Hand writing! Hand written! Writing and beyond! the handwriting of doctors was no less legible than that of non-doctors.

Handwriting

Handwriting is a person's particular & individual style of writing with pen or pencil, which contrasts with "Hand" which is an impersonal and formalized writing style in several historical varieties.  Hand writing of an individual is not just an impression of letters on paper but is also an impression of his/her thoughts and attitude.

Every literate human has his own manner of writing. There are many peculiarities in a handwritten text such as specific shape of letters (their roundness or sharpness), regular or irregular spacing between letters, slope of the letters, rhythmic repetition of the elements or arrhythmia, the pressure to the paper, the average size of letters and many others.

Handwriting of every individual is relatively stable, i.e. the style of writing changes very slowly with age. Another important fact is that all people have different handwriting. Even identical twins have differences. Therefore, the most common type of questioned document examination involves handwriting wherein the examiner tries to address concerns about potential authorship by analyzing his/her handwriting. Hence, it is worth cultivating a good handwriting.

Defining good or bad hand writing is not a tough nut to crack. Good hand writing is simply one which is legible and beautiful too. Good hand writing might have equal gap between all the letters, all the letters of almost same size and same degree of tilt etc. On the contrary Handwriting is considered bad if it prevents other people from being able to read the copy. Bad handwriting can be a symptom of disease for example, dopamine-responsive dystopia. Some people think that many doctors have bad handwriting.

According to "Time", doctors' sloppy handwriting kills more than 7,000 people annually. However, D. Berwick and D. Winickoff showed that "the handwriting of doctors was no less legible than that of non-doctors" and that "significantly lower legibility than average was associated with being an executive and being male". Many famous people (e.g. Elliot) had poor handwriting because they wrote a lot. On the other side, some great people (e.g. Gandhi) had very clear handwriting. Clearly, good handwriting and bad handwriting can be certainly defined but it does not hamper anybody’s personality or their possessions.

Hand writing which once used to be an eminent way of expression on papers has become a dying art. In today’s scenario where kids start using keyboards as soon as they begin with school handwriting has gone in tandem. But, several studies suggest that writing things out by hand might be a critical way we train our brains.

Writing by hand is different from typing because it requires using strokes to create a letter, rather than just selecting the whole letter by touching a key, says Virginia Berninger, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington. These finger movements activate large regions of the brain involved in thinking, memory, and language. Handwriting helps children learn letters and shapes, and hence it improves their composition of ideas, and may also boost fine-motor skills development.

A study by Berninger found that in grades two, four, and six, children wrote more words, faster, and expressed more ideas when writing essays by hand than when typing on a keyboard. A separate study by researchers at Indiana University found that children who practiced printing by hand had more active brains than kids who simply looked at letters.
It’s not just children who benefit from writing things out by hand, says a study in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. Adults learning a new language remember its characters better if they write them out by hand than if they produce them with a keyboard.

It is very clear that how much ever advanced we may become but one thing that is certain is that Hand writing cannot be replaced by any other technology. It is indeed one of the best ways to express thoughts in a smooth and subtle way.