Sometimes, the teachers cannot even read their own handwriting: one teacher's illegibly scrawled comment eventually turned out to read, "Please write legibly!"

1. Not only a teacher's scrawl, but a student's scribble, can affect the student's grades. Handwriting performance researcher Steve Graham reveals: "Two out of three kids in this country do not write well enough for their classroom work." (quote by Graham in the CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR's November 14, 2007 report on handwriting in America)
   
   Graham's and others' studies also show that better handwriting really does result in better grades for similar or identical work: as much as a full letter grade better, even if the teacher or exam grader has received (and has tried to follow) instructions not to allow handwriting to influence the grade.
   What does this mean when students with poor handwriting must compete against students with better handwriting? (for instance, on nationally standardized essay tests like the revised SAT's essay section — or on college-application essays or job-application forms)
   
   Some students facing exams, or their anxious parents, hope to avoid the consequences of dysfunctional handwriting by making special arrangements to gain an exemption permitting them to keyboard their essays. The Educational Testing Service — makers of the SAT exam — permits this in various cases if the student has a well-documented disability that affects handwriting.
   
   BUT ...
   
   not all students and parents who gain an SAT keyboard exemption make themselves aware of what happens to the exempted essays before grading.
   
   Before a keyboarded SAT essay goes to the graders, it reportedly has sometimes happened that the exam proctor copied out the essay by hand and submitted this copy instead of the student's original typescript. When this occurs (apparently without the knowledge or consent of the Educational Testing Service) it seems that the exam proctor does this in hopes to prevent graders and college admissions officers (who ultimately see these exams) from ascertaining whether or not a student had a disability affecting writing (something that they might otherwise ascertain by noting whether or not the student had used a keyboard).
   
   Results of this policy:
   
   /a/ many of the keyboarded essays reach the graders weeks or even months after the essays of other students (who handwrote their essays). Therefore, students who gained an exemption to keyboard have, at times, found their essay-test scores delayed by weeks or even months while other students (who handwrote because they needed no exemption) have already received their SAT scores and sent these scores to the colleges that the students would like to attend. The resulting delay in admissions, for students who received permission to keyboard on the SAT, may close these students out of the college programs of their choice as earlier entrants fill the places available.
   
   /b/ even if the examination proctor submits a handwritten copy of a s keyboarded essay promptly enough to allow reasonably swift grading, this necessarily makes that student dependent on the hope that whoever proctored the exam (usually a schoolteacher) may happen to write legibly..
   Vast numbers of teachers (and other adults who might proctor SAT exams) simply do not write legibly.
   So a student who gains permission to keyboard the SAT essay may not avoid handwriting difficulties after all. His or her score may suffer because of something that the student cannot control or improve: someone else's scrawl. (This may explain why students who could legitimately gain permission to keyboard their SAT essays have nevertheless come to me in search of better handwriting. They would rather have a chance of doing better because of their own improved handwriting than face a chance of doing worse because of someone else's poor writing.)
   
   .
   
   

Computers and pocket organizers, which many tech-savvy people tout as solutions, do not solve handwriting problems. 

For one thing, many hard-up schools and school districts lack the money to afford to buy or repair any computers - 
or even typewriters. A school that can't provide typewriters (even manual ones) for its typing classes probably will not have keyboards available for other work.)

And - even if everyone had a computer available, all the time - more and more of the new computers and pocket organizers rely on "non-keyboard input." Very often, this means "pen-based input", i.e., handwriting (entered with an electronic pen on a special tablet or screen - click here to find out more!)

If your "pen-based input" does not compute — if the machine cannot read your handwriting correctly — all the computing skills in the world will not help you use your computer.


1. Shopping lists, quick notes, house addresses, phone numbers, Web-site addresses, Post-Its^(TM), doctors' appointment cards, coupons, & data-entry forms: where speed AND accuracy "on the run" have top priority, we still rely on the good old paper and pen/cil!)

   Handwriting classes for college students: the time may have come.

   Unheard of? Perhaps ... yet certainly necessary! At least, so says the Department of Art at Saint Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa. Continuing a policy established in the 1950s by an earlier Art Department head, the late Dr. Edward Catich (author of The Origin of the Serif), the Art Department requires ALL students who elect a calligraphy class to begin their studies with remedial penmanship, italic-style, using materials developed by Edward Catich and a later head, John Schmits.
   Said Schmits, shortly before his untimely death in 2005: "If I could, I would extend the penmanship requirement to the rest of the student body, not just the calligraphy students." The tradition, though, continues since his death: students in other departments (education, occupational therapy, etc.) can and do take the handwriting class along with the calligraphy students. The university requires all students taking this class to use their re-built penmanship for all their writing: in the classroom, and out.
   The results have overwhelmingly favored their efforts: not only in the life-long benefit to the students themselves, but in the effect on local private and public schools, as graduates often accept teaching positions in the Art department, teaching italic handwriting as calligraphy, in schools in Davenport and the surrounding area. To order teaching materials used for the handwriting class at Saint Ambrose University, contact the Saint Ambrose University Department of Art or the Saint Ambrose University Bookstore .
   

   Finally — what about the many situations which make keyboarding, tape-recording, etc., just plain impractical? ...How many of us can get through even one whole day without once needing to put pen or pencil to paper, without once needing to read the letters, words, and numbers handwritten by others?

physicians' handwriting: the facts

According to a study by the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, illegible handwriting and transcription errors cause over 60% of the medication mistakes in hospitals.

• Just how poorly do physicians write? Doctors' penmanship has reached such lows that many MDs write the names of different drugs identically - meaning that drug-manufacturers may soon need to change the names of commonly prescribed drugs to keep them from being confused with other commonly prescribed drugs. Renaming a medication - and publicizing the change - costs a great deal of money; almost certainly, the pharmaceutical industry passes the costs of these expensive changes on downwards to the consumer. For instance: even before the dangers of the arthritis medication Celebrex became known, medication errors involving the name of this product - misread in sloppy handwriting - killed patients because the sloppily handwritten name looked similar to the sloppily written names of other drugs which treated other conditions. Click here for a report on the confusion and its lethal consequences.

• Will computers solve all the problems? Probably not: more and more computers — for example, the Tablet PC —  dispense with keyboards by using pen-based input. Shortly after the release of the Tablet PC, Bill Gates announced Microsoft's plans to continue emphasizing handwriting as an important input method which will feature increasingly in future Microsoft computers.

• Do MDs really write worse than the rest of us? Not necessarily: but we see more of their handwriting (and it affects us more).

   

• Many physicians (and their patients) used to make jokes about doctors' handwriting and even circulate cartoons about doctors' handwriting. However, the serious consequences of medi-scrawl have begun to change people's attitudes.

   

• • Almost daily, newspapers and magazines and academic studies — even doctors and medical students themselves — call medical penmanship"no laughing matter."

     

  • Television entertainment, too, now warns against medi-scrawl and shows it in dangerous action:
    • On NBC-TV's hit medical-drama TV series ER, a sick man becomes sicker because of an unclearly penned prescription issued by Dr. Peter Benton (played by Eriq LaSalle). (April 6, 2000 broadcast: Episode 130, titled "Viable Options")

       

    • In a later ER episode,during a staff training exercise Dr. Neela Rasgotra (played by Parminder Nagra) has trouble reading the handwriting of Dr. Tony Gates (played by John Stamos). (November 2, 2006 broadcast: Episode 273, "The Heart of the Matter")

       

    • On ABC-TV's hit medical-drama TV series GREY'S ANATOMY, intern Norman Shales (played by Edward Herrman) misreads a numeral and as a result incorrectly reports a patient as dead. (October 18, 2007 broadcast: episode 4.4, coincidentally also titled "The Heart of the Matter.")

       

    • Later in the same GREY'S ANATOMY episode, Dr. Isobel (Izzie) Stevens (played by Katherine Heigl) tells her interns: "Penmanship saves lives! Is that a 7, or is that a 9? If I have to ask myself that in the middle of an emergency, your patient is dead. You killed him. With your handwriting. Think about that!"

     

Why the crisis?

How things got this way

• Decreased emphasis, from decade to decade, on handwriting competence - Average instruction time for handwriting has shrunk, over the decades, to 5-10 minutes a week; with usually no instruction/presentation after grades 3-4. In other words: at just the point in education when one must write more - and write faster- in order to keep up with the work, the curriculum phases out even minimal instruction in handwriting).

• You cannot teach what you do not know ... and teacher-training in most US states no longer includes any instruction in the teaching of handwriting. From the 1930s to the 1950s, handwriting started vanishing from more and more teachers'-college course-lists; by now, most teachers' colleges no longer even offer - let alone require taking - any course in how to teach handwriting. The vast majority of today's teachers'-college graduates no longer have to demonstrate competence in teaching handwriting - they do not even need to write legibly themselves - if they want to gain the credentials that will let them teach your child.

• This means that today's teachers got their own final lessons in handwriting at about age seven or eight ... and they got those lessons from teachers who themselves received their own final training and evaluation in handwriting at that age. (Would you let your child learn any other subject/skill - math, science, history, or spelling - from someone whose teaching skills and subject-matter knowledge came entirely out of what that teacher remembered from attending the 2nd or 3rd grade of school?)

• Even what little teaching a child may still get usually suffers because of the split between 2 divergent styles of letter:

We do not allow this artificial split in any other area of education. For instance, we'd call it ridiculous to try to teach math entirely in Roman numerals up into second or third grade, then suddenly drop it all and start over again with modern Arabic numerals or even algebra ... and we don't teach English by starting off with Chinese.

Today's conventional cursive model (which most of us have learned to regard as traditional) has rhythm and (at its very best) even beauty. But even at its best it presents teaching and performance problems:

For one example of the problems of conventional cursive - the easiest problem to see, note the t-bar time-waster, illustrated below:

(NOTE: thin lines - indicating motion during pen-lifts - would of course follow a straight or nearly straight path in rapid, high-quality handwriting. For visibility's sake, this illustration bends them slightly out of the way.)

As the above diagram shows, students learning conventional cursive typically learn not to complete (cross) the t until after reaching the end of the word.

As shown, this requires the pen to waste time: going into the air at the end of the word in order to travel all the way back to the beginning of the word (thin line) in order to cross the t, then going into the air again and traveling forward over the entire word (thin line) in order to arrive (once again) at the end of the word ... only then (after all this wasted time and motion) does the writer reach the point at which he or she can go on to the next word.

By contrast, our civilization's original cursive-handwriting manuals - in Renaissance Europe - avoided this wastage by crossing the T upon writing it , not procrastinating till the end of the word in today's fashion:

(The join, as shown here, extended from the crossbar of t instead of from the base.)

The thin lines here show the much shorter pen-in-air path, with almost zero back-and-forth wasted motion, that was designed by those Renaissance originators of our cursive handwriting - we can see the greater efficiency and orderly sequence here: one finishes each and every letter (including the t) before beginning the next.

Unfortunately for those of us who find handwriting less than marvelously easy, Austin Norman Palmer (originator of the famed "Palmer Method") and his equals in penmanship — people who did so much to form the common mind (and hand) of our nation — apparently gave as little throught as other men and women of their time to the efficiency-minded cursive that their Renaissance forebears had used.

Handwriting matters so much — and many neglect it so much — that those who seek to defend it owe it to themselves not to reject the traditional (as well as demonstrably simpler and more efficient) Renaissance Italic cursive style in the name of the complexities which became familiar in later times.

handwriting: some teaching/doing tips for ANY style:

Consider the following:

In teaching, emphasize the downstrokes of letters. Teach that these should, as a rule, parallel each other. Such strokes should go parallel to the overall salnt of the writing, ALL the way down until they hit a guide-line such as the "baseline" the writing sits on, and/or the "very bottom line" that marks the bottom of the descenders. Downstrokes need to reach this line before they begin turning or curving into the next, upward stroke!

(Just this tip will improve the appearance, legibility, & even speed unbelievably for most writers.)

NOTE: By down-strokes, I mean not only the "obvious" ones (such as the long strokes in l, j, and h) but also the ones that most school-models teach as curves or parts of a circle:

e.g., the "left edge" of a letter like d or g or a,

or the "right edge" of p or m or n. 

Since a downstroke provides the easiest and best control, motorically, I build as much of the letter as I can out of a good, firm downstroke -- I find it helps to build the other letters by learning to connect the down-strokes together in "motor patterns" ("dinosaur teeth", --> v w etc. -- & "bumps" --> m n h etc. -- & "waves" --> u y, etc., as well as other patterns

Use only about a 5-to-15 degree slant to the right for cursive writing (also for manuscript if you want) -- this will allow the "flow" of slant writing, while remaining very, very legible because it writing will appear vertical or almost vertical (The more slant, the less legibility. Though most of us need a bit of slant for speed, we do not need more than a very slight slant for the sake of speed.)

Most handwriting styles, from the dawn of the written word. have gravitated to this 5-to-15-degree range of slant when performed by the fastest and most legible writers: no matter what writing tool or writing surface the writer used, and no matter what slant the writer tried to emulate.

TO CHOOSE AND USE A SLANT WITHIN THIS OPTIMAL RANGE:

CLICK HERE to download and print FREE 5-degree slant paper.

CLICK HERE to download and print FREE 10-degree slant paper.

CLICK HERE to download and print FREE 15-degree slant paper.

For papers without slant lines — but with many other helpful features — consider the Stage-Write Handwriting Paper Series from Therapro.

For a history of slant and other features in handwriting, and research supporting a slant of 5 to 15 degrees as well as other features recommended on this page, I recommend HANDWRITING MODELS FOR SCHOOLS by handwriting teacher and researcher Charles "Chuck" Lehman.

A word about joining ...

Wherever possible, join letters by using straight, not curvy, lines: e.g.,use a straight, short horizontal to join o to n (on), and a straight, short upwards diagonal to join a to n (an).

Consider eliminating loops wherever possible (for example: on ascender-letters such as l/h/k). Teach/allow/encourage the writer to do these as retraced strokes, and/or even with a pen-lift. This will vastly improve legibility!

Many legible/fast-writing adults naturally write loop-free letters in any case, so eliminating loops arguably does not make handwriting "wrong" even under the constraints of conventional cursive.

STRONGLY consider allowing and encouraging students to write "print-like" forms of capitals, even in cursive writing (as long as these slant the same as the rest of the cursive writing). At the very least, permit and encourage this for some of the "twistier" & more confusible capitals such as the conventional cursive S, G, I, J, etc.

Teach every student how to read and recognize the fancy conventional forms ... but do not worry the student about writing them! (Given proper techniques for learning to read that fancy "cursive writing" stuff, learning to read it takes an hour or less if the student can read ordinary printed letters. Learning to write it, too, can take much, much longer. Today's crowded curriculum may make it difficult to justify calling other classwork to a halt so that students can spend a few months or a couple of years changing their handwriting to a more elaborate style.)

Many adults, after all (including the most legible rapid writers) "print" their capitals. Since capitals form only 2% of ordinary prose text, no reason demands teaching such effort-intensive forms to everybody for all cursive writing. Cursive writing, with every capital made in a "print-like" manner, remains 98% conventional-cursive writing.

Similarly: especially where students have a problem with lower-loop shaping (e.g., g, j, y), STRONGLY consider teaching each student not to join/loop out of these letters, but to make the "move" out of the letter "in the air" -- i.e., lift the pen. A writer should also consider lifting the pen (instead of joining) wherever he or she finds a particular join actually slower (even after practice!) than just lifting the pen while moving ahead to the next letter.

Frequent "trouble spots" that post far less trouble when one teaches an efficient "air-join" instead of requiring a twisty, convoluted "on-paper join" include: the letter-combinations ca, gh and qu -

NOTE: Again, most fast/legible-writing adults do normally eliminate some or many loops/joins in their handwriting. Much of what schoolteachers and textbooks impose upon our handwriting in elementary school burdens a handwriter with excess: surplusage that the fastest, clearest writers discard anyway as they mature ... so why teach it to anyone in the first place? (E-mail me for details on this, if it interests you ... or visit the Home of the Handwriting Rebels and learn about others of a like mind )

VERY strongly consider using "print-like" (not conventional- cursive) forms for the lower-case letters b, f, r, s, & z

NOTE: For some letters,

this involves teaching/accepting

non-total joining of letters throughout words.

Rest assured - the sky will not fall in!

Many adults who write fast and legibly do it by using print-like letter-shapes and not joining absolutely every letter, rather than cope with 2 separate forms: manuscript and cursive.

Writing of this type removes the "accident-proneness" from many handwritten alphabet-letters. With this kind of writing, you don't get a b that looks like l - an f that resembles b - a z that resembles y or perhaps a distorted n - or an r or s that looks more like a too-tight e or a dot-less i.)

Have students put the paper in front of their "writing shoulder" (NOT in front of their heads!) -- righties by the right shoulder, lefties by the left -- after all, the arm attaches on that side. Some students will benefit by moving the paper even further right (or left); depending on how widely they tend to swing the writing arm.

looking at difficulties in handwriting

/1/ staircase of handwriting function

optimal:

• self-administers (administers to others if required) handwriting maintenance/improvement procedures - self-monitors status of own handwriting (can monitor others' handwriting status if required)
• handwrites unambiguously at practical speed(s) for needed duration(s) of task
• the writer, and others who see and read his or her writing, find it at least cceptable in appearance: whether or not it conforms exactly with every details of a given school-style of handwriting.

approaching optimal:

• continues developing handwriting speed to needed level(s)
• handwrites unambiguously for increasing durations: word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, page, long task
• handwrites unambiguously anything s/he can say, hear, understand, or think
• handwrites unmistakably all letters, numerals, symbols, punctuation, abbreviations, etc. that s/he reads/knows/uses. (NOTE: This will vary depending on the needs of the person also because of our changing culture. For example: just a few decades ago, very few of us ever needed to write the @ symbol!)

not-yet-totally-functional handwriting

(includes most of USA normal population!)

• handwrites legibly or at adequate speed or with ease - but does not manage to do all three together
• handwrites unambiguously all or most letters in one or more related-motion groups (such as u/a/c/d/g/q or n/r/m/h/b/p), but not all the letters and/or not all letter-combinations. This writer will show repeated and noticeable difficulties involving particular sequences of motion and/or particular letters/joins, especially in conventional cursive writing

someone who can write ...

but definitely a "problem handwriter"

• handwrites unmistakably one or more letters, but not all of them
• may have (or have had) a lot of difficulty with conventional manuscript-then-cursive instruction: (He or she will probably tell you: "I hate cursive !")
• may "fight" conventional cursive , and/or attempt a "self-invented" way of writing (typically this will be some form of "printing," a mix of upper- & lower-case, and/or atypical ways of forming the letters (out-of-order strokes or directions)

someone in the following situation

may appear unable to write by hand -

however, appropriate methods and models for handwriting may make it possible for this individual to develop some handwriting competence and ascend higher on the "staircase":

• can hold some object, with some part of the body, &/or can move some object and/or body-part to make some type of mark (such as a dot or scribble) on some kind of surface.
• may require a special tool, writing surface, or other adaptation to do so

someone in the following situation cannot write by hand:

• cannot voluntarily move any body part or hold any object in any manner whatsoever

/2/ trouble spots in handwriting include:

conventional-print-writing trouble spot:

• requiring/presenting circle/vertical separate shapes for beginners' written letters - the shapes that most people, even adults, find  the most difficult to make (at least,without drafting tools). Even for people without disabilities, these shapes do not really relate to ordinary everyday patterns of movement.

conventional-cursive trouble spots:

• use of 2 opposed styles for writing, so that students must change their entire already-established writing style just to join letters: this means that later learnings oppose earlier ones (instead of building on them)
• requiring fancy versions of  CAPITALS/b/f/r/s/z in joined writing ... this not only makes the letters very difficult to learn and distinguish, but makes them extremely dissimilar to the letter-shapes used almost all reading matter. In any case, these allegedly necessary fanciments (especially for the CAPITALS) do not even appear in the handwriting of many adults who write legibly at speed. This makes them difficult to justify on grounds of speed or "adultness." Difficulty in mastering these shapes also stems from their rarity: only 2% of ordinary prose text consists of capital letters, so a student usually does not encounter the elaborate conventional cursive forms often enough to remember them clearly, or to justify the extended practice that these elaborate shapes require for correct mastery, performance, and retention.
• asking for total joining/looping of all letters in script words

  (To experience this problem, try to write all these words, in good conventional cursive, without a single pen-lift inside any of the words. Can you? Probably not!)

  handwriting Constitutionally citizenship Thanksgiving grandmother scientific grandmother tyrannosaurus arithmetic thermometer astronomy eleemnosynary thyroidectomies uncopyrightable multiculturality antidisestablishmentarianism

  Some letter-combinations make it very hard to join legibly at speed. In many cases, a join/loop may even present more difficulties (and allow less speed and legibility) than just momentarily lifting the pen during the movement between letters. (Examples include joining into tall letters & a/c/d/g/q). Also, our attention spans and our hands often need a break from repetitive motions after 3 - 5 letters.

• presenting/teaching extreme "script" slant. Using a heavy slant (over 15 degrees to the right) removes the cursive letters even further from ordinary (type) letter-forms (a vertical stroke in type translates to a  strongly-slanted stroke in conventional cursive handwriting) ... also, it optically squashes letter-bodies, making them less easy to distinguish.

but does the research support this?

If you take an interest in writing more simply (and/or in teaching your children to do the same), you may ask:
"What research support this? Does this just represnt one person's - or more than one person's - experience? Or have we any hard proof that the things Kate suggests really make a difference?"

Current research does show that the differences do make a difference: at least, if your goals in handwriting include legibility and speed.

Here follows a summary of 1998 university research on what makes for effective handwriting-skills:

this research, from the University of Washington and the
University of Maryland, appears in the 1998 issue of HANDWRITING REVIEW, an annual (now semi-annual) handwriting-research journal published by the Handwriting Interest Group (HIG) at the University of Reading (UK).

Article title:

Virginia Berninger and Steve Graham -
"Language by Hand: A Synthesis of a Decade of Research on Handwriting," in HANDWRITING REVIEW (pp. 11-25). Reading (UK): Handwriting Interest Group/University of Reading, 1998.

(Dr. Berninger conducts learning-disabilities research at the University of Washington, and Dr. Graham teaches/researches in the Education Department of the University of Maryland. Funding for the handwriting research done by Berninger and Graham at both these universities came through grants from the USA's National Institutes of Health [NIH], as part of NIH research on assessment and intervention for writing disabilities.)

Berninger's and Graham's research involved 900 children, 100 each in grades 1 through 9 - 50 boys and 50 girls in each grade, in two USA states (Maryland and Washington).

Below, you'll find the HANDWRITING REVIEW abstract of the article, then my own summary of some specific Berninger/Graham findings which should interest anyone who cares about better, simpler, basic handwriting and how to teach it:

ABSTRACT from Handwriting Review:
"An overview is provided of a decade of research in handwriting, with an emphasis on the rôle of handwriting in composing for authentic communications purposes. This research, which is a joint collaboration of two research groups, is theory-driven and has examined the neurodevelopmental underpinnings of handwriting, handwriting development, gender differences, assessment practices, instructional approaches, and transfer from handwriting to other writing and reading skills. Key findings from this research program include (a) handwriting automaticity (producing accurate letters under time-limited conditions) is important to writing development throughout the elementary school years, and (b) handwriting is language by hand and involves more than just fine motor skills."

SOME SPECIFIC FINDINGS OF NOTE summarized by Kate Gladstone:

/1/ many students do not follow the typical classroom expectation of using only one of the types of handwriting they learned

(manuscript - i.e., what most US people would call "printing" & most British people would call "script"-

or cursive - i.e., what most US people would call "script" & most British people would call "copperplate")

throughout a piece of writing. Instead, they "mix" elements of both these systems. About 40% of the children observed by Berninger and Graham habitually "mixed" handwriting-systems in this manner.

/2/ about SPEED - Berninger and Graham observed that those students who used such a "mixed" writing wrote faster than the students who complied with the classroom expectation of using either one or the other type of handwriting for a given piece of work.

In other words, not only did the students with "mixed" writing write faster than "print-writers" (we might have expected that) but they *also* wrote faster than those writing "properly" in all-cursive style (something we might NOT have expected ... since people often think of "good handwriting" as being synonymous with "doing it properly in cursive - because that speeds the handwriting"... yet writing in "proper" relentlessly joined cursive actually produces slower results, by test, than "mixing" one's writing.)

(Note that those familiar only with conventional USA-style manuscript and cursive systems generally apply this description of "mixed handwriting" to Italic, the type of handwriting that I recommend.)

/3/ about LEGIBILITY - Berninger and Graham observed that those students using such a "mixed" style of writing wrote as legibly as, or more legibly than, students who complied with the classroom expectation of writing either consistently in conventional manuscript or consistently in conventional cursive.

In other words, any "proper" (100%-connected, etc.) cursive program not only falls short in speed, but does not excel in legibility either (and probably falls short in legibility as much as in speed). So why insist on a conventional cursive style at any stage?

/4/ which is faster, manuscript or cursive? - Berninger and Graham observed that work done exclusively in cursive writing was not significantly faster than work done exclusively in manuscript writing. (To measure handwriting speed, the researchers counted how many accurate letters each writer produced per minute.)

If a relentlessly joined and ornamented cursive style - which some people feel must matter so very much - does not even exceed the speed of "printing", what reason exists to teach it?

/5/ which permits better legibility, cursive writing or manuscript writing? - Berninger and Graham also observed that work done exclusively in manuscript writing did not make for easier reading than work done exclusively in cursive writing.

(The researchers evaluated legibility with the Test of Legible Handwriting authored by Larsen and Hammill in 1989.)

To me, findings /1/ - /5/ imply that classroom "either/or" expectations for disparate styles -

"manuscript is manuscript, and cursive is cursive, and never the twain shall meet" -

have counter-productive results, and that instead of imposing a pair of disparate styles in quick succession we should definitely teach a consistent form of handwriting that combines the best elements of these styles.

After all, even when 40% of kids write in a "mixed" way without any instruction or encouragement in doing so, their "mixed" writing has superior results in speed and has at least equal results in legibility.

Some additional Berninger/Graham findings:

/6/ Berninger and Graham observed that the average speed and legibility of children's handwriting rose steadily, grade after grade, from first through ninth grade (complete tables are given in their article) with one striking exception - while children were in third grade, their speed and legibility reverted to first-grade levels (only afterwards, in fourth grade, did the speed and legibility slowly begin to rise again.)

The authors attribute this loss of handwriting competence to the fact that third-grade students in the USA are normally required to change their handwritings - this is typically the year when students are expected to alter their handwriting-style from what they were previously taught (manuscript) and now write in a very different style (cursive).

(To me, finding /6/ implies that classroom expectations for a change of styles are counter-productive, and that instead we should be teaching a single style to prevent this regression.)

general observations relating to teaching/learning of any style

/7/ Berninger and Graham observed that girls in the study typically wrote more fluently than boys, and that this fluency seemed to translate into girls getting better grades for written work than boys -
there also appears some evidence, according to Berninger and Graham, that most girls use left-hemisphere processing for handwriting (mentally coding letters verbally) but most boys use right-hemisphere processing (coding letters spatially) and that the spatial coding slows retrieval (makes it more difficult to remember, on demand, how a letter is to look

/8/ Berninger and Graham observed also that, when handwriting instruction involves what the researchers called "verbal mediation"

(verbalizing specific directions for how to form the letter in connection with tracing/copying/writing),

handwriting-learning and -performance actually deteriorate

(i.e., students who receive "verbal mediation" as part of their handwriting instruction do *less* well than students who receive the same trace/copy/write instruction but with the verbal-mediation component *left out*) -

Berninger and Graham suspect that adding the task of verbal comprehension/memorization/description to the task of mastering/using handwriting, in their words, "uses up limited working memory resources in the beginning writer."

(I'd like to note at this point that many "standard" handwriting-instruction programs in the USA

(and perhaps in other countries too?)

specifically *require* teachers and/or students to use this counter-productive "verbal mediation"-style step-by-step oral description of letters and/or strokes.)

Yet ANOTHER interesting finding of the Berninger/Graham team was this:

/9/

When the researchers compared the effectiveness of various strategies in handwriting-instruction other than hearing/memorizing verbal descriptions

(copying a model-letter,

demonstrating the motor acts involved in forming a letter & asking students to copy these acts,

providing numbered arrows as visual cues for letter-formation -

requiring students to write letters from memory after increasing
time-intervals -

using both numbered arrows *and* writing of letters from memory after
increasing intervals) -

it was the combination of numbered arrows and writing from memory after increasing intervals that produced significantly greater improvement in handwriting, and greater "automaticity" of handwriting behavior

(students did not have to consciously think about how to form each letter every time)

compared with any of the other approaches or with a "no intervention" approach ("control" group)

- the combination of numbered arrows and writing from memory after increasing intervals also produced significantly greater transfer of handwriting-skills into the students' written composition outside of handwriting-instruction copying-tasks.

(What was interesting to me here was that "copy the model", which is probably THE most common and typical strategy of classroom teachers, appeared *not* to actually be the best strategy for teaching/learning of letter-forms.

Numbered arrows (one component of the study's most successful strategy) are of course common, but I know *very* few if any teachers/curricula who use or even *mention* the other half of the most successful strategy (memory after increasing intervals) in learning letter-forms. Try both halves of that most successful strategy (numbered arrows and writing letters from memory after increasing intervals of time) and tell me what you think!)

short resource list (some available materials)

Fairbank, Alfred, A Handwriting Manual and A Book of Scripts.
(out of print: stocks still available from John Neal, Bookseller, Inc., 1-800-369-9598 or e-mail JNealBooks@aol.com)

Getty, Barbara and Dubay, Inga, Write Now: A Complete Self-Teaching Program For Better Handwriting
Portland [OR]: Portland State University Media Resources, 1991 (1-800-547-8887, extension 4891. Other materials are also available from this source)

Jarman, Christopher, Development of Handwriting Skills. Second edition. Melbourne (Australia): Basil Blackwell, 1999 - or e-mail Christopher at quilljar@btinternet.com - or visit his handwriting site to learn more

Lehman, Charles L., Handwriting Models for Schools. (out of print, but stocks still available from John Neal, Bookseller, Inc. 1-800-369-9598 or e-mail JNealBooks@aol.com ). You may also wish to inquire from Charles L. Lehman himself at scribe@hevanet.com ... and you may enjoy visiting his web-site at http://www.hevanet.com/scribe . 

For a much fuller resource list

(now 60 kilobytes!), e-mail me -

make sure that your message's SUBJECT-line contains the words "handwriting resource list"

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Kate Gladstone -

The Handwriting Repairwoman

Kate Gladstone

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325 South Manning Boulevard

Albany, NY 12208 1942 USA

telephone: 1 518 482 6763 

e-mail: handwritingrepair@gmail.com

Many physicians claim that pharmacists can always read any prescription, no matter how difficult, if they try. Yet numerous pharmacist- and physician-oriented journals, web-sites, and blogs display the most strikingly illegible "mystery scripts" chosen from among the thousands of prescriptions seen by the authors/editors or sent in by readers. Sometimes, after displaying one of these difficult puzzles the editor or site-owner provides the correct reading. However, patients deserve the correct medication more than "sometimes."

The prescription puzzle "guessing game" has serious consequences. Click here for the Institute of Safe Medication Practices' (ISMP) 16-July-1997 report of a case in which a physician, a pharmacist and a pharmacy all faced a lawsuit for damages as a result of a death caused by the physician's illegible handwriting - the report includes a graphic of the illegibly lethal prescription. According to the ISMP: "This [death] ... could set a new standard of practice."