Joined Up Handwriting

With the Joinit system you can quickly and easily create fully joined up 'handwriting' in Microsoft Word, using popular UK school handwriting styles. There are lots of different handwriting fonts to choose from which follow on from cursive (with lead-ins) and precursive styles.

Click an image below to see all of our cursive or precursive letter styles.

Cursive joined styles (with lead-ins):

Precursive joined styles (no lead-ins):

What is Joinit?

We offer several different unjoined fonts on this website which are ideal for the early stages of handwriting development, but correctly joined handwriting can't easily be produced using just a font. In order to join the letters correctly a program is needed to ensure that the joins are changed when required. For example, the lower case letters o, r, v and w don't end on the line like most other letters, so any following letter needs to start from a higher position instead of on the line.

Each Joinit package includes of a set of fonts which are specially designed to join, plus a template for Microsoft Word which contains a macro to join the letters correctly. Once installed on your PC, you can start Joinit by double-clicking the shortcut on your desktop or from your Start - Programs menu. This will open a new document in Microsoft Word with a Joinit toolbar displayed. You can type or paste in text, then highlight it and click a button on the Joinit toolbar to convert the text to correctly joined in solid, dotted or dotted with line guides style.

Joinit is ideal for creating classroom displays in the style of handwriting which children are expected to use themselves. It can also be used to create custom handwriting worksheets to suit individual needs. For example, the same piece of text could easily be adapted so that some children have a solid font style as an example to copy, while others have the same text in dotted letters to trace over (in whatever size is appropriate for the individual). Some children may need to focus on the position and size of letters, so a version of the same worksheet could be switched to lined style.

Choose the package which matches your school's joined up writing style. Each package is specific to a single handwriting style so that there are no fiddly options to set up. You can use features of Microsoft Word, such as tables, text boxes and the spellchecker. Once you have joined the the text it can be copied and pasted into other applications. Each Joinit package includes the full set of five matching unjoined fonts.

For more information you can download the Joinit instructions in PDF format. If you have any questions on compatibility or if you would like a different letter style, please contact us.

Minimum system requirements for all the Joinit packages: Windows XP or later and Microsoft Word 97 or later (must be full version of Microsoft Office, Joinit will not work with Office Starter Edition). Joinit will also work on a Mac if you have Microsoft Office 2004 or 2011 (but will not work with Office 2008 for Mac)