Can changing your handwriting improve your grades?

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Olivia Rowett

Can changing your handwriting improve your grades?

We all know the impact of pre-perceptions and labels on grading in education, but what if our handwriting can cause these pre-perceptions in the first place? Would that mean that we can improve our grades by improving our handwriting?

Many psychologists say yes. For example, Klein and Taub (2005) gave fifty-three teachers a number of writing compositions that had been awarded 80% by impartial experts. They found that handwriting legibility (among other factors, including use of aesthetic devices such as underlining) was a significant and unfair predictor of the resulting grade given by the teachers. Their research suggests that grading bias can be reduced if students follow these guidelines:

• Do not use ambiguous lettering (e.g. ensure your lowercase Q has a tail)

• Use even and consistent spacing

• Write in black pen only

• Do not use eccentric aesthetic devices (e.g. underlining, highlighting)

• Do not capitalise words incorrectly or use block-capitalisation for emphasis

  
  

There are two main reasons why these factors cause legibility bias. Firstly, we can attribute this to the obvious influence; readability. It would make sense that handwriting that is easier to make out and read will be graded better. However, there is also an underlying psychological bias involved. When examiners see poor handwriting, underlining and unnecessary capitalisation they make the assumption that the student is of poorer intelligence. This forms a harmful pre-perception that can cause some teachers to under-grade their work.

Therefore, it is not wrong to assume that a student can improve their grade by simply changing their handwriting, however it should be noted that these influences are only minor and are unlikely to cause any concerning influence to the student's grade. Furthermore, many examiners and teachers are aware of this effect and consider this during the grading process.