Dysgraphia

Dysgraphia is so commonly found in people with dyslexia that it is often considered to be part of the same disorder.  Also known as a visual-motor integration problem, people with dysgraphia have poor, nearly illegible handwriting. 

Signs of dysgraphia include:

• Poor handwriting

• Unusual pencil grip, often with the thumb on top of the fingers (a “fist grip”).

• Young children will often put their head down on the desk to watch the tip of the pencil as they write.

• The pencil is gripped so tightly that the writer's hand cramps. They will frequently put the pencil down and shake out their hands.

• Writing is a slow, laboured, non-automatic chore.

• Letters are formed with unusual starting and ending points.

• Getting letters to “sit” on the horizontal lines is very difficult.

• Copying off of the board is slow, painful, and tedious.

• The child looks up and visually “grabs” just one or two letters at a time, repeatedly sub vocalises the names of those letters, then stares intensely at their paper when writing those one or two letters.

• This process is repeated over and over.

• The child frequently loses his/her place, misspells, and doesn't always match capitalisation or punctuation when copying—even though the child can read what was on the board.

• Unusual spatial organisation of the page.  Words may be widely spaced or tightly pushed together.  Margins are often ignored.

• Cursive (linked) writing proves incredibly hard to master, and similarly-formed cursive letters such as f and b, m and n, w and u cause chronic confusion.