Autism and handwriting

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On all the websites I see, poor handwriting is one of the hallmarks. Mine is unique but otherwise fine, and from what I see snapshots people post here of there own, so is the handwriting of most other people here.

What gives?

Spectrum spectrum spectrum. Autism spectrum disorder. We all fall in different places on the spectrum, and not all of us have even the most common traits.

Then why the hell don't they emphasize this? It leaves people with the impression if you don't exhibit the hall marks, you don't have it. Even professionals think this way.

Because everyone, for some reason, wants everything to fit into just a few categories. Take a look around at some of the topics on these forums and you'll see what I mean. In the topic asking whether Dustin Hoffman's character in Rain Man was high or low functioning, the idea that there's something like mid functioning was like a foreign concept for most people. Most of them thought that he definitely was or definitely wasn't high functioning or low functioning. But the fact is that you can put together a group of ten different people diagnosed with Asperger's and you'll have ten very different people, and that's not even getting into lower functioning forms of autism. There's a staggeringly huge list of traits that people with AS have, so naturally we won't all have the exact same ones.

My handwriting can go from being really good, to being absolutely unreadable.

Yeah, I don't quite get it either.
I fit every part of the Aspie criteria like a glove, except for that.
In fact I'm quite clumsy in real life, but I paint for fun and I think I've got a pretty steady hand.
I painted this base layer 2 days ago all freehand without bleaching-out or airbrushing away anything —> http://fatal-noogie.deviantart.com/art/ ... -245289738
In my art classes, I was the only one willing to take the time & practice to learn the traditional Chinese hand position,
where you hold the brush vertical from the middle, and never let your palm touch the page.
I'm also the only one I know willing to use my left hand to aid the process: On some works, I
use a large brush in my left to dab the big shapes, and a small brush in my right to control the edge details. http://fatal-noogie.deviantart.com/art/ ... -233003454

I don't claim to be any good by calligraphy standards, but I'm damn-sure good enuf to prove that Aspie hands can do it too.
In fact, I resent the stereotype. If I had known it as a kid, I might never have taken up the pencil & sketchpad.

Mine's quite bad :/
I can't figure out why, and trying to hand-write in a decent way always takes me ages and makes my wrist ache

I've seen the writing sample thread here. My handwriting probably isn't the worst, but it is FAR from the nicest.

My handwriting is so bad that if I can have my wife write something for me, I will.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Mine too. My signature is different every time.

This is why I recently started printing my signature. I used to sign in cursive like most people, but not only was it an unreadable scrawl every time, it never looked the same twice. So I started printing my signature in all capital letters, since my handwriting in print is mostly the same each time, and I haven't heard any complaints yet.

My handwriting is abysmal. It has always been terrible. Sloppy, and like an 8 year old child. It is interesting that this is a problem associated with AS. It must have something to do with motor coordination problems.

Exactly. My handwriting varies by the second, I can go from great to ridiculous in a few letters XD

If I was to be a Doctor, people would get arrested for forging because each signature would look different I'd have no patients after a week

And BTW to the Quotee, Love the R+C Reference . Haven't gotten to play since my PS3 gave out Did you know Insomniac Games has a Twitter Account? (I am such a geek )

I made a conscious effort to improve my handwriting. In fact, it was one of my interests for a while. I practiced and pored over old penmanship texts until I could produce a neat, cursive hand. Even now, my handwriting is terrible unless I'm making that conscious commitment to keep it neat. Otherwise it slips off into illegibility. Some people have neat handwriting without even trying. Both my parents have a consistent, neat hand, whereas mine varies greatly. Maybe among autistic people this is due to a lack of motivation on their part. I can't write neat unless I have a motivation to write neat.

Last edited by sfreyj on 31 Jul 2011, 2:40 am, edited 1 time in total.

My handwriting sucks! Sometimes my hands shake though.

My handwriting is neat, but that might be because I write extremely slow, at about half the speed of most people. For my signature, that's a little bit different. It looks like a big bunch of squiggles every time.