Why do we have different styles of handwriting? It is so individual that you can identify people such as friends and colleagues purely from their handwriting.
• Handwriting is influenced by factors including the style we were first taught, how our minds reacted to this teaching, how we learned from errors, whether we are left or right-handed, the anatomy of our hands, the nature, quality and dexterity of our hand-eye coordination, the effect of our personalities on the conscious and subconscious choices we make about our handwriting as we grow up, plus various cultural influences we absorb over time.
Given these influences it’s more surprising that we manage to use handwriting to communicate at all. I’ve had to type this because my handwriting’s terrible.
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Geoff Convery, Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, UK
• My friend writes on a blackboard using letters 10 times bigger than on paper, yet I can still recognise his handwriting. So it is not just a matter of small muscle control.
Philip Roe