To sign “write” or “writing” in ASL, you pinch the tips of your thumb and index finger together on your dominant hand (forming what’s called a “20” handshape, like holding an invisible pen) and slide those fingertips across the open, upturned palm of your non-dominant hand. The motion mimics writing on a notepad.
The Basic Sign for WRITE
Hold your non-dominant hand out in front of you, palm facing up, with your fingers together and flat. This hand acts as the “paper.” With your dominant hand, touch your thumb tip to your index fingertip while keeping the other fingers loosely curled. Then drag those pinched fingertips sideways across your flat palm in a short, smooth stroke. One pass across the palm means “write” as a simple verb. Sliding twice across the palm can emphasize the action or indicate ongoing writing.
Your dominant hand does all the moving. Your non-dominant hand stays still. The direction of the slide goes from the thumb side of your flat palm toward the pinky side (if you’re right-handed, that means sliding from your left to your right). Keep the motion relaxed and natural, not stiff or exaggerated.
Variations and Related Signs
ASL uses the same base sign for several related words, with small changes in movement or context doing the work that suffixes do in English.
- WRITE: One or two slides across the palm, as described above.
- WRITING (noun): Often the same sign, with context and facial expression making it clear you mean the thing rather than the action. In some conversations, signers will repeat the motion or pair it with other signs to clarify.
- WRITER: Sign WRITE, then add the AGENT sign (both flat hands held vertically in front of your body, palms facing each other, moving downward together). This “person who does X” ending works the same way it does for TEACH + AGENT = TEACHER.
If someone asks you to “write something down,” you might also see the sign done with a slightly larger, more deliberate movement to convey emphasis. Facial expression and body language carry a lot of grammatical weight in ASL, so the difference between a casual “write” and an urgent “write this down!” comes through in your face and the speed of the motion as much as in the hand movement itself.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
The most frequent error beginners make is using the wrong handshape on the dominant hand. You’re not pointing with your index finger or making a fist. The thumb and index finger pinch together at the tips, as if you’re holding a tiny pen between them. If your fingers are too spread apart or too tightly clenched, the sign won’t read clearly to a fluent signer.
Another common issue is moving the non-dominant hand. That palm stays flat and still throughout the sign. Think of it as a piece of paper sitting on a desk. You also want to avoid bouncing or tapping. The motion is a smooth horizontal slide, not a series of taps or dots.
Fingerspelling vs. Signing
You could fingerspell W-R-I-T-E letter by letter using the ASL manual alphabet, but that’s slow and unnecessary for such a common word. Fingerspelling is typically reserved for proper nouns, technical terms, or words that don’t have an established ASL sign. Since WRITE has a clear, widely recognized sign, use the sign itself in conversation.
That said, if you’re in a classroom or learning environment and you want to practice, fingerspelling and signing the word together is a standard drill. Sign WRITE first, then fingerspell it, so you reinforce both skills.
Writing ASL on Paper or Screen
ASL doesn’t have a standard written alphabet the way English does, but several systems exist for putting signs into written form. If your search was about how to write ASL itself (rather than how to perform the sign for “write”), here’s what’s available.
Glossing is the most common method in classrooms and textbooks. You write the English equivalent of each sign in CAPITAL LETTERS, arranged in ASL word order (which differs from English). A hyphen between capitalized words means a single sign whose meaning requires multiple English words to translate. A tilde (~) between capitalized words indicates a multi-sign construction. So a gloss might look like: ME WANT WRITE LETTER.
SignWriting, developed by Valerie Sutton, is a visual notation system that represents handshapes, movements, and facial expressions with symbols arranged vertically on the page. Handshapes are drawn as geometric shapes: a square for a closed fist, a circle for a rounded hand with fingertips touching the thumb, and a pointed rectangle for a flat hand. A head symbol (a circle representing the view from behind the signer) anchors the sign’s location, and movement arrows indicate direction. Dark dots show fingers bending inward, light dots show fingers straightening, and arrows of different styles distinguish between movement parallel to a wall versus movement parallel to the floor. It’s the closest thing to a true writing system for sign languages.
Stokoe Notation is an older system developed by linguist William Stokoe in the 1960s for academic analysis. It breaks each sign into three parts written in sequence: the location where the sign happens, the handshape that performs the action, and the movement itself. It’s useful for linguistic research but rarely appears outside academic settings.
Digital Tools for ASL Writing
If you want to type ASL-related content on a computer, a few tools are available. The Gallaudet TrueType font lets you type on a standard keyboard and see fingerspelling handshapes appear on screen instead of letters. On Windows, you download the .ttf file, open it, and click Install. On Mac, you download the file, then drag it into your Fonts folder (Home > Library > Fonts) and double-click to install. Once installed, you can select “Gallaudet” as your font in any word processor, and each key produces the corresponding fingerspelling handshape.
For SignWriting, the SignPuddle platform and related software let you compose signs using the full symbol set. These tools are more specialized and have a steeper learning curve, but they allow you to write entire sentences and stories in visual sign notation rather than English glosses.