Handwriting . . . sorry, but your handwriting is nearly as bad as mine. Please don't handwrite ANYTHING. Type everything, even short notes. I am so embarrassed about my own scrawly handwriting that you'll notice that I PRINT rather than write in cursive style. When you deal with editors you NEVER handwrite notes. An editor refuses to slow down and work out what's being said in handwriting. Get used to it, please.
Let me explain why I'm so fierce about this. An editor is a busy person working against the clock. Every minute spent squinting at your loops and squiggles is a minute stolen from the real job. If your copy is hard to read, the editor forms one of two thoughts, and both of them hurt you: either you are careless, or you are an amateur. Neither thought gets you commissioned a second time.
There is also the matter of mistakes. A misread word in handwriting becomes a printed error, and the error carries your name above it. A "5" that looks like an "S", a "c" that looks like an "e", a surname scrawled in a hurry: these are the little disasters that creep in when a tired sub-editor has to guess. Typed copy takes the guessing away.
So make it a rule from your very first day. Type your articles. Type your covering note. Type the caption on a photograph. The only handwriting you ever need is in your own notebook, for your own eyes, taken at speed during an interview. That shorthand is yours. Nobody else should ever have to read it.
And keep the typed page clean and plain. No fancy fonts, no coloured paper, no clever layout. A clean page in a plain typeface tells the editor you are a professional who respects their time. That impression is worth more than you might think.