Handwriting to Font
Write the alphabet once and download a font of your own hand.
Print the sheet
One page, 68 boxes. Write a character in each with a dark pen — about ten minutes.
Photograph it and drop it here
From directly above, with all four corner squares in the frame. A phone photo is fine — it is read on your device.
Finding the sheet and cutting out the letters…
That didn't work.
Handwriting is a face nobody else has.
The sheet is made here and your photo is read here — neither is uploaded.
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About the Pathine Handwriting to Font
Print one sheet, write each letter once in the boxes, photograph it, and download a real font file of your own handwriting — a `.ttf` you can install and then choose from the font menu in any program on your computer.
The sheet has four black squares in its corners and a printed grid. Those corners are how the photo is put back into square: a page photographed with a phone is never quite flat-on, so the grid arrives as a slight trapezium, and the corners are what let every box be found exactly rather than approximately. It also means nothing has to work out which letter is which — the box at row four, column two holds a `q` because that is where the `q` was printed.
Each letter is then traced into outlines and written into the font as curves, so the result is not a picture of your writing at some fixed size. It is the real thing, sharp at any size, on screen and in print.
All of it happens in this browser tab: the sheet is generated here and the photograph is read here. Your handwriting is not uploaded, which matters more than usual — a full alphabet in somebody's hand is enough to imitate it.
When you'd reach for it
A letter that looks handwritten
A note to a customer, a thank-you card, a covering letter. Typed in your own hand it reads as though you sat down and wrote it, and you can still fix a typo before printing.
Titles, labels and captions
Recipe cards, plant labels, chapter headings, a market stall's price list. A personal hand does the job a script font is usually hired for, and it is not a font anybody else has.
Keeping a hand that matters
A grandparent's writing, a child's first alphabet, the hand a family business has used on its signs for forty years. Once it is a font it can be set again in something new.
Comics, games and mock-ups
Lettering a comic, captioning a game, or filling a design mock-up with something that is not Lorem Ipsum in a stock script face.
How to turn your handwriting into a font
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Print the sheet
One page of 68 boxes, generated here. Print it at full size on plain white paper — "fit to page" is fine, since the corner squares tell the reader how big the page ended up.
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Write one character per box
A black or dark blue pen. Not pencil, which is too close to the paper to separate reliably, and not a thick marker. The character each box is for is printed just above it.
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Use the three rules
Sit every character on the bottom rule. Take capitals up to the top rule and x-height letters to the middle one. Those rules are the font's proportions — a letter written half height will be half height when you type it.
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Photograph the whole sheet
From directly above, in even light, with all four corner squares in the frame. A phone is fine. A shadow across the page is handled; a fold or a reflection is not.
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Name it and download
The preview is set in the font itself, so what you see is what the file does. Then install it — double-click on Windows or macOS — and it appears in the font menu of your programs.
Common questions
Is my handwriting uploaded?
No. The sheet is generated in this browser tab and the photo is read in it too — the corner detection, the tracing and the font file are all built on your device. Nothing is sent anywhere and there is nothing on a server to delete.
Can I install this on a phone or tablet?
On a computer, yes: double-click the file on Windows or macOS and it is installed, and every program's font menu picks it up. On iPhone and iPad you cannot install a font by opening it — iOS needs a configuration profile, which means an app such as iFont or Fonteer. Android is similar. This is worth knowing before you spend ten minutes filling in the sheet: the font will build perfectly on a phone, and using it there takes an extra step that has nothing to do with this tool.
Why does every letter look identical when I type?
Because it is identical — the font holds one drawing of each character, and real handwriting never repeats a letter exactly. That is the honest limit of a font built from one sample per letter, and it is most obvious in a word like "letter" or "noon". Nothing here can invent the variation; it would have to come from you writing each letter several times.
Some letters are missing from the font.
Those boxes came out empty. The tool names which ones under the preview rather than filling them in with something you did not write. The usual causes are a box genuinely skipped, or a stroke too faint to read — try the "faint strokes" slider first, and re-shoot in better light if that does not do it.
A letter is cut off at the top or bottom.
A stroke that crossed the edge of its box was cut at the edge, because the box is exactly the area that gets read. Tall ascenders and long descenders are the usual casualties. Write that character again, inside the lines, and photograph the sheet once more.
What is actually in the file?
A TrueType font, with your letters stored as outlines rather than as pictures, a character map so typing an `a` finds your `a`, the spacing measured from your own writing, and the name you chose. It is an ordinary font file — nothing about it is specific to this site, and nothing in it phones home.
Can I sell things made with it, or share the font?
It is your handwriting and your file. We claim nothing over it, keep no copy, and put no licence, watermark or restriction inside it. Use it for work, install it on your other machines, or send it to someone — bearing in mind that a full alphabet in your hand is enough for somebody to imitate your writing.
Can I use lined paper, or write in pencil?
Neither, really. The sheet has to be the printed one, since the corner squares and the grid are how any of this works. And pencil sits too close to the paper in a photograph to separate cleanly from it — a black rollerball or fineliner gives by far the best result, and a fountain pen is excellent.