Sam’s had enough and Marshmallow is starting to make her move.

Jj is for Jottings 13. Frequent Errors Made by Early to Mid Primary Children (and, when I come to think about it, secondary students as well because one flows on to the other – of course).
In list form:
1. Using capital letters mixed in with lower case. I recommend a good alphabet book to fix this – “Aa is for Alpacas”, for example(!) For some reason using B rather than b is common, even in the middle of a word.
2. Handwriting is not aligned so that, instead of having a row of “bodies” of letters with sticks up at twice the height of the body and the tails down at twice the height of the body, everything is higgledy-piggledy in terms of alignment and therefore extraordinarily difficult to read.
3. Incorrect pencil grip, which is frequently awkward and therefore tiring, and consequently doesn’t allow the writer to write at speed or for lengths of time. This is becoming an increasing problem for secondary students who have to sit 3 hour exams. They just haven’t built up the athletic stamina for handwriting because they are using incorrect pen grip and haven’t had enough practice because some or a great deal of their written work is done on computers and therefore is not written at all, but typed.
4. Letter formation is incorrect, which makes joined up writing difficult. For example, I often observe children starting on the left hand side of the letter o, which means they’ll end up on the left hand side and this doesn’t flow on to the next letter in the joined up sequence as it would if they had begun on the right hand side. It doesn’t matter so much if you are printing, but printing is more time-consuming.
There is much to be said for practising all these skills over and over at an early age so it all becomes effortless and unconscious ever after. Of course, children who don’t draw and colour in at a young age are at a disadvantage, because they haven’t developed the fine muscle skills which are necessary for handwriting. Hopefully, now colouring books for adults are very popular and people are finding benefits in terms of relaxation and creative satisfaction, more children might spend time colouring in alongside their parents.
Just as clear speech is important for verbal communication, clear handwriting is important for written communication. It is pointless trying to communicate through either medium if the message isn’t getting across due to faulty delivery.