.

It was acceptable to break a long word at the end of the line in order to justify the right hand edge but never anything less than a six letter word.

We removed the right hand pencilled margin with an eraser at the end of the page.

It was quite an art and largely forgotten about.

This was also a time when the form teacher's preference came into play, for example ours did not like a lower case z being a reduced height Z but preferred something that looked like a 3 but below the line, the word jazzy for example looks much better.

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Originally Posted by RobJohnson

This is all from memory but as I recall we had a six inch space between the margins and worked on the basis that a six letter word was one inch and that the space between each word was two letters, that allowed you to +1 or -1 to adjust the length of the line. Planning ahead was essential and knowing what you intended to write, not easy in dictation.

It was acceptable to break a long word at the end of the line in order to justify the right hand edge but never anything less than a six letter word.

We removed the right hand pencilled margin with an eraser at the end of the page.

It was quite an art and largely forgotten about.

This was also a time when the form teacher's preference came into play, for example ours did not like a lower case z being a reduced height Z but preferred something that looked like a 3 but below the line, the word jazzy for example looks much better.

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Wow. The precision of this requires some strong numbers manipulation (math) for children. Many would not be capable of it. Sounds like you also may have had an extremely fastidious teacher. How could most children have fit their handwriting into such measured size limitations?

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Originally Posted by TSherbs

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Originally Posted by RobJohnson

This is all from memory but as I recall we had a six inch space between the margins and worked on the basis that a six letter word was one inch and that the space between each word was two letters, that allowed you to +1 or -1 to adjust the length of the line. Planning ahead was essential and knowing what you intended to write, not easy in dictation.

It was acceptable to break a long word at the end of the line in order to justify the right hand edge but never anything less than a six letter word.

We removed the right hand pencilled margin with an eraser at the end of the page.

It was quite an art and largely forgotten about.

This was also a time when the form teacher's preference came into play, for example ours did not like a lower case z being a reduced height Z but preferred something that looked like a 3 but below the line, the word jazzy for example looks much better.

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Wow. The precision of this requires some strong numbers manipulation (math) for children. Many would not be capable of it. Sounds like you also may have had an extremely fastidious teacher. How could most children have fit their handwriting into such measured size limitations?

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I am not saying that we were all good at it!

I have a clear memory of using a hyphen in long words and 'carrying-on' the word to the line below.

There is a bit of a legacy issue in that I still like to see a justified right hand margin in Word, once again not very fashionable even in business.

Always use the fully justified setting in Word.
So far as a handwritten justified right margin it's practice, practice, practice....
Like,writing a (reasonably) straight line on blank pages, with the additional exercise of changing the wording on the fly to fit the space remaining.
All this from the only kid in 3rd & 4th grades unable to earn a Palmer Handwriting Certificate.

I think justified handwriting is a silly idea personally. Nothing like that to inhibit good flowing letterforms. Perhaps it's okay for a special purpose such as a decorative page in a manuscript -with very tightly formed lettering?
Typeset text always shows uneven letter and word spacing when justification is used -('Rivers'), and left aligned type always looks better on the page. It's not a machine we're building here, why make it look robotic?