Hi there. In this education post, I would like to provide some notes and thoughts on messy writing. This is more from the teaching side and from a marking perspective on messy writing. I do focus on math examples for messy writing but the contents in this post can be applied to other subjects.
Topics
- Education As Transfer Of Information
- Messy Writing Can Be Hard To Interpret
- Messy Writing Cases
- Teachers With Messy Writing & Confusing Lessons
Education As Transfer Of Information
A large part of education is the transfer of information. Information can be transferred in the classroom environment, through books, websites, audio, video and through word of mouth. One of the most traditional ways of communication is handwriting. Handwriting is one way to communicate thoughts, ideas, feelings to others.
Messy Writing Can Be Hard To Interpret
As much as technology is being adopted in the education space, handwriting is still important. What is also important is clean handwriting. Words, numbers, pictures and drawings that are written and drawn neatly helps the reader understand what is being communicated. Messy writing makes it difficult for the reader to know what is being communicated. The reader may have to guess if a number is a 1 or a 7 or if a letter is m or n.
Messy Writing Cases
In this section, I cover some messy writing cases.
Size Of Letters & Numbers
There are cases where people have nice writing but the sizing can be extremely small or large or even inconsistent. The writing is not messy but what is written can be hard to read. Anything that is hard to see or read is annoying for those who are marking tests, assignments and papers.
Small Details In Letters & Numbers
Some messy writing cases may not be that big. It could be in the little details when writing letters and numbers. Sometimes the number one looks like a seven, a five may look like the letter S, the number 8 looks like the letter B and so on.
Online Writing With Mouse/Trackpad
This messy writing case is forgivable. It is not that easy for young students and even adults to be able to write or draw neatly with a computer mouse or a laptop trackpad. The handling of a pen/pencil is much more different than using a computer mouse or a laptop trackpad.
To fix messy writing in this case is to really get better at using the mouse and laptop trackpad. Another solution is to buy a writing pad connected to the computer. This solution is a bit expensive.
Possible Physical Limitations
There is the possibility where the messy writer may not be able to fix their writing. The person could have some sort of physical limitation in their writing hand.
There was a classmate back in high school who hurt his writing hand which was his right hand. The right hand was hurt from injury from hockey I believe. He had a cast on the right hand and had to write with his left hand. His left hand was not a writing hand so he had to learn and practice with using the other hand.
Young Student
Messy writing usually occurs in young students. It does take time and focused practice for students to get comfortable with writing in normal font and in cursive writing.
Teachers With Messy Writing
For those who mark tests and assignments from students messy writing makes things tougher. For the students, messy writing from teachers and educators does make learning more difficult than it should be. Messy writing from teachers makes it hard for students when it comes to note taking, reading and understanding what is going on.
From some teachers messy writing may not be the big issue. There is also the issue of having the topics being all over the place on the chalkboard, whiteboard, projector screen.
