Editing Penmanship (section)

=== Books used in North America ===
[[File:Handwriting.png|thumbnail|'[[The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog]]', written by two different hands]]

[[Platt Rogers Spencer]] is known as the "Father of American Penmanship". His writing system was first published in 1848, in his book ''Spencer and Rice's System of Business and Ladies' Penmanship''. The most popular Spencerian manual was ''The Spencerian Key to Practical Penmanship'', published by his sons in 1866. This "[[Spencerian Script|Spencerian Method]]" Ornamental Style was taught in American schools until the mid-1920s, and has seen a resurgence in recent years through [[charter schools]] and [[home schooling]] using revised Spencerian books and methods produced by former [[IAMPETH]] president [[Michael Sull]] (born 1946).

George A. Gaskell (1845–1886), a student of Spencer, authored two popular books on penmanship, ''Gaskell's Complete Compendium of Elegant Writing'' and ''The Penman's Hand-Book'' (1883).  [[L. H. Hausam|Louis Henry Hausam]] published the "New Education in Penmanship" in 1908, called "the greatest work of the kind ever published."<ref name="Hausam">{{cite book|url=http://skyways.lib.ks.us/genweb/archives/1912/h3/hausam_l_h.html|volume=III|issue=Part 2|title=Kansas: a cyclopedia of state history, embracing events, institutions, industries, counties, cities, towns, prominent persons, etc.|publisher=Standard Pub. Co.|location=[[Chicago, Illinois|Chicago]]|year=1912|access-date=10 March 2013|quote=L. H. Hausam, president of the Hausam School of Penmanship, Hutchinson, Kan., was born in St. Charles, Mo., 14 June 1870|first=Frank W.|last=Blackmar|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050422083117/http://skyways.lib.ks.us/genweb/archives/1912/h3/hausam_l_h.html|archive-date=22 April 2005}}.</ref>

Many copybooks were produced in North America at the start of the 20th century, mostly for Business Style penmanship (a simplified form of Ornamental Style).  These included those produced by [[Austin Norman Palmer|A. N. Palmer]], a student of Gaskell, who developed the [[Palmer Method]], as reflected in his ''Palmer's Guide to Business Writing'', published in 1894.  Also popular was [[Zaner-Bloser Method]], introduced by [[Charles Paxton Zaner]] (15 February 1864&nbsp;– 1 December 1918) and Elmer Ward Bloser (6 November 1865&nbsp;– 1929) of the Zanerian [[Business College]]. The A. N. Palmer Company folded in the early 1980s.

Modern Styles include more than 200 published textbook curricula including: [[D'Nealian|D'Nealian Method]] (a derivative of the Palmer Method which uses a slanted, serifed manuscript form followed by an entirely joined and looped cursive), Modern Zaner-Bloser which accounts for the majority of handwriting textbook sales in the US, A Beka, Schaffer, Peterson, Loops and Groups, McDougal, Steck Vaughn, and many others.

Italic Styles include [[Getty-Dubay Italic]] (slightly slanted), Eager, Portland, [[Barchowsky Fluent Handwriting]], Queensland, etc.

Other copybook styles that are unique and do not fall into any previous categories are Smithhand, Handwriting without Tears, Ausgangsschrift, Bob Jones, etc. These may differ greatly from each other in a variety of ways.
The first made video for correcting messy handwriting especially for people with ADHD and or dysgraphia was "Anyone Can Improve Their Own Handwriting" by learning specialist Jason Mark Alster MSc.