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It seems like those of us who spend most of our day at a computer are slowly losing those handwriting skills. Our elementary school teachers spent years drilling into us. More than anything else, it’s a matter of disuse: many people hardly ever write anything out by hand and, if they do, it’s a quick note meant only to last until the next time they’re at a computer.
But good handwriting is a skill worth honing, especially in a digital age, and for plenty more than writing your aging grandmother — although I’m sure she appreciates legible writing.

Bad Handwriting Kills
In any given year, approximately 7,000 people die because a pharmacist couldn’t read a prescription. And while prescription pads will likely become electronic in the future, there will always be professions that rely on hastily jotted notes. Not all of these jobs will go electronic any time soon. Consider construction sites: not practical places for most electronic devices. But if you wander around a building site before anyone gets around to painting, you’ll see pencil marks on most of the lumber. Measurements, locations and quantities are all written on the wall, and while an illegible note might not kill anyone, there’s a high likelihood it could cost a contractor some money.

Ensure to write legibly whenever you have to write, do not hesitate to subtly point out to the writer whenever you find a note important but illegible.

Handwriting is an integral part for school-going children as it allows them to communicate their thoughts & ideas within a reasonable time, through a readable product. Handwriting is complex activity involving mind & motor coordination. Although skills of handwriting are required for 30% to 60% of an average child’s school day, 10% to 30% of children have handwriting difficulties.
The three identified deficiencies in any handwriting are legibility, performance time, and physical and emotional well-being.
An important question to be answered is, why such high percentage of children have difficulty in writing?
Handwriting difficulty, or Dysgraphia, as defined by Hamstra-Bletz and Blote (1993) is a disturbance or difficulty in the production of written language related to the mechanics of handwriting.
Clinicians say Dysgraphia is a neurological disorder that generally appears when children are first learning to write. But they also firmly believe early treatment can help prevent or reduce many problems. This can be done by training muscles to remember the shapes of letters and numbers through regular guidance & specially designed method of practice.
Legibility and slow writing speed are most commonly manifested problems with Dysgraphia. It is seen that such children require more time to fulfill handwriting assignments in class. Moreover, studies on such children’s handwriting process indicated that they had less mature movements, with performance was in space and time, and they required more in-air time (between letters and words) than typically developing writers.

Two main outcomes used to assess and define poor handwriting are product legibility and performance time. In addition to legibility and timing deficits, it has also been observed that children with Dysgraphia erase more, complain about fatigue or hand pain, and are unwilling to write and do their homework. All of these may be considered to represent a category of physical as well as emotional well-being.

A child who is struggling with handwriting will find it difficult to keep pace with class assignments or to satisfy parents’ expectations. Indeed, handwriting difficulties influence children’s academic achievements for two main reasons:
1. First, the difficulty in mastery of the mechanical aspects of handwriting, which is transcription ability, may
interfere with higher-order processes required for the composition of text and, hence, influence the quality and
quantity of the written product.
2. Second, teachers tend to give higher marks for neatly written papers than for those in which legibility is poor,
affecting the overall grades of the child.

Some children who have difficulty mastering handwriting skills may respond by simply giving up, having developed a
mindset that they cannot write or compose text.

It thus appears that poor ability to write may influence perceptions of the parents, teachers & peers about child’s overall competence as a student.

In the schools, students get greatly affected by information from others and this can influence their sense of self-efficacy & competence. Given that writing plays a major role in this context, the negative cycle of handwriting difficulties and low perceived self-confidence among children with Dysgraphia may be perpetuated in relation to their writing abilities as well as other academic abilities.

Based on our observations we can say when it comes to training the children with Dysgraphia to write legibly, it is important to have patience and should always use only positive sentences. What you need to do is:
1. Analyze his handwriting; identify the flaws in formations of fonts.
2. Do not give vague advises like write neatly, write nicely etc., rather tell him how to write & how to correct the above problems.
3. Pick up one problem at one time. Move to the next only after he has overcome the first problem.

Through this article we do not intend to raise another problem for the parents or teachers, but certainly want to make a point that the teachers & parents should start empathizing with children having the problem of Dysgraphia.

This remark usually comes with an exclamatory expression from the speaker or writer. It always comes with a tint of disbelief.
But, let me tell you there is nothing to disbelief. My experience of over a decade with handwriting I have come to believe that this is merely a MYTH. Handwriting invariably, without fail can be corrected at any age. The only condition applied is that the writer should have steady hands.
This means that 6 to 60 every age is correct, if you decide to repair you handwriting & want to make it readable for anybody & every body.
What it requires is:
1. Identification of the technical flaws in your handwriting by an expert.
2. Following the process as advised by the expert.
3. Deciding consciously not to repeat the mistakes of the past.
For school going children it is important because more than 30% of the school hour is consumed in writing text. It is the basic process, by which a student learns a language, remembers the spellings, adds to his vocabulary & can write his exams.
For a grownup adult, his handwriting is an important part of his personality; it avoids embarrassments that can follow if you have to write a note.
Believe me, if you have a problem in your handwriting, and you want to overcome it, it is the first step that you have taken towards it. Rest, meet an expert & just follow as he says.

A Student’s prime concern is legibility with speed, whenever he thinks of handwriting. Despite numerous technical advancements and virtual writing aids, handwriting continues to remain the basic mode of expression for students of any age. 80% of students have gone through torturous moments in their classrooms for their not so legible handwriting ,which in many cases have gone to the extent of affecting not only their educational career but also their personality.

It is no more a point to be worried because a segment of people who have understood the problem of the students have been doing research & training work.

There recent research has proved that handwriting can be repaired at any age. The only need is a willingness and a positive frame of mind.
A few tips to correct the most common “reasons” affecting the legibility of a handwriting:

1. Keep uniform space between letters and words.
2. Maintain Uniform Slant
3. Let the ascenders and descenders not overlap on the letters above and below.
4. Maintain uniformity in the font size.
5. Do not write with your elbow’s hanging off the table.

Do not wait. Refer web world for more information.

Communication initiated in the ancient days only in the verbal form. Adaption of cultural rituals and generations passing stories from one to another proved to be major contributors to not only development of language but also keeping intact the history of the mankind. Written communication came into existence much later. In the initial days it was mainly in form of pictorial inscriptions to standard pictorial presentations. Mohan-jo-daro & Harrapan civilization adapted the pictorial form at its best in their daily use through Seals and Mudras.
If we are to define writing we can say, writing is a form of simple coded symbols which are used to interact with each other through repeated use, generally known as “language”. Every developing tribe & later different group of inhabitants occupying different parts of the world developed their own symbols for communication. These over a period of the evolution of the mankind took shape of the simpler symbols or alphabets as we call them. Before the invention of writing instruments these were recorded in the form of prehistoric inscriptions on walls & stones.
Available records suggest three major cultural developments in writings namely Sumerian-cuneiform, Egyptian- hieroglyphs, Chinese-kanji.
Pictorial representation later became ideographs evolving themselves beyond the original drawings, representing ideas. The ideographs were written from top to bottom, left to right, or right to left.
Phonetics was the combination of various shorter ideographs.

Legibility is the major concern when we talk of handwriting. The simplest definition of handwriting could be, “I write & you read”.
If this the fact let us look at few easy tips for enhancing the legibility of a handwriting:
1. Space between words- Keep them uniform.
2. Space between letters – Make sure every alphabet has sufficient space for itself ;let them not overlap, if not written with adequate space c & l could easily be mistaken for a d.
3. Size of the fonts- a uniformity is evident, lets you have writing that is unpleasant to look at. A smaller c could get mistaken for an i.
4. Upper & lower zone of alphabets – small or too large badly affects the legibility of a handwriting. The lower zone of g, y f, q, or the upper zone of f, p, b if not correct in size can overlap with sentences above or below them, affecting the legibility of a writing.
5. Slant – a slant generally adds beauty to a writing, but only if they are not beyond 10 degrees to right or straight(90 degree), avoid a left slant.

Enjoy writing

The principle that underlies handwriting analysis is simply that everyone writes in a unique way. When we first learn to write, we learn a particular method to form letters. So everyone who learns the same method starts out with very similar handwriting. This establishes the foundation for our method of writing. As time goes on, though, we develop unique individual writing habits or characteristics that differentiate our writing from everyone else’s. Writing is, after all, a complex task that requires fine motor skills and practice in the beginning. Once we learn to write, however, it’s pretty much an automatic action we take for granted.
Several people may share a few individual handwriting characteristics with each other, but many handwriting analysts would say it’s impossible for people to share 20 or 30 of those characteristics. Therefore, it is a common rule in handwriting analysis that no two people share exactly the same handwriting.
Still, one thing that makes handwriting analysis less of an exact science than say, DNA evidence, is that it’s open to interpretation and circumstances.
Reasons for why different people have different handwriting:
1.- The structure of the upper limbs of humans (size of hands, grip, etc), is widely different from one another, and in consequence, the movements of the muscles, is “imprinted ” in the cerebral cortex, from a very early age (3-4 years)
The structure differences of fingers and hands have a wide range of variation ,this difference, brings also differences in the width and shape of the written letters by logic….

2.- The cerebral cortex (motor area), differs in impulses for drawing (the writing is a form of creating or drawing symbols) from one individual to the other…..apart from other structures that regulate fine movements such as the thalamus and cerebellum, that act as ” regulators” of the fine movements of any human being..
So, we can conclude by aforementioned reasons, that no two people can have similar handwriting.

Speed writing for Effective Minute Taking
The only effective speed writing is that which boosts your grades.
You don’t get grades for taking pretty notes or taking lots of notes. You get better grades by answering questions better.
Many students get a false feeling of exam security through writing tomes of notes. But those notes have to stay outside when you sit your exam.
To be effective, writing has to be done quickly to minimize lecture distraction; effective writing must summarize; and effective notes have to be reviewed or they are useless. Otherwise you are better off drawing cartoons in class and reading your textbook at home.
The reason effective written notes are better than taped lectures is that they summarize an hour of exposition into ten minutes of text. Effective speed writing is achieved by digesting and compressing information.
To do really effective speed writing in class you have to keep asking “what did s/he just say- that’s important” and “how is that related to what I just wrote.”

Today’s workplace is dynamic, competitive and fast-paced. In order to differentiate yourself from thousands of other office professionals, you need to equip yourself with skills that are in demand. Speed writing is an invaluable tool for any office professional wanting to take notes quickly and accurately.
Speed writing is based on a few basic rules which are extremely easy to remember and implement. Unlike other shorthand a method involving memorizing 20 or 30 rules. Speed writing is extremely easy to master and will change the way you take notes forever!
Technical job proficiency is a prerequisite to corporate and career success. Internationally, Speed writing has become the single most sought-after skill that any administrative professional can possess. By mastering this you stand on the brink of new opportunities and success in your career. Learn how to write phrases and terms as quickly as you can hear them. Increase your writing speed with legibility and also increase confidence.

No one is predicting, or even recommending, a return to the days when children obsessively practiced Writing & their faces expressing a sublime satisfaction. Beauty seems to be less important than fluidity and speed. It has been proved beyond doubt that from kindergarten through fourth grade, kids think and write at the same time. (Only later is mental composition divorced from the physical process of handwriting.) If they have to struggle to remember how to make their letters, their ability to express themselves will suffer. The motions have to be automatic, both for expressive writing and for another skill that students will need later in life, note-taking. Measures of speed among elementary-school students are good predictors of the quality and quantity of their writing in middle school.
Predictions of handwriting’s losing importance didn’t begin with the computer; they date back to the introduction of the Remington typewriter in 1873. But for at least a generation, penmanship has seemed a quaint and, well … schoolmarmish subject to be emphasizing. Now, backed by new research, educators are trying to wedge it back into the curriculum. After all, no one has suggested that the invention of the calculator means we don’t have to teach kids how to add, and spelling is still a prized skill in the era of spell check. If we stop teaching penmanship, it will not only hasten the dreaded day,the bigger danger is, they’ll be composed even more poorly than they already are.