Handwriting

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Anybody who goes to a doctor regularly can relate with this one.

 

 

Do you think that more intelligent people tend to have worse handwriting? I swear, there has to be an illegibility class at most medical schools...

[RyanJ]

Anybody who goes to a doctor regularly can relate with this one.

 

 

Do you think that more intelligent people tend to have worse handwriting? I swear, there has to be an illegibility class at most medical schools...

 

I've been wondering the same thing, there does seem to be a correlation between increasing intelligence and decreasing penmanship. I wonder if this is actually the case.

[timo]

I don´t think so. But from own experience: In the medical field you have to write and sign a lot of papers, and then some more. My signature has significantly changed even within one year of working in that field.

 

You might extend it to any higher educated ppl (not necessarily more intelligent ppl): The more you advance in school or university, the more often you have to write more information in shorter time. That can cause your handwriting to adopt to it becoming more efficient (on the writing side, not necessarily on the reading one).

 

Just and idea of mine, though.

 

EDIT: Oh, and "I am sooo smart" is a poor excuse for a bad handwriting

[insane_alien]

could be. mine is crap. its often been described as "a bunch of drunken chicken scratchings" and thats by the people who could decipher it.

[RyanJ]

could be. mine is crap. its often been described as "a bunch of drunken chicken scratchings" and thats by the people who could decipher it.

 

I second that! Mine is so bad I have to use a computer for exam work otherwise its completely illegible.

[YT2095]

mine unless done Very slow and deliberate is utterly unreadable, no seriously it is!

I can read it ok though, it`s just other poor sods that don`t stand a chance.

my IQ is quite reasonable, but nothing remarkable.

 

also you Must factor in that many Docs (of a medical type) will write in Latin also!

I did know the reason but have long since forgotten.

[RyanJ]

also you Must factor in that many Docs (of a medical type) will write in Latin also!

I did know the reason but have long since forgotten.

 

 

Maybe because lots of the words used in medicine are Latin in origin anyway?

[blike]

Do you think that more intelligent people tend to have worse handwriting? I swear, there has to be an illegibility class at most medical schools...

Haha, actually they're biting our heads off in school these days telling us to write legibly. At one hospital I visited this summer they had a huge posterboard size blowup of a doctor's handwritten note that literally looked like scribbles and scratches. It said, "Can you read this? If you can't, neither can the nurses."

 

In my opinion its better to take an extra 5 seconds to write it out clearly than to get a call at 2am because someone can't read your handwriting and needs clarification.

[YT2095]

Pharmacologists/Chemists seem to be able to read it ok though?

 

only thing is, you never get to see their writing often as all the labels for your medicines are computer printed, it would be cool to see if theirs were just as "Bad"

[insane_alien]

YT, i'm guessing worse based on all the old bottles of chems scattered about my uni.

[ecoli]

I'm not sure about this, and I certainly haven't seen any studies indicating this to be so.

 

However, I have noticed a change from penmanship to typing classes in middle schools. We are definately changing our priorities based on technological advances.

[Mokele]

I've actually switched to printing; I no longer use cursive at all. It's just as fast, and much more legible, especially since my cursive is atrocious.

 

Mokele

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I've done the same.

[ecoli]

I've actually switched to printing; I no longer use cursive at all. It's just as fast, and much more legible, especially since my cursive is atrocious.

 

Mokele

 

I don't think I know anyone who writes in cursive. The last one was probably my seventh grade english teacher.

[ydoaPs]

In high school, I was the only person I(and my Etymology teacher; she pointed it out) knew that wrote in cursive. During my second semester of my senior year, I started writing in a print that is what most people consider fancy. I just kind of cursive-ized print. In the military, we have to use block letters for the watch logs. My block writing sucks, but it is very legible. It just isn't pretty.

[insane_alien]

i went through a phase where i only wrote in block. my english teacher tried to kill me every time i handed in an essay completely in block capitals. which isn't so different when i wrote normally, just a different reason.

[GutZ]

I don´t think so. But from own experience: In the medical field you have to write and sign a lot of papers, and then some more. My signature has significantly changed even within one year of working in that field.

 

You might extend it to any higher educated ppl (not necessarily more intelligent ppl): The more you advance in school or university, the more often you have to write more information in shorter time. That can cause your handwriting to adopt to it becoming more efficient (on the writing side, not necessarily on the reading one).

 

Just and idea of mine, though.

 

EDIT: Oh, and "I am sooo smart" is a poor excuse for a bad handwriting

 

I always thought the same, In college my writting got so bad that I couldn't even read it myself, I couldn't imagine how bad it got for people who take note for 10 years on advanced topics.

[Ndi]

My handwriting started to degrade with speed. Especially with my second university the teachers no longer took any pauses from fluent speech, even more, some kept speeding up when less than 10% of us were behind.

 

I remember it degrading to a recognizable-scribble technique in which I only wrote beginning and end of words and used the length and special letters (T, L, etc) to re-guess the word. It took 3 times as long to read than to write but I was down to 6 minutes per page for sustained periods (hours). Still, my university courses stack is significantly thinner that my mother's (doctor (specialist)) so I always assumed her bad handwriting was because that.

 

I also noticed she has very distinct signs for certain letters, those that have long tails, such as g and t, which are almost from a fancy font. I assume she uses that for orientation too. I can read her handwriting, even if very ugly because I guess the words. OTOH it might simply be genetic.

 

Oh and I switched to capitals for new/unrecognizable/unguessable words. Capitals slow me down though.

 

As a side note, I type slightly faster, tried to take notes on a computer and got banned from doing so because of the incessant keyboard rattling.

[EvoN1020v]

I would just assume that intelligent people have messy writing because most of them have poor communication skills.

[the tree]

My theory is that people who write more, have worse handwriting. Doctors have to take tons of notes and most of it is for their own reference, as with academic types who spend a lot of time taking lecture notes.

[ParanoiA]

I've actually switched to printing; I no longer use cursive at all. It's just as fast, and much more legible, especially since my cursive is atrocious.

 

Mokele

 

I thought I was the only one that did that. In fact, I've been somewhat embarrassed about it because I've almost forgotten how to write in longhand. When I try, it looks soooo horrible, and I have to stop and think about how to write some of the letters. I've damn near untrained myself in cursive at this point.

[Super Genius]

I read somwhere that most geniuses have bad handwriting as they think the beaty of handwriting is completely irrelevant and frivolous...but just because you have nice handwriting doesn't mean you are unintelligent, of course

[bascule]

A possible suggestion I heard regarding doctors and poor handwriting is this:

 

Doctors must study for a long time and take extensive notes. This process makes them optimize their writing for speed, rather than legibility.

 

I print everything in highly legible block letters, despite hardly ever writing anything and overwhelmingly choosing to type whenever I can. People often give me compliments on the quality of my handwriting.

 

And I would consider myself to be smart, so...

[Bluenoise]

I've actually switched to printing; I no longer use cursive at all. It's just as fast, and much more legible, especially since my cursive is atrocious.

 

Mokele

 

Same here. They forced use to learn it in early school. Proclaimed it as vastly superior to printing. Even wouldn't except assingments that weren't in cursive.

 

Eventually you realise it's virtually impossible for other poeple to read, especially quickly.

 

Right now I can barley write cursive maybe a word every 10 seconds.

 

I think most people develope their own writing style. Mines printing with ~50% connected letters. I just do what comes naturally.

[tartanpaint]

My hand writing is alright, that is it's legible and I'm reasonably intelligent but there is a girl in my school who is VERY intelligent and her handwriting is pretty neat. It might be a gender thing though. Most of the girls I know have neat writing and the boys atrocious writing.