Penmanship is the art of writing by hand, and also how good you are at it: neat penmanship, poor penmanship, beautiful penmanship. It can mean the skill you practise, or the look of the letters on the page. The word is a little old-fashioned now. People more often say handwriting. In many English-speaking schools, penmanship used to be a real subject, with lined paper and careful joins; today children type far more, so the word itself feels like something from an older classroom. It is about letters made with a pen or pencil, not about typing, and not about Chinese brush writing. You can praise the idea on the page and still say the penmanship is messy — the thoughts may be fine while the letters wobble.