How big is the handwriting on a Scribble card?
The handwriting sizes itself to what you wrote. A short message is written at 3 mm letters — the size an adult writes on wide-ruled paper — and a longer one comes down in steps to fit, never below 1.7 mm. Those are millimetres of actual letter, measured the same in every one of the 198 handwritings. Every card in one run is written at the same size, set by the longest merged message in the batch.
On this page
You do not set this and there is no control for it. The size is worked out from the message you typed, the handwriting you chose and the space on the card — and it is shown to you while you type, in millimetres of letter height, beside a picture of the card at its real size.
#The range
| Roughly | Letter height | Looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Up to about 20 words | 3.0 mm | The largest we write. An adult's handwriting on wide-ruled paper. |
| About 30–40 words | 2.4–2.8 mm | College-ruled paper. Fills most of the card. |
| About 60 words | 1.9–2.2 mm | Neat and close. Fills the card. |
| Past about 80 words | 1.7 mm | The smallest we write. Past this the card is full and the message has to be shorter. |
#Why the whole batch is one size
A campaign merges a different message for every recipient, so the person with the long company name needs more room than the person with the short one. If each card sized itself, one client would get 2.6 mm letters and another 2.4 mm — and if anybody ever put two of your cards side by side, that would look like a fault rather than a feature. So the batch is measured as a whole and every card is written at the largest size that fits all of them.
That is worth knowing when one recipient's merged message is much longer than the rest: it pulls the whole run down a step. The check on the message step reports the size the batch landed on, and the blocked-row table names any single row that is the reason.
#What the message step tells you
| It says | It means |
|---|---|
| 2.9 mm letters · 6 lines, in green | Written as large as we go. There is room for more if you want it. |
| 2.0 mm letters · 12 lines, in amber | Long enough that the handwriting has come down to fit. Cut a line and it goes back up. |
| will not fit, in red | Too long even at 1.7 mm. Cut a sentence — this cannot be sent as it stands. |
#Common questions
- Can I choose the size myself?
- No, and deliberately. The size that fits is a fact about your message, your handwriting and the card, and all three are measured exactly — the same measurement the plotter works to. A control here would only let somebody choose a size that does not fit, or one that looks wrong.
- Does a different handwriting change the size?
- It changes how much FITS, not how big the letters are. Letter widths vary by more than a third across the 198 hands, so the same words take more or less room — and a wider hand may drop a step to fit. But 2.4 mm letters are 2.4 mm whichever hand writes them.
- Is the picture on screen the real size?
- It is drawn at the real proportions and never larger than life size, by the same functions that drive the pen — so the words, the size and where they sit are exact. The only thing it cannot promise is the precise shape of each letter, because every card gets its own draw of the handwriting.
- What is the hard limit on a message?
- 500 characters, before merge fields are filled in. That is a backstop rather than the real constraint: whether a message fits depends on the words and the hand, which is what the size readout measures. See limits.
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