The Letter s

Okay, the next letter we're going to do is the letter s. Now, the baby s, or the minuscule s, is actually half of a capital S. So that's why it looks like just half of an S, because that's what it is. If you take a big S and you cut it in half, well, this is the bottom of it.

So how do we do it? It's exactly like we start with an i. We go light up, dark down. But then, instead of flicking forwards, we keep dark and we go backwards, like a j, like a capital J, until we hit the line. And then we come back on the same curve. And then, when we get to the forward part of the letter, we flick upwards to make our connecting stroke. So that is the s.

The s that we have in the printed typescript is not a good s to use for handwriting. I will show it to you later, but we're not going to copy it. We'll be using this s. As you can see, it has a nice forward slope, so your eye is always moving forwards. We don't want to suddenly have a letter that is not sloped forwards. It doesn't look pretty.

So this is the s. Draw a page of s's. You can start off with one line of them separate, and then you can do a line of them joined together.

The thing to remember with the s is that the line down is straight, and then it curves just before the bottom line, and touches the upstroke. You curve back on the same line, and then you flick away. And of course, if you're connecting them, you go light up, and then you start another one.

And if you make a series of s's, make sure they're the same distance apart, that the s's are more or less the same size, and that the angles are the same. And you can check the angles once again by putting a ruler onto it and drawing a line through. And check that they touch the line, and that they don't go up, they don't go down, they don't get smaller, and so on and so forth.

Worksheet 18