Alternatives to Handwriting Without Tears

The only head-to-head trial that pits these programs against each other found no winner. Fifty third graders were taught cursive by Handwriting Without Tears(R), Zaner-Bloser(R), or Loops and Other Groups, ten to fifteen minutes a day for six weeks. Every group improved, and at posttest there was no meaningful difference between the three (Shimel, Candler and Neville-Smith, Physical and Occupational Therapy in Pediatrics, 2009). So the useful question is not “what is the best alternative,” it is “which part of this program is failing my child, and what is the cheapest fix for that specific part.”

Handwriting Without Tears(R), Zaner-Bloser(R) and D’Nealian(R) are registered trademarks of their respective owners and are discussed here editorially. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or a reseller of Learning Without Tears, Zaner-Bloser, Savvas Learning or any other handwriting publisher, and we do not sell or provide those curricula. Our own styles are described functionally: traditional print, modern slant print, simplified block print and continuous cursive.

The field, in one table

Route	Letter style	Paper	Cost shape	Fits best when
Handwriting Without Tears	Vertical print, capitals taught first, then lowercase, then cursive	Double line	Per component, plus manipulatives and teacher guides	The child needs a stripped-down, low-clutter page and a strict formation sequence
Zaner-Bloser	Traditional manuscript K through 2M, then cursive 2C through 6, built on four basic strokes and four keys to legibility	Three line	About $15 school price per student edition, roughly $525 and up for a classroom package	The school already uses it and you want the home sheets to match
D’Nealian	Continuous stroke manuscript whose lowercase letters already resemble the cursive forms	Three line	Per workbook, sold through Savvas	You want one style from print through cursive with no visual break
Getty-Dubay Italic	Unlooped italic, joins optional	Varies by book	Per book, student and adult titles	Older learners and adults, and anyone who finds looped cursive unreadable
Free printables plus explicit teaching	Whatever you choose	Whatever you choose	Nothing	You are willing to supply the instruction yourself

Zaner-Bloser prices are from shop.zaner-bloser.com, checked August 2026; student editions were listed at $14.90 school and $19.87 retail, with comprehensive grade-level classroom packages from $525 to $840 school price. Program structure for Handwriting Without Tears is as described on lwtears.com: a Pre-K through grade 6 sequence, print in the early grades and cursive from grade 2, built on double-line paper and multisensory instruction. Savvas describes D’Nealian as “the original continuous stroke, manuscript-cursive handwriting program”, covering K through 5, with the cursive transition in grade 2 and lowercase taught before capitals. Zaner-Bloser’s program page sets out the K through 6 structure and its four simple strokes. Getty-Dubay describes its italic as “faster than print and easier than looped cursive”, with a loop-free path from print into joined writing.

What the research actually supports

Three findings are worth more than any curriculum brochure.

Teaching handwriting explicitly works, and works better on writing than on handwriting. Santangelo and Graham’s meta-analysis of K to 12 handwriting interventions found effect sizes of 0.59 for legibility and 0.63 for fluency against control conditions, and larger gains on the writing that handwriting is supposed to serve: quality 0.84, length 1.33 (Educational Psychology Review, 2016). The IES What Works Clearinghouse practice guide for elementary writers makes the same recommendation at a moderate evidence level: teach students to become fluent with handwriting, spelling, sentence construction and typing (WWC Practice Guide 17).

Motor exercises without letters do close to nothing. In the same meta-analysis, motor-only instruction returned 0.10 for legibility and negative 0.07 for fluency. A later meta-analysis of 31 studies and 2,030 preschool and elementary students found the same shape: timed transcription practice, multicomponent handwriting treatment, and performance feedback all produced gains, while sensory-motor and self-regulation approaches showed insufficient evidence (López-Escribano, Martín-Babarro and Pérez-López, Frontiers in Psychology, 2022). If your objection to a program is that it spends too long on dough, foam shapes and songs before letters appear, the research is on your side.

The evidence specific to any one brand is thin. Searching PubMed for “Handwriting Without Tears” returns five records. The most favorable is a crossover study of 149 first graders in which the HWT condition scored significantly better on the Minnesota Handwriting Assessment for form, size, spacing and alignment than conventional classroom instruction (Roberts, Derkach-Ferguson, Siever and Rose, Canadian Journal of Occupational Therapy, 2014). A second found kindergarten groups taught via occupational therapy consultation outperformed controls on all ten subtests of the Test of Handwriting Skills-Revised, with 20 children per experimental group (Donica, American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 2015). Both compare a structured program to whatever the school was already doing, which is the comparison a structured program tends to win. Neither shows the program beating a different structured program, and Shimel 2009 is the study that tried and did not find one.

Diagnose the failure before you buy the replacement

The letters look wrong compared with school

This is the most common and the least expensive to fix. A child taught vertical print at home and slanted print at school is doing two motor programs for the same alphabet. Pick the one the school uses and make home match it. Nothing else about the curriculum needs to change. Our style comparison covers what actually differs between them, which is less than the marketing implies.

The double-line paper is the problem

Double lines give a strong midline cue and drop the descender line. Some children lock onto it; others cannot then place a g or a y on ordinary school paper. If that is the mismatch, switch the ruling, not the program. Three-line paper with an explicit descender space is one setting in our worksheet generator, and you can keep every other teaching decision you have already made.

Capitals first feels wrong

Capitals-first has a real rationale: capitals are all the same height, they sit between two lines, and they use fewer curves. It is also not the only defensible order, and starting with the easiest lowercase letters is well supported. This is a sequencing choice, not a product, and you can change it without buying anything. See why the alphabet is the wrong teaching order.

It is too young for the child

Manipulatives, chalkboards and songs land badly with a nine year old who already knows the letters and writes them badly. An older struggling writer needs targeted practice on the specific letters that are failing, at a sensible size, plus feedback. That is the profile the 2022 meta-analysis found responds to timed transcription and performance feedback, not to more readiness activities.

The cost

A full classroom package is priced for a school district. A parent needs a formation sequence, correct models, and paper. All three are obtainable free.

What to do about it

1. Write down what is actually failing: letter shapes, sizing, spacing, speed, or resistance. If you cannot name it, spend a week collecting samples first.
2. Match the letter style to the school. If there is no school style, pick one and stop shopping.
3. Fix posture, paper angle and grip before buying any curriculum. A bad pencil grip or a badly angled page defeats every program equally, and left-handed writers need a setup change that no workbook supplies.
4. Teach by letter family, roughly six to eight letters at a time, modeling the stroke order aloud before the child traces. Our letters index has a page per letter with the formation described, for example letter b.
5. Practice short and daily. The studies that produced the gains above used ten to fifteen minutes a day, not an hour on Saturday.
6. Give feedback on one thing at a time. Performance feedback is one of the few components with a measured effect.
7. Reassess after four to six weeks with a fresh sample next to the old one.

If steps one through seven run for a term with no change, the problem is more likely to be motor, visual or a specific learning difficulty than curricular. That is the point to ask for an occupational therapy evaluation rather than to buy a fourth workbook.

The free route, honestly described

Free printables replace the workbook. They do not replace the teacher. What a paid curriculum buys you is the sequence, the scripted language for describing each stroke, and someone else’s judgment about pacing. If you are willing to supply those, the printed material is the cheap part: generate the letters you are working on, at the ruling and size you need, in dotted, hollow or blank trace styles, and print only what this week requires. Our step by step teaching guide is the sequence part, written out.

What free printables cannot do is make a decision for you about print or cursive, or about when to start. Those are covered in print or cursive first, and the honest answer there is also narrower than the marketing on either side.