Do you have poor penmanship/handwriting?

Post Reply New Topic

I have found that my handwriting never really "grew up" it reached its peak around age 10 when I learnt to join it up, but hasn't really developed beyond that. If anything it has sort of gone backwards as I have stopped joining all my letters.

Compared to everyone else around me I can't help but feel that it looks very childish in comparison.

Diagnosed with dysgraphia 30 years before aspergers.

I have a few oddities like I tend to write in an upwards sloping angle and some of my letters are odd but I've alway enjoyed writing

People love my handwriting. They always assume I'm a graphic designer or an artist. Which I'm not, by the way, I've got the creative imagination of a petrol pump. They tend to describe my style as italic; whatever it is, I've frankly no idea how they read it, because my Us, Vs, Rs, Ms and Ns all look identical, just up-and-down strokes. But as long as I'm using lined paper to keep it level (I'm completely unable to write straight on unlined paper), it looks attractive even if it's not easy to read.

I decided I was going to have nice handwriting when I was about 10. I'd moved from one primary school, where we had to do lower case printing, to another, where the children had already learned to do joined-up writing. So I was never taught. But I decided I was going to teach myself, and the style I chose initially was my Dad's, which I loved.

Over the next 10 years, my handwriting style changed constantly as I experimented with different styles. If my parents had kept my schoolbooks, I know I wouldn't recognise some of the handwriting as mine at all. I would write certain letters one way, then see them written another, more attractive way, and decide to adopt that style myself. It was as if I built up a handwriting 'personality' by stealing the nice bits of lots of other people's. It's more stable now (I'm on my 50s), but if I see things I wrote, say, 10 years ago, I can still see differences; the style has continued to evolve. I don't think I'll ever have a permanent style.

I voted Yes in this poll, though. Although I have legible handwriting, I can't actually write for more than about a minute at a time. I grip the pen excessively and press down too hard on the paper. I can write a message for someone at work on a Post-It note, and still read it four or five notes further down the stack from the impressions I made on the paper. I failed at school because I could only take notes in the first 10 minutes of the class; I'd write for a minute or so, get cramp, rest for a minute, and then write for another minute. I could go through this cycle a few times, then I'd get a cramp in my hand that just wouldn't release, so I'd have to stop altogether.

Nowadays, I can chair a meeting very effectively, but ask me to minute it and I'm still stuck after 10 minutes. If my manager comes to me with a list of things to do, I – like many AS people – have to write it down in order to remember it. But I'm forever having to ask him to slow down or stop for a moment. I've never admitted to people at work that, although I'm the person to whom everyone sends their drafts for grammar and spelling checks, and for me to rewrite poor sentences, I can't actually write very well at all.

It's been explained to me that it's down to poor fine motor control and lack of awareness of body boundaries. Many people with autism can't tell where their fingers end and the pen starts, which makes control difficult. For someone with these difficulties, gripping a pen and manipulating it to make very precise marks on a piece of paper is incredibly hard work, and pressing down too hard on the paper (which people apparently do to help control the movement of the pen) makes it even more difficult. So this is why I get cramp. If I didn't have nice handwriting I'd probably be able to write for a bit longer, as it wouldn't need so much precision – but it's unlikely that anyone with the level of difficulty I have would ever be able to write legibly for very long. I guess others who have trouble with handwriting have exactly the same issues, it's just that they didn't have the vanity I had as a child about my writing!

Yes I do, I have to try really hard to have half decent penmanship. I remember when I was in elementary school we had to earn pen licenses to be able to write with pens from grades 4-5. I wasn't ever able to earn one. In grades 4-6 we had to write with erasable pen. I always type everything now.

[b][i]Yes, most of us Aspies have extremely poor handwriting: for a combination of reasons — involving everything from motor-control problems to motor-planning problems to certain deep-seated illogics in the ways that handwriting is customarily taught (e.g., the print-then-cursive chasm: "cursive" in the USA usually refers to a loop-ridden style whose odd letter-shapes & inflexible ground-rule of always-join-EVERY-letter-even-wherever-that's-far-slower-than-a-pen-lift appear calculated to make handwriting as senseless, illogical, and torturous as possible) 
        As far as I can discover: among the very few Aspies who attain a competent handwriting, at least 98% of the ones I have met have done it by chancing on (or by having been originally taught) the Italic form of handwriting, which escapes such woes of illogic and poor design. I am — as far as I can find — the only Aspie who became a handwriting instructor/remediator, and Italic is what I recommend & teach: see my site at http://www.HandwritingThatWorks.com (To learn about another Aspie who mended his own handwriting by teaching himself Italic, visit http://www.autisable.com/724554820/mature-autism---handwriting--motor-skills/ )

Yup, I am just awful. Can't do cursive unless someone stands over me with a whip. My printing looks childish, and I can't stay on the line, just roller coaster up and down. And yet, I am a really good artist and painter and potter and jeweler and knitter. So it isn't a manual dexterity thing. I also am pretty thoroughly ambidextrous, but I can't write well with either hand.

My handwriting is like a typewriter. I even slash my zeros and cross my sevens.

I used to practice writing very small. And by very small is I once use a .3 lead pencil to fill out my homework. The teacher gave it back to me and told me to do it again bigger. So I doubled the size. The teacher gave it back to me and told me to do it again bigger. So I double the size. The teacher gave it back to me and told me to go see the principle. I guess i deserved it for being a smart ass.

Two reasons for my good handwriting could be my intrest in PNP RPGs I used to make and fill out my own character sheets more then a few. The other reason would be Navy boot camp where they teach you to write legibly so you can fill out daily logs

Mine is poor now because I am so used to typing so my hand has gotten lazy to write so it's messy and y hand gets tired easily from too much writing. I only write when I sign my name or make a grocery list or write a check or have to fill something out.

My writing was better but then my hands got used to typing after year of being out of school. I hate cursive writing. It's supposed to make you write faster but it doesn't for me or else it's too unreadable if I write too fast. But I do it for signature anyway. Plus I can't even read it from others so i wish they all print. I can't even read my own IEP records because it's all in cursive. I am going to be telling my son's teachers to print me notes or else how am I supposed to do my job as a parent if they write in cursive. At least make it readable. They can just type on the computer if they have to and then print it or send me an email.

Growing up mine was pretty atrocious. I never got my pen licence in primary school which was embarrassing. I had a left handed friend who's hand writing was like a flowing Elvish script or something so he inspired me to work on mine and now I've been told by some people it's kind of nice.

Yes, I've always had sloppy handwriting. I prefer to print, and that can sometimes be hard to read.

My handwriting his horrible, I was also the victim of right hand forced learning (im a lefty for everything else, including playing a guitar), but I write right handed.

My hand writing is fine now, actually I think it's pretty neat, but I had difficulties with it throughout all of elementary school and most of middle school that caused me a lot of grief. Having awful teachers didn't help, I actually ended up switching schools in 5th grade because the teacher would make me stay in for lunch time detention on a near daily basis to rewrite my homework and classwork because it was so sloppy. As if I was writing sloppy deliberately and punishing me would make it better Needless to say writing the work over and over didn't make me any neater, just made my arm tired so I ended up writing sloppier.

My hand writing is pretty atrocious. I print if someone else needs to read it. Even I have trouble reading my cursive script. It also took a very long time for me to learn to write. Apparently my parents wondered if I would ever master it.