Psychology & Psychiatry

Japanese children learn to write through rhythm

How do we learn to write? Associate Professor NONAKA Tetsushi (Kobe University Graduate School of Human Development and Environment) looked at the development of writing skills in Japanese first-grade students learning the ...

Psychology & Psychiatry

Robotic therapy helps children's coordination

Researchers from the University of Leeds are developing an innovative new robotic device that helps children to practise and improve their hand coordination.

Other

Doctors' orders: improve your handwriting

Doctors' handwriting has never been renowned for its elegance, but an Indian medical group is so concerned about sloppy scrawls that it has started an awareness drive to prevent fatal errors.

Psychology & Psychiatry

Child coordination disorder ups risk of mental health issues

(HealthDay) -- Children with probable developmental coordination disorder (DCD) at age 7 have a significantly increased risk of depression and mental health difficulties at age 10, according to a study published online March ...

Psychology & Psychiatry

Penmanship still important skill for kids to have

Laptops, cellphones, smartphones, tablets. It's becoming an e-world when it comes to messaging, but a Kansas State University education expert says that doesn't mean it's time to put a period to handwriting.

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Handwriting

Handwriting is a person's particular & individual style of writing with pen or pencil, which contrasts with "Hand" which is an impersonal and formalised writing style in several historical varieties. Cursive is the prominent style, but imitating print letter shapes or using caps only is becoming more prevalent among children.

Every literate human has his or hers own manner of writing. There are many peculiarities in a handwritten text:

Handwriting is relatively stable, i.e. the style of writing changes very slowly with age. Another important fact is that all people have different handwriting. Even identical twins have differences. Therefore, the most common type of questioned document examination involves handwriting wherein the examiner tries to address concerns about potential authorship.

The handwriting can contain some other information. For example, you can find out whether a person was nervous or intoxicated at the time of the sample.

Graphology is the controversial study and analysis of handwriting especially in relation to human psychology. In the medical field, it can be used to refer to the study of handwriting as an aid in diagnosis and tracking of diseases of the brain and nervous system.

Handwriting is considered bad if it prevents other people from being able to read the copy. Some people think that many doctors have bad handwriting. According to "Time", doctors' sloppy handwriting kills more than 7,000 people annually. However, D. Berwick and D. Winickoff showed that "the handwriting of doctors was no less legible than that of non-doctors" and that "significantly lower legibility than average was associated with being an executive and being male". Many famous people (e.g. Elliot) had poor handwriting because they wrote a lot. On the other side, some great people (e.g. Gandhi) had very clear handwriting.

Bad handwriting can be a symptom of disease. For example, dopamine-responsive dystonia has the following symptoms (among others):

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA