Printable block letters

Block letters are heavy, square-cornered capitals made for signs and posters. The maker above is set to Block: type your word, choose the height, and print.

What block letters are good for

Block letters are the lettering of signs: yard sale boards, protest placards, locker signs, shop windows, sports banners. They are thick and even, with square corners and simple shapes, so they read from much farther away than a thinner or fancier style. Bubble letters are friendly and playful, while block letters are bold and direct.

The Block style here is based on a heavy display face with small capitals, so every letter is a capital and lowercase letters come out as smaller capitals. That keeps a sign looking uniform even if you type in mixed case.

How to make block letter signs that read from a distance

• Keep it short. A sign read from a moving car has two or three words.
• Go big. As a rough guide, each inch of letter height gives you about ten feet of comfortable reading distance, so 3-inch letters read from about 30 feet.
• Use the outline fill and trace it onto dark card, or print colored letters on white. The contrast between letter and background matters more than the color.
• Leave space around the word. A sign crammed edge to edge is harder to read than one with margins.

Block letters versus bubble letters

Block letters keep straight edges and sharp corners. Bubble letters round everything off and swell outward. In practice, block letters suit anything that needs to look official or be read quickly, and bubble letters suit anything for kids, parties and celebrations. You can switch between them with the style buttons and compare the sheet count, since block letters are wider and a word in Block often needs one more sheet.

Drawing block letters by hand

Draw two light horizontal guide lines for the top and bottom. Write each letter as a skeleton, then draw a second line parallel to every stroke to give it thickness, keeping the thickness the same on every stroke. Square off the ends and join the outlines where strokes meet. For a 3D look, draw short diagonal lines from each corner in the same direction and join them up behind the letter.

More printables

• Printable letter stencils
• Happy birthday in bubble letters
• Name tracing worksheets
• Cursive tracing worksheets
• Handwriting practice sheets
• Bubble letter alphabet: printable A to Z

Guides

• How to draw bubble letters
• How to print large letters on multiple pages
• Bulletin board letter sizes
• Best paper for printing letters to cut out