ISTM that women’s tend to be neater. There are many many exceptions, of course, and my father’s handwriting is much much nicer than my mother’s, for example. But overall, my impression is that for the most part, women’s are neater. And this seems to also be the impression of everyone else I’ve ever discussed it with. Question is why, and I see three possibilities.
[ul]
[li]It’s not actually true, and is a mistake by me and everyone else (which would raise the question as to why people make this mistake).[/li][li]Women are naturally more suited for writing neatly. (Which would raise the question of how? ISTM that handwriting is more mental than physiological, because people who roughly write things in sand and such with other body parts will tend to keep the same shape as their handwriting.)[/li][li]Women pay more attention to neatness in handwriting - either they did as kids and good handwriting persisted, or they still do as adults.[/li][/ul]
I think it’s a mixture of all these things. (Maybe I’m just generally prejudiced against single bullet theories.)
There is evidence that females tend toward greater fine motor skill than males, yes. But I’ve seen enough women with crude handwriting that that can’t be the whole story, and also we’re probably talking about the differences between the means of two groups being swamped by the variation within the two groups.
As for the third point … based on my own experience and observation, there’s a certain amount of social conditioning: beyond a certain age, a boy who spends a great deal of time practising his penmanship is going to get about the same treatment as a boy who loves his home economics class.
Here’s an interesting data point: My mom has two different handwritings. She writes one way when it’s supposed to look neat, for someone else to read, and another way for things only she will have to read. The funny thing is, her messy handwriting looks exactly like mine (the only handwriting I have). Often, when I’m home visiting, I’ll walk past her calendar and see something written, and wonder to myself when I wrote that.
My 77-yr old mother, and her mother (now deceased) and my 87-yr old father, all have superb, neat handwriting. They grew up in Europe, where such things were taught.
BTW, my mother and GM have a different style, one that is taught only in Germany.
There is some raw talent involved in beautiful forms of handwriting like calligraphy but it is just motivation and intention for most people. Both my ex-wife and daughter are talented artists and their handwriting isn’t especially good unless they want it to be for something formal. I can write in a very neat cursive or print style if I want to but I hardly ever do. I have a style of writing and note-taking that is so unusual that only I can read it and that comes in handy a lot especially at work but also at home. Most adults just get accustomed to their own style and don’t really care about how pretty things look to others. The computer age has made this a lot worse.
I agree with this. My own handwriting has gotten worse since I began primarily typing things.
I think it’s because I can type a lot faster than I can write neatly, and when I write something I automatically try to write as fast as I type things, which is not a recipe for neatness.
I’m a male with good handwriting. It is often complimented and mistaken for a female’s. While there’s a good bit of 1 and 2 from the OP, from discussions I’ve had with people (men and women) with bad handwriting, they invariably admit they just don’t care.
I am 40, female and left handed. My handwriting has gone in cycles through my life, due to mainly external influences. ( I am from Canada, by the way)
In grade school girls were encouraged to print and then write, not just neatly but “prettily”.They boys just had to do enough to be legible. In Grade 1 my teacher humiliated me infront of the class because a “W” was particularly sprawling. “Mona, did you have spaghetti for Lunch. It looks like you dropped a noodle on your page instead of a W.” (Okay, it doesn’t sound so bad now, but try hearing that at age 6)
When I was 10, I had a teacher drop my grade from a D to an E to an F in penmanship, effectively lowering my “Language Arts” grade by an entire letter score and ruining my chances for the Honour Roll. (Even though I was straight A’s and reading at a high school senior reading level at that time) This was a male teacher.
By Grade 9, when I was 15 I had a teacher twit me about my sloppy handwriting. (He couldnt believe I was in Grade 10 English and his Grade 9 History. I told him I had accelerated in English, and he refused to believe I could be advanced in English when my handwriting was so poor. He actually went and pulled my school records because this bothered him so much. In retrospect, he started hasseling me more after that, because he knew “my potential”
By Grade 13, I was typing everything. (On a Smith-Corona wordprocessor! So there!) And no one said a thing about my handwriting. Or I printed.
In university I started typing up my notes after class. Then in my late 20’s I went to nursing school, had a lot more labs assignents to do that couldn’t be typed, so my handwriting as a result of practice became much neater and more legible. For years I had to chart by hand and my writing became quite neat. Even my mother commented that my writing was tidier than she had seen from me …well forever.
Now we use paperless charting at work and I fear my handwriting is doomed. MY boyfriend will get me to print stuff he needs hand printed and tidy, because he says “girls are neater than boys” It makes me want to hit him.
While I’ve noticed that it is neater, I’ve also noticed that female handwriting is often loopier and more curved and “flowery”, while male handwriting, even when neat, seems more straight laced and economical. I know I write like a legible version of a first grader.