Suggestions are given for diagnosing and remediating handicapped students' handwriting difficulties. A list of symptoms of handwriting problems is followed by guidelines for assessing difficulties and strategies that incorporate such factors as pencil grip, paper position, and writing posture. (CL)

Provides illustrated directions for hand-made book making, including the production of ink, quill pens, paper, signatures, and cover. (CMV)

A corpus of the author's own slips of the pen is analyzed. Four processing levels--lexical, graphemic, allographic, and graphic--are postulated, with different types of error being assigned to different levels in the production of handwriting. (Author)

Soon after "Prescription for Ailing penmanship" (EJ 153 105) appeared in this journal, two readers sent in their adaptations and expansion of the idea, including several "newly discovered" ailments. Here are their descriptions, diagnoses and treatments of strokenemia, messiosis, numberalgia and two secondary manifestations of "t"sles and…

Explores the founding document of present-day New Zealand, the "Treaty of Waitangi," in terms of the Maori chiefs' signatures and their significance in European and tribal custom. Notes that most of the signatures on the original treaty were approximately 5mm high and were subsumed by the attempted European spellings of the names of the…

This article presents practical solutions to some common problems that may interfere with the mechanics of handwriting. Problems addressed include poor sitting posture, immature pencil grasp, poor stability or positioning of paper, uncertain hand dominance, difficulty copying from the chalkboard, and problems with spatial organization. (JDD)

Describes the experience of a five-year-old mainstreamed boy who supposedly had a developmental lag in language. The boy illustrated his understanding of basic functions of written language by competently orchestrating a pretend rental agreement with one of the authors. Illustrates the need to look beyond the surface features of the writing of…

Discusses basic strokes, stroke sequence rules, and motor aspects of drawing in writing Chinese characters. Finds mastery of proper stroke sequence is low even for familiar characters. Discusses three main groups of errors children made. Explores educational implications for the teaching of stroke sequences in the teaching of handwriting based on…

Data on 556 children with potential developmental coordination disorder described gender, comorbidities, reasons for referral, problems identified by occupational therapists, and assessments used. Typically, 85% were referred in primary school, 77% were boys, high numbers had handwriting and fine motor problems, and mostly formal assessment tools…

The purpose of this study was to apply two techniques, drill activities and fine motor activities, to find whether they help improve the handwriting of a student with dysgraphia. This action research used an ABAB single subject design to find which technique worked better over an eight-week period. The results were inconclusive on which technique…

As Chinese characters ("hanzi") have three aspects--as a technical writing system, an aesthetic visual art (Chinese calligraphy), and a highly-charged cultural symbolic system--changing them is a complex process. In the 1950s when language planning campaigns were launched to modernise Chinese through "hanzi" standardisation,…

Background: It is well established that handwriting fluency constrains writing quality by limiting resources for higher order processes such as planning and reviewing. According to the "simple view of writing" then slow keyboarding speed should hinder the quality of keyboarded essay compositions in the same way that slow handwriting…

Because sensorimotor and environmental factors have a profound effect on children's learning, every teacher should know how to weave strategies from occupational therapy (OT) into their everyday instruction. This is the guidebook K-3 teachers need to "think like an OT"--and form effective partnerships with OTs in their schools--so all students can…