Cursive Letter W Worksheets

Cursive w is two rounded valleys followed by a high finish. Enter with an overcurve from the baseline, dip to the baseline, rise to the midline, dip to the baseline again, then climb back to the midline and stop with a short flat checkstroke pointing right. It is the widest lowercase letter in the alphabet, and it needs the room.

Give it space or the word closes up

Because w takes about twice the width of an n, a child writing on narrow paper tends to compress it, and the two valleys merge into something that reads as u or as a scribble. The remedy is to write the letter noticeably large for a while, and to check the practice row for two clearly separate dips rather than for general neatness.

The fourth checkstroke letter

w ends at the midline like b, o and v, so the letters after it enter from above. we, wi and wa are the joins to practise. This matters more for w than for the others because w so often begins a word in English, which means the awkward join lands early in almost every word it appears in, where it is most visible.

The printables on this page

The extra large page prints W and w with a solid model and three dashed copies on each of three bands, at a size where both valleys stay open. The guided page places capital and lowercase together at 96 point, then rows of seven capitals, seven lowercase and four Ww pairs on three line guides, finishing with two empty ruled lines. The words page traces wet, win and wig, each with a free row beneath.

How wide should cursive w be?

Roughly twice the width of n, which makes it the widest lowercase letter. Both valleys should be the same width and both should reach the baseline cleanly. If a word looks cramped, w is usually the letter that was squeezed, because it is the one that needs the most horizontal space.