The Letter c

Now we're going to do the first of the rounded shapes, and the rounded shapes give most students a lot of trouble. The letter c, which is extremely important because most letters are made of combinations of i and c, is hard. It's a curious kind of i. If you think of an i that kept going, like a wave crashing in the ocean and falling over, that's what it is. Or it's like an i that melted in the heat of a candle.

So this is how we do it. You start off the same way you would start if you were making any other letter: light up, all the way to the top. But then you keep going, and you have to keep going a bit further than you expect. So you curve it round and you curve it down, like the top of a walking stick; it's got a nice curve. Then, without picking your pen up, you come back on the same line, and you curve around, nice and round, all the way to the bottom. And then when you get to the bottom, you flick up and away. And that's your connecting stroke to the next letter.

Now, what can go wrong with this? A few things. If you do not make the letter c curved enough at the top, like a wave that's crashing down, it can look like an i. And the same thing with your i: if you don't make your i straight, it can look like a c. That's a tendency with i's. Sometimes i's get a curve in them, and you need to fight against that. And you need to fight to make your c nice and fat and round. It needs to be round like the ocean, round like an egg, round like a football. Round.

So you go up with a straight line, and then you curve it. That's the tricky part. Your straight line turns into a curve, and it crashes. It hits the line and it crashes down, and it comes down a little bit further than you expect. Not too far, because then you will make an o. You must have that gap. And then you come back on the same line (I'm repeating myself), and you curve around to the bottom, and then you flick forwards. And that is a letter c.

Don't make it too shallow. It mustn't be thin, like it's starved. It needs to look like it's had a good meal. That's your letter c.

Worksheet 20