Nan Jay Barchowsky devised the Barchowsky Fluent Hand method, drawing from the revival of italic calligraphy in early 20th-century Britain, and her own classroom-teaching experience. She released the first guide based on her writing teaching system in 1997.
Samples pages of Barchowsky, N.J., 2008. BFH, A Manual For Fluent Handwriting, second. ed. Swansbury, Inc.
Barchowsky Fluent Hand has two progressive stages. The basic style is taught to students in preschool and first-grade (5–7 years old). The letters are unjoined, based on slanted oval shapes, and characterised by pointed exit strokes.
The cursive alphabet of the Fluent Hand method, taught in the second and third-grade (7–9 years old) also has slanted oval shapes, and features contextual joining that appears only in certain letters sequences. Letters with exit strokes from the baseline do not join the letters with ascender strokes (such as a to b or i to l). Likewise, letters that join with descending and reversing strokes (such as g or j) are not joined either.
