Rest your hand on the screen, like you would on a piece of paper, then start writing. Your Surface is designed to ignore your hand and other inputs while you write. Use the pointer that appears under your pen tip to guide you while you ink. This control isn’t supported on Android 4.2 and 4.3 devices. It impacts the scrolling experience on those versions.

A correct pencil grip will enable children to move their fingers gripping the pencil with efficient finger movements leading to much smoother handwriting. It will also help the child wellbeing as incorrect pencil grip can lead to fatigue and cause painful hand cramps. This previously required device-specific apps like the Microsoft Surface app for configuring the Surface Pen on Surface devices. The Microsoft Surface app still allows you to adjust a Surface Pen's pressure sensitivity, and other device-specific tools may still have additional settings. But most common options are now built into Windows. Pen Settings Each of these lines is developed in a sequence based on the age of the child, but it's never too early to practice, especially if your child loves writing and drawing. Find out about the process children follow to develop a secure and strong pencil grip for writing and drawing.The "Choose which hand you write with" setting controls where menus appear when you use the pen. For example, if you open a context menu while it's set to "Right Hand", it will appear to the left of the pen tip. If you open a context menu while it's set to "Left Hand", it will appear to the right of the pen tip. Windows tries to avoid opening context menus behind your hand, where you can't see them. Our Pencil Control Pattern Workbook has been designed by experienced teachers to help children improve the fluency of their handwriting.

This pencil control booklet is great for kids with dysgraphia! Like our pencil control workbook? Take a look at more activities: This control will be deprecated in April 2021. More information: Model-driven app controls deprecation

Why is fluency important in handwriting and pencil control?

Enter the mask to use for validating data as users enter it. You can use a combination of the following characters for the mask:

You can help children develop their pencil grip and fine motor control skills with a range of activities. Creative play is a great way to encourage children to engage with skill development activities so providing them with a range of stimulus to choose from can be really beneficial: Collaboration controls give you the power to simplify your user’s workflow collaboration. Build model-driven apps that allow users to work with approvals, files, meetings, notes, and tasks from Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams without switching the context from app to app. More information: Collaboration controls Legacy controls Auto-complete The auto-complete control filters an item list as you type and lets you select a value from the drop-down list. For example, you can use this control to let users choose from a dropdown list of states or countries/regions. This control maps to a Single Line of Text type column. Property Find themed pencil grip challenges which feature your child's favourite characters such as Elmer, Humpty Dumpty or Mr Twig.Thankfully, there are many things that teachers and parents can do to help build pencil control and fine motor skills. So why not do it in a fun way?