How the writing is made
Why it does not look like a font
Most automated handwriting gives itself away for one reason: every letter is the same drawing, repeated. Getting past that is less about the machine than about what the machine is told to draw.
A real pen writes every piece
The finished correspondence is written onto the stationery by a pen held in a machine. It is not a printed image of handwriting, and there is no toner or inkjet involved at any stage of the writing.
That has consequences you can see and feel. The ink soaks into the paper fibres rather than sitting on the surface. Pressure deforms the sheet, so you can run a finger over the back of the page and find the writing. Ink density shifts along a stroke the way it does when anyone writes with a ballpoint.
This is the part no software can imitate, and it is the reason we start here. How the machine itself works is a separate question, and a more mechanical one.
Several forms of each letter, not one
A script font holds one drawing of each character. Every a in a letter is therefore the same a, in the same proportions, sitting the same way on the line. Nobody consciously notices this, and almost everybody notices its effect - the text acquires a regularity that reads as produced rather than written.
Our handwriting holds several drawn forms of the letters that appear most, and varies which one it uses as the line is written, so the same character does not arrive the same way twice in a row.
A handwriting font
One drawing of the letter, reused. Every a on the page is the same shape in the same place on the line.
Our handwriting
Several forms of the letter, chosen as the line is written, each sitting slightly differently on the baseline.
Real handwriting varies like this without trying. A person writing the same word twice makes two different shapes, and the difference is part of what the page looks like.
Imperfection, on purpose
Letterform variation alone still produces writing that is too tidy. Spacing stays even, the baseline stays level, and the slant never wanders. Handwriting does none of those things.
So a second layer of variation is written in on top of the letterforms: small shifts in spacing between characters and words, a baseline that drifts slightly across a line, and slant that moves a little through a paragraph. The amounts are small and they are bounded - enough to break up mechanical regularity, never enough to make the writing look careless or hard to read.
Keeping those bounds right is most of the work, and it is the part we tune rather than publish.
What the three together produce
Real ink on real paper gives the page its physical character. Multiple letterforms stop the text falling into a visible pattern. Controlled imperfection removes the regularity that letterforms alone leave behind. Any one of the three on its own is noticeably short of the other two.
The result is correspondence with considerably more natural variation than a handwriting font on a plotter, which is the comparison that matters when you are choosing between suppliers rather than between mail and email.
We are not going to tell you what a recipient will conclude, because we do not know and neither does anyone else selling this. Ask us to post you a sample and form your own view with the page in your hand - which is the only test that settles it.
What we check before a run
None of the above is worth much without the checks around it. Before a campaign is written:
- The piece is set up and checked with the same pen, hand and stock as the run, and the final details are confirmed with you before it starts.
- The data is validated first - merge fields that would write Dear [FIRST_NAME], empty values and malformed addresses are found before a pen touches paper, not after four thousand pieces.
- Finished pieces are checked for ink consistency and legibility before they are folded, inserted and sealed. Anything below standard does not go out.
The full sequence is on How it works, and what the finished piece looks like shows the output rather than the process.
Keep reading
How it works
Four steps from first conversation to letters in the post. Tell us what you are sending and w…
Examples
Formats, layouts and message structures for handwritten letters, cards and envelopes - with w…
Request a sample
Ask for a written sample posted to you. Real pen on real paper, in the hand your campaign wou…
Handwritten letters
A handwritten letter service for Australian businesses. Real ballpoint on real paper, from 10…
How the machines work
Plotters, pen pressure, letterform variation and why a good machine-written page looks nothin…
Is it really handwritten
A straight answer to the question buyers actually ask: what a writing machine does, what it d…
Straight answers
Is this a handwriting font?
A font is part of it, but a font alone is what makes automated handwriting look automated. Our handwriting holds several drawn forms of the common letters rather than one, and the writing varies which form it uses as it goes. On top of that we add small amounts of controlled inconsistency to spacing, slant and baseline. Then a pen writes the result onto the paper.
What is actually different from a pen plotter running a script font?
The machine is the least interesting part - the pen movement is similar. The difference is what it is asked to draw. A single script font gives you the same letter shape every time it appears, which is the thing the eye picks up on a page of text. Multiple letterforms plus deliberate variation is what stops a page settling into a visible pattern.
Can you tell it was not written by a person?
Someone examining several pieces side by side, looking for it, will see one consistent hand throughout - which is also true of a person who wrote all of them. We would rather describe the process accurately than make claims about what a reader will conclude. Ask for a sample and judge it in your own hand.
Does the variation make the writing harder to read?
No. The variation operates well inside the range of ordinary handwriting, and legibility is checked before a run starts. Writing that is hard to read fails at the only job it has.
See it before you decide
A written page tells you more in ten seconds than any description of the process. We will write one and post it, free, with no obligation.