What Causes Handwriting Difficulty? The Skills View

By Laura Lurns · Reviewed by Philip Weaver · Last reviewed 2026-10-02

Is there one cause of handwriting trouble?

The research we hold does not settle what causes handwriting trouble.

One researcher argued for models with several causes rather than a single one (Pennington, 2006). He built his model for reading trouble that comes with attention or speech trouble. It is a model, not a study of handwriting. We could read only its summary.

Trouble with writing and trouble with reading often go together. Several studies we hold found this, in different kinds of samples. They counted different things, so no one rate applies to all children. The research we hold does not settle whether one causes the other.

When more than one area is hard, we look at more than one.

In our view, handwriting rests on several skills. A child can find one of them hard, or more than one. So we look at each skill, rather than for one cause.

What skills sit underneath handwriting?

In our way of thinking, handwriting has four skills. They all run at once when a child writes. This is our model, not a finding.

Forming the letters. Holding the pencil. Shaping each letter. Keeping the letters on the line and about the same size. One researcher's definition of dysgraphia includes moving the fingers in order (Berninger and O'Malley May, 2011).

Recalling how letters and words look. Pulling up the written form of a letter or a word, rather than sounding it out. Researchers call this orthographic coding. Berninger's definition puts orthographic coding inside dysgraphia (Berninger and O'Malley May, 2011). In Berninger's account, a loop links the memory of a letter's form to the moving hand. That is her account, from an overview and a slide handout (Berninger, 2009; Berninger, 2019). It is not a test of it.

Holding the sentence in mind. The child writes one letter at a time. The rest of the sentence has to stay in mind. Holding a sentence in mind while writing it is one of the skills running at once. Letters and spelling that are not yet automatic compete with the ideas for attention. This is one real reason a child writes less than they know. It is not the only one.

Laying out the page. Where the words go, how far apart they sit, and when a new line starts. Of the four skills, the research we hold is thinnest here, as we read it.

Handwriting improves most consistently with handwriting practice; motor work alone has not been shown to improve it.

Is it about motor skills and body sense?

Body sense means knowing where your body is without looking. Its research name is proprioception.

One small study looked at 19 healthy children (Hong and colleagues, 2016). A sense of movement went with more readable handwriting. A sense of where the elbow was did not. It is a link, not a cause.

Some definitions keep motor disorders apart from dysgraphia. The International Dyslexia Association says children with dysgraphia do not have a primary developmental motor disorder. It calls that another cause of poor handwriting (International Dyslexia Association, 2020). Berninger's 2019 slide handout says not all handwriting problems are dysgraphia. Some, it says, are motor disorders (Berninger, 2019).

In the UK and Australia, dyspraxia is an everyday name for DCD (NHS, 2023; healthdirect, 2025). The NHS calls DCD a condition affecting physical coordination. Both the NHS and healthdirect pages list writing among the signs of DCD. An international consensus on DCD advises against the word dyspraxia (Blank and colleagues, 2019).

A review of DCD and dysgraphia looked at kinds of help (Biotteau and colleagues, 2019). Drawing on earlier reviews, it reported weak effects for help aimed at the senses. Those effects were on motor skills in children with DCD, not handwriting. The review puts help aimed at the task itself first.

Dyspraxia is not another name for dysgraphia. To us, these definitions draw the line around motor trouble in different places. Our rule is to describe patterns on these pages. We do not put a name on a child.

Handwriting improves most consistently with handwriting practice; motor work alone has not been shown to improve it.

Do teaching and practice matter?

In our view, gaps in handwriting teaching can be part of why handwriting is hard.

One trial taught handwriting to first graders who found handwriting and writing hard (Graham, Harris and Fink, 2000). They gained more in handwriting than children given lessons on sounds. They also wrote more, and the gains were still there six months later. That was how much they wrote, not how well. The trial tested teaching as help, not what caused the trouble. We could read only its summary.

One US study looked at children in grades 2, 4 and 6 (Berninger and colleagues, 2009). They wrote longer essays by pen than by keyboard. The authors linked that mostly to how much each way had been practiced and taught.

In our view, gaps in handwriting teaching can look like dysgraphia from the outside. In our view, teaching the missed step is usually worth doing while you find out more.

Handwriting, spelling and getting ideas down each get better when taught.

• Handwriting. Santangelo and Graham (2016) pooled studies of teaching handwriting. Handwriting lessons made handwriting clearer and faster than other lessons or none.
• Spelling. In a 2014 review of 53 studies, Graham and Santangelo found that teaching spelling directly works. They also found gains in spelling while writing, not only on tests.
• Getting ideas down. Two reviews support teaching children how to plan and revise (Graham and Perin, 2007; Gillespie and Graham, 2014). The first covered grades 4 to 12. The second covered students with learning disabilities.

Work on handwriting, spelling and composing side by side.

What about genes and the brain?

One twin study looked at 540 twins aged 8 to 18 (Olson and colleagues, 2013). It found that genes play a part in how children differ in copying handwriting. The same held for samples of their writing. Part of that was separate from the genes linked to reading. A second twin study looked at the words and sentences children wrote, not their handwriting (Erbeli and colleagues, 2017). There, the largest share of the differences between children came from each child's own experiences. They did not come mainly from genes or a shared home. In that kind of study, that part also includes errors in the testing.

We hold no study of whether a parent's handwriting trouble shows up in their child. These studies describe differences across many children. They do not tell you the cause for your child. They did not test teaching. In our view, genes are not a verdict. They do not decide on their own what happens to your child.

The research we hold has no brain-structure evidence about handwriting.

Does the cause change what you do?

In our view, the cause mostly does not change the first step. That step is to work out which skill is hard for your child. The exception is a skill that was there and has gone. Our position is that a lost skill goes to a doctor first, not a tutor.

Try this. Ask your child to tell you what they were going to write. Write it down as they talk. Then compare it with what they wrote on their own. That is a check we use, not a test.

Keep teaching the writing while you work out where it gets stuck. We would not wait for a cause before helping.

When to ask for help

Each of these is a reason to ask for help on its own.

• Little change, even with steady practice and good teaching.
• Writing well below your child's other schoolwork.
• A teacher who raises a concern about writing.
• Extreme upset about writing.
• Complete avoidance of writing.
• Hopelessness about learning.
• Sadness or worry that lasts.
• Significant delays in speech, language or motor development.
• A skill that was there and has gone. Our position is that a lost skill goes to a doctor first, not a tutor.

Start with the teacher. Say what you are seeing at home, and what you have tried. Beyond the teacher, the right person depends on what it turns out to be about. If the work is too hard, someone who works on that school skill. If worry or mood is the thing, someone who works with children's mental health. In our view, delays in speech, language or movement are worth raising with your child's doctor. In our view, if you are worried enough to ask, a professional evaluation is worth asking about.

Any talk of hurting themselves is a same-day call to your doctor or a crisis line.