Writing difficulties

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My handwriting is with out a doubt nasty to look at, let alone read. One problem I have when I write, especially if I'm trying to take notes is that when I write indvidual words, I'll often skip over letters as I spell out the word and I'll have to go back and fill them in, smuding up the word I had nicely spaced out on my piece of paper.

Example....

I might try to spell out the word "obstacle" and will write out "obstcle". I'll then have to cross out that word, or insert the A between the T and C. Strangely, I only do this with vowels.

I do this quite often and it makes for some messy looking papers. Is this an aspie thing, or is this just me?

I don't know if it's an aspie thing, but I do exactly the same thing all the time.

My hand writing is horrid to read, though my friends tell me it is "cool looking." I also skip letters often when I am writing, and go back to fill them in, just like you.

Another odd thing I do is add "e"s to the end of words. Like instead of writing "word" I'll start to write "worde."

When I am having trouble focusing, or just trying to write too fast, sometimes my hand feels like it's slipping all over the page, too, and I can't even make coherant looking letters.

I also hold my pencil incorrectly, no one said anything to me until Jr. High, and by then it was pretty much too late to fix it. So my hand gets cramped kind of easily.

I like typing much better .

I've also always had bad handwriting, and I grip the pen like an eagle's claw.... A lot of teachers tried to get me to hold the pen "properly" but it never ever felt natural to do it that way, and I always ended up going back to the "claw". I always struggled to understand the importance that was placed on handwriting "prettiness" at primary school - as long as its readable (as mine always has been) then what's the big deal?

I have to admit that my writing looks horrible. Usually it's not becuase it is spelled wrong, but becuase it is simply illegible.

I, too, prefer typing.

I have problems with writing too. Not forgetting letters but whole words.
Often when writing or typing a sentence, I suddenly jump halfway the sentence to the next one. And when I see that has happened I can't remember anymore what I wanted to write as the first sentence.

Besides my chickenscratch handwriting, I also seem to mess up letters. I sometimes write the wrong letter, especially by writing a capital 'R' instead of a 'P' by mistake. I also leave out 'i's all the time. Weird.

I was a headache for my teachers.

I am lefthanded. They tried to make me right handed. didn't work.
I don't hold my pen right. They tried to make me hold it right. Didn't work. I sucked my pointer finger so much it is bent out of shape, even by the time I started school. So I use the next finger ( my middle finger) and my thumb to hold the pen and my pointer finger around the pen to stabilize it.
I would write completey backwards. From the right hand side of the right hand page in the back of the book, to the left of the page. All the letters were backward too.
I can still write backwards quite easily. I can sign my name too.
I actually have some resentment for what I percieved as a waste of everyones energy, trying to make me someone I'm not.

I have moments when I will write either better or worse. Sometimes it's very hard to write. I might start using this as a gauge to when I'm close to shutdown maybe. I am a very slow writer. I was always very poor at thsose times in English class when we were timed on how fast we wrote. And we had to make it all up off the top of our heads too!!

I write in capitals when I want others to read it. I write in some scawl when its only me that needs to read it.

I just wanted to ad that I aslo add e's onto words. I miss out vowels. I put the end of a word on the begining of the next word. I write the completely wrong word. words are wierd to me, but make more sense than numbers. I cannot remember a sequence of more than 2 numbers. Which is a pain because I have recently realized I am fascinated by sacred geometry, but its full of dam numbers. lmao

ElfMan

My writing can be scrawly and neatish - but never as neat as I want it to be.

I sometimes forget words, and often forget to dot the "i"'s and cross the "t"'s and "F"'s.

My handwriting is in script style, and is scrawled really fast so that might contribute to me forgetting to do these things.. I will write a whole word before I cross the "t"'s because it's all joined together.

Typing i'm terrible at. My co-ordination sucks. I'll press the space bar at the wrong time, and push the letters in the wrong order.

I force myself to write as neat as I possibly can and I obviously have succeeded there because I have had several people comment on how nice my handwriting is. The only reason I write well is because something got to me that I had sloppier hand writing then most people. When I don't use force I write pretty poorly. I have no distinctive style when not using force. It is always changing.

I have fairly nice looking handwriting, but I still experience the same errors you all encounter.

I will Make Rs instead of Ps sometimes, and I also will write "the the" or no "the" at all. Sometimes I'll skip letters, but that doesn't happen that often. One thing I have noticed though is that I don't write particulary fast.

My handwriting is also small and almost perfectly level on the line. Some times it can look as fine as book print.

I tend to change styles of handwriting randomly in a single paper. Thus, I can mimic several fonts and handwritings of fellow people.

I do the same thing with skipping over letters in words. Occasionally, I'll skip a word in a sentence, but I dare say that's just a thing everybody does every once and a while. However, the frequent skipping of letters could very well be yet another symptom of AS.

Yes, I used to to that all through school. I used to randomly mimic people with perfect, neat writing, curly writing and wide writing. It would change from those back to my own handwriting then maybe to something else on a single page.

Last edited by magic on 12 Mar 2005, 12:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I actually have pretty clear handwriting for someone who has gross-motor/fine-motor difficulties. This is the result of everybody, literally everybody, from my speech therapist to my occupational therapist, giving me writing practices to do. This was when I was about 8 or 9 years old. Cursive is actually easier for me than printing.

I'm also a quite good typist... 66 words per minute.

I remember at primary school abeed about 8 or 9 being given work to to.

it baisically was to "write" out a long series of curves shapes, sort of like a continual "S" or "8".

I vividly recall spending ages getting it right.

but no one had explained that it was meant to "train" my hand to make the shape easily.

so I was twisting my hand and moving very slowly just trying to copy the shapes, and never got the "flowing" movement that was, I now realise, the whole point.

My handwriting is so bad I often have trouble reading it myself, so i tend to write in capital letters. even then i have developed some oddities.

like writing a capital T as a upside doen "L" so it is all one movement without taking the pen from the paper.

I've always had writing problems. It is difficult for me to hold a pen properly. The hand is supposed to be relaxed, yet I hold the device in a death grip! If my hand is relaxed while holding a pen, it shakes and the writing is even worse.

The longer I write, the worse the cramp becomes. Eventually, it becomes almost unreadable. So when I write, I write a couple sentences at a time, then rest a while. I have forgotten how to write in cursive and haven't written that way since I was a child.

That being said, I did make a good showing while writing poetry to a girl in calligraphy. I was getting quite good at it, probably because I would write one letter at a time, very carefully.

Another writing related problem I've had is a difficulty taking notes. In the beginning, I may print some legible and usable information. But since I can't write fast, I begin to abbreviate. Eventually, I begin using some kind of code I make up on the spot.

Later when I look at my notes I can't read them. And the code I thought I would remember? Just gibberish now...