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In most cases, you should print your essays on a computer. While handwritten essays may be appropriate for small assignments, necessary for in-class work or even required for certain college applications, work printed from a computer is easier to read and widely accepted as the most professional format for submitting essays.

Benefits of Typing

Typed essays look professional and are easy to read. They are also easy for you to edit -- copying and pasting is much simpler and neater than erasing and rewriting. While not foolproof, word processing programs can pick up on some grammatical and spelling errors. They also make it easy to insert images, tables or footnotes where necessary. Finally, typing an essay provides you with a backup copy.

Benefits of Handwriting

If you have the choice to hand-write or type an essay, it may sometimes be better to hand-write. Research published in the peer-reviewed electronic journal "Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation" found that handwritten essay drafts scored higher than the exact same essays typed, with more neatly handwritten essays scoring better than messier essays. Handwritten essays made graders feel closer to the essay-writer, and graders were more likely to believe the essays were completed through hard work. Computer-typed essays felt more like a final copy than a first draft, and thus were graded more stringently. Despite these results, keep in mind that if you are required to type an essay, a handwritten essay likely will not be accepted, and you could receive a zero for your work. Additionally, these handwritten essays were drafts, not final copies. Finally, this study presented graders with the same essays, but other studies show that typing may result in a better written essay, particularly if you are accustomed to typing.

Rules of Handwritten Essays

There are no hard-and-fast rules for hand-writing an essay, but here are some good ones to follow. Write neatly -- cursive may be more difficult to read than print. Write on lined paper in blue or black ink, using the red line on the side of the page as your left margin. You may want to use only one side of the paper, particularly if ink bleeds through. Double-spacing (leaving an extra line) may help you make room for possible edits. Number your pages. Above all, follow any specific instructions your teacher gives you.

Rules of Typed Essays

Essays should be typed in a readable font -- this means you should use a traditional font, such as Times New Roman, Arial or Georgia (and not a font like Curlz or Comic Sans). Use only one space after a period. Print in black and on one side of the paper. Generally, text should be left-justified and double-spaced. Number your pages. Do not try to increase the length of your essay by changing page margins, which should usually be one inch. Make sure to use spell-check. Staple your paper in the upper-left corner. Above all, follow your instructor's specific rules for formatting.

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Paige Johansen has been writing professionally since 2003. She holds a B.A. in psychology and English from Cornell University and an M.F.A. in fiction writing from The University of Virginia. Between degrees, she worked in the fashion industry for two years.

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9 Tips to Ace That Timed Essay

Exams are almost upon us, and a familiar sense of foreboding has settled over the campus. One exam element that can be particularly intimidating for some students is the timed essay: an exam question which demands a full essay on a topic that is typically revealed for the first time during the test. While these kinds of questions may seem scary, there are plenty of ways to make them easy for yourself. Read on for tips about how to prepare in advance of the exam and how to approach timed essays before, during, and after the writing process.

While Preparing for the Exam: Become familiar with the course content. If the professor hasn’t told you in advance what a timed essay prompt will be, it can be intimidating to think that you will have to write about a subject you’ve never seen before. However, this thinking process does not reflect the reality of the situation. In fact, even if your teacher hasn’t given you any hints about the essay question, you do know what it will be about: the concepts and ideas you’ve discussed in the course. Therefore, if you take the time to review your notes and ensure you understand everything that was discussed, it should be difficult for the essay question to catch you off guard. As soon as you read the question, relevant course concepts will start popping into your head, and you’ll just have to organize them into a coherent essay. Start planning if you can. Although the situation described above sometimes occurs, it’s also very common for professors to give their students a fairly detailed idea of what an essay question will involve in advance of the test day. (After all, professors want to mark high-quality essays written by well-prepared students!) This heads-up gives you a great chance to prepare for the exam. If you have the time, consider mapping out a possible essay in point form before the day of the exam arrives. Consider practicing writing under time pressure. You’ve probably written dozens of essays before--the only thing that sets a timed essay apart is that it’s timed. Students often struggle to complete the full essay within the time constraints, particularly if they have to write longhand when they’re accustomed to working on the computer. For this reason, it can be helpful to simulate the conditions of a timed exam before the actual day: pick a practice question, find some lined paper, set a stopwatch, and see how you do! Before You Start Writing: Read the question carefully. The most critical part of the essay-writing process actually happens before you write your first word. When you flip to the essay question, make sure you read it as carefully as you can, noting the difference between words such as ‘contrast’ and ‘analyze’ and highlighting any details which the professor specifically instructs you to include. It’s not uncommon for excellent essays to receive low marks because the student answered a question other than the one that was asked. Make a clear and specific plan. Some students react to the time pressure of essay exams by scribbling down their introduction as soon as they’ve read the question and figuring out their points as they go. While it might seem counter-intuitive, taking five or ten minutes before you start writing in order to draw up a plan will be an enormous time saver. Decide on your thesis, the topic of each paragraph, and the arguments which you intend to cover, then jot down some quick point-form notes. This process won’t take long, and, once you complete it, all that’s left will be to expand those notes into a well-organized essay. Without a clear plan, you run the risk of realizing partway through that you’ve drifted off topic or written yourself into a corner, and fixing these mistakes will consume a ton of extra time. Schedule a set time for each paragraph. On the topic of planning, it’s important to sketch out an idea of how long you want to spend on each section of your essay. (If you know the number of paragraphs you’ll need to write ahead of time, you can do this before the exam even starts!) Take note of the amount of time allotted for the exam and split it into reasonably-sized segments, leaving some time at the end for revision if possible. Without a schedule to follow, it’s easy to become too focused on a single paragraph and run out of time to finish the essay. While You’re Writing: Write clearly and double-space. This tip may seem basic, but it’s easy to forget and it can make a big difference. Both these measures won’t just make it easier for the marker to read your paper; they'll also help you write it. If you have time left at the end of the exam for review, having the ability to skim quickly through your work and write revisions in blank spaces will be incredibly helpful.

Keep yourself on schedule.  Remember the paragraph-based schedule we discussed above? It’ll be useless if you don’t do regular check-ins during the exam. Keep an eye on the clock to ensure you’re always on track. If you realize that you’re falling dangerously behind schedule, it might be necessary to cut some arguments or examples you planned to include. Although making these omissions can be painful, it’s better to leave out a few points from one section than to leave out an entire paragraph because you ran out of time. Don’t worry too much about editing and revision before you finish. When composing essays, many students stop and read over each paragraph once they finish it, making sure that it’s well-written and free of errors before advancing to the next one. This approach is entirely logical when there’s no time pressure involved, but it can actually work against you during an exam. Perfecting paragraphs is a time-consuming process, and, if you spend too much time editing before the essay is finished, you might have to rush through the last few sections or leave them out entirely. For this reason, it’s best to focus on producing a complete first draft before you worry about edits and revisions.

After You’ve Finished Writing: Re-read the question and ensure you’ve addressed all parts. The most important part of writing an essay exam is ensuring that you’re answering the question was posed. Even if you made sure you were interpreting everything correctly before you began, you may have forgotten to address a subquestion or integrate an example as you were writing. Before you submit, read the prompt again and make sure your completed essay matches up! Edit if you have time. If you have enough time left over, read your essay again and make corrections. When you’re working under time pressure, it’s easy to make grammar mistakes or produce hard-to-follow sentences; the final few minutes are your chance to clean up those errors. Unless if you finished way ahead of schedule, don’t worry about major revisions like reorganizing the structure of the essay--it’s better to hand in an essay with an imperfect structure than a paper that’s impossible to follow because you had to stop halfway through the revision process.

Remember to have the right perspective. Once you hand your exam to the professor, relax! It’s easy to work yourself up after an essay exam when you didn’t get the chance to read your work over or you feel like your arguments were weak. However, it’s important to keep in mind that your professor understands the circumstances under which the essay was written. They’re fully aware of the time pressure you were dealing with, and they will judge your work far differently than they would judge a typical essay with a deadline set weeks after the assignment date. If you did your best to write a complete, clear, and insightful essay within the time allotted, you should have nothing to worry about. Best of luck during the upcoming exam season!

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Example of a Great Essay | Explanations, Tips & Tricks

Published on February 9, 2015 by Shane Bryson . Revised on July 23, 2023 by Shona McCombes.

This example guides you through the structure of an essay. It shows how to build an effective introduction , focused paragraphs , clear transitions between ideas, and a strong conclusion .

Each paragraph addresses a single central point, introduced by a topic sentence , and each point is directly related to the thesis statement .

As you read, hover over the highlighted parts to learn what they do and why they work.

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Other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about writing an essay, an appeal to the senses: the development of the braille system in nineteenth-century france.

The invention of Braille was a major turning point in the history of disability. The writing system of raised dots used by visually impaired people was developed by Louis Braille in nineteenth-century France. In a society that did not value disabled people in general, blindness was particularly stigmatized, and lack of access to reading and writing was a significant barrier to social participation. The idea of tactile reading was not entirely new, but existing methods based on sighted systems were difficult to learn and use. As the first writing system designed for blind people’s needs, Braille was a groundbreaking new accessibility tool. It not only provided practical benefits, but also helped change the cultural status of blindness. This essay begins by discussing the situation of blind people in nineteenth-century Europe. It then describes the invention of Braille and the gradual process of its acceptance within blind education. Subsequently, it explores the wide-ranging effects of this invention on blind people’s social and cultural lives.

Lack of access to reading and writing put blind people at a serious disadvantage in nineteenth-century society. Text was one of the primary methods through which people engaged with culture, communicated with others, and accessed information; without a well-developed reading system that did not rely on sight, blind people were excluded from social participation (Weygand, 2009). While disabled people in general suffered from discrimination, blindness was widely viewed as the worst disability, and it was commonly believed that blind people were incapable of pursuing a profession or improving themselves through culture (Weygand, 2009). This demonstrates the importance of reading and writing to social status at the time: without access to text, it was considered impossible to fully participate in society. Blind people were excluded from the sighted world, but also entirely dependent on sighted people for information and education.

In France, debates about how to deal with disability led to the adoption of different strategies over time. While people with temporary difficulties were able to access public welfare, the most common response to people with long-term disabilities, such as hearing or vision loss, was to group them together in institutions (Tombs, 1996). At first, a joint institute for the blind and deaf was created, and although the partnership was motivated more by financial considerations than by the well-being of the residents, the institute aimed to help people develop skills valuable to society (Weygand, 2009). Eventually blind institutions were separated from deaf institutions, and the focus shifted towards education of the blind, as was the case for the Royal Institute for Blind Youth, which Louis Braille attended (Jimenez et al, 2009). The growing acknowledgement of the uniqueness of different disabilities led to more targeted education strategies, fostering an environment in which the benefits of a specifically blind education could be more widely recognized.

Several different systems of tactile reading can be seen as forerunners to the method Louis Braille developed, but these systems were all developed based on the sighted system. The Royal Institute for Blind Youth in Paris taught the students to read embossed roman letters, a method created by the school’s founder, Valentin Hauy (Jimenez et al., 2009). Reading this way proved to be a rather arduous task, as the letters were difficult to distinguish by touch. The embossed letter method was based on the reading system of sighted people, with minimal adaptation for those with vision loss. As a result, this method did not gain significant success among blind students.

Louis Braille was bound to be influenced by his school’s founder, but the most influential pre-Braille tactile reading system was Charles Barbier’s night writing. A soldier in Napoleon’s army, Barbier developed a system in 1819 that used 12 dots with a five line musical staff (Kersten, 1997). His intention was to develop a system that would allow the military to communicate at night without the need for light (Herron, 2009). The code developed by Barbier was phonetic (Jimenez et al., 2009); in other words, the code was designed for sighted people and was based on the sounds of words, not on an actual alphabet. Barbier discovered that variants of raised dots within a square were the easiest method of reading by touch (Jimenez et al., 2009). This system proved effective for the transmission of short messages between military personnel, but the symbols were too large for the fingertip, greatly reducing the speed at which a message could be read (Herron, 2009). For this reason, it was unsuitable for daily use and was not widely adopted in the blind community.

Nevertheless, Barbier’s military dot system was more efficient than Hauy’s embossed letters, and it provided the framework within which Louis Braille developed his method. Barbier’s system, with its dashes and dots, could form over 4000 combinations (Jimenez et al., 2009). Compared to the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, this was an absurdly high number. Braille kept the raised dot form, but developed a more manageable system that would reflect the sighted alphabet. He replaced Barbier’s dashes and dots with just six dots in a rectangular configuration (Jimenez et al., 2009). The result was that the blind population in France had a tactile reading system using dots (like Barbier’s) that was based on the structure of the sighted alphabet (like Hauy’s); crucially, this system was the first developed specifically for the purposes of the blind.

While the Braille system gained immediate popularity with the blind students at the Institute in Paris, it had to gain acceptance among the sighted before its adoption throughout France. This support was necessary because sighted teachers and leaders had ultimate control over the propagation of Braille resources. Many of the teachers at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth resisted learning Braille’s system because they found the tactile method of reading difficult to learn (Bullock & Galst, 2009). This resistance was symptomatic of the prevalent attitude that the blind population had to adapt to the sighted world rather than develop their own tools and methods. Over time, however, with the increasing impetus to make social contribution possible for all, teachers began to appreciate the usefulness of Braille’s system (Bullock & Galst, 2009), realizing that access to reading could help improve the productivity and integration of people with vision loss. It took approximately 30 years, but the French government eventually approved the Braille system, and it was established throughout the country (Bullock & Galst, 2009).

Although Blind people remained marginalized throughout the nineteenth century, the Braille system granted them growing opportunities for social participation. Most obviously, Braille allowed people with vision loss to read the same alphabet used by sighted people (Bullock & Galst, 2009), allowing them to participate in certain cultural experiences previously unavailable to them. Written works, such as books and poetry, had previously been inaccessible to the blind population without the aid of a reader, limiting their autonomy. As books began to be distributed in Braille, this barrier was reduced, enabling people with vision loss to access information autonomously. The closing of the gap between the abilities of blind and the sighted contributed to a gradual shift in blind people’s status, lessening the cultural perception of the blind as essentially different and facilitating greater social integration.

The Braille system also had important cultural effects beyond the sphere of written culture. Its invention later led to the development of a music notation system for the blind, although Louis Braille did not develop this system himself (Jimenez, et al., 2009). This development helped remove a cultural obstacle that had been introduced by the popularization of written musical notation in the early 1500s. While music had previously been an arena in which the blind could participate on equal footing, the transition from memory-based performance to notation-based performance meant that blind musicians were no longer able to compete with sighted musicians (Kersten, 1997). As a result, a tactile musical notation system became necessary for professional equality between blind and sighted musicians (Kersten, 1997).

Braille paved the way for dramatic cultural changes in the way blind people were treated and the opportunities available to them. Louis Braille’s innovation was to reimagine existing reading systems from a blind perspective, and the success of this invention required sighted teachers to adapt to their students’ reality instead of the other way around. In this sense, Braille helped drive broader social changes in the status of blindness. New accessibility tools provide practical advantages to those who need them, but they can also change the perspectives and attitudes of those who do not.

Bullock, J. D., & Galst, J. M. (2009). The Story of Louis Braille. Archives of Ophthalmology , 127(11), 1532. https://​doi.org/10.1001/​archophthalmol.2009.286.

Herron, M. (2009, May 6). Blind visionary. Retrieved from https://​eandt.theiet.org/​content/​articles/2009/05/​blind-visionary/.

Jiménez, J., Olea, J., Torres, J., Alonso, I., Harder, D., & Fischer, K. (2009). Biography of Louis Braille and Invention of the Braille Alphabet. Survey of Ophthalmology , 54(1), 142–149. https://​doi.org/10.1016/​j.survophthal.2008.10.006.

Kersten, F.G. (1997). The history and development of Braille music methodology. The Bulletin of Historical Research in Music Education , 18(2). Retrieved from https://​www.jstor.org/​stable/40214926.

Mellor, C.M. (2006). Louis Braille: A touch of genius . Boston: National Braille Press.

Tombs, R. (1996). France: 1814-1914 . London: Pearson Education Ltd.

Weygand, Z. (2009). The blind in French society from the Middle Ages to the century of Louis Braille . Stanford: Stanford University Press.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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An essay is a focused piece of writing that explains, argues, describes, or narrates.

In high school, you may have to write many different types of essays to develop your writing skills.

Academic essays at college level are usually argumentative : you develop a clear thesis about your topic and make a case for your position using evidence, analysis and interpretation.

The structure of an essay is divided into an introduction that presents your topic and thesis statement , a body containing your in-depth analysis and arguments, and a conclusion wrapping up your ideas.

The structure of the body is flexible, but you should always spend some time thinking about how you can organize your essay to best serve your ideas.

Your essay introduction should include three main things, in this order:

• An opening hook to catch the reader’s attention.
• Relevant background information that the reader needs to know.
• A thesis statement that presents your main point or argument.

The length of each part depends on the length and complexity of your essay .

A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . Everything else you write should relate to this key idea.

A topic sentence is a sentence that expresses the main point of a paragraph . Everything else in the paragraph should relate to the topic sentence.

At college level, you must properly cite your sources in all essays , research papers , and other academic texts (except exams and in-class exercises).

Add a citation whenever you quote , paraphrase , or summarize information or ideas from a source. You should also give full source details in a bibliography or reference list at the end of your text.

The exact format of your citations depends on which citation style you are instructed to use. The most common styles are APA , MLA , and Chicago .

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If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

Bryson, S. (2023, July 23). Example of a Great Essay | Explanations, Tips & Tricks. Scribbr. Retrieved April 8, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/academic-essay/example-essay-structure/

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Shane finished his master's degree in English literature in 2013 and has been working as a writing tutor and editor since 2009. He began proofreading and editing essays with Scribbr in early summer, 2014.

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Handwriting vs typing: is the pen still mightier than the keyboard?

I n the past few days you may well have scribbled out a shopping list on the back of an envelope or stuck a Post-it on your desk. Perhaps you added a comment to your child’s report book or made a few quick notes during a meeting. But when did you last draft a long text by hand? How long ago did you write your last “proper” letter, using a pen and a sheet of writing paper? Are you among the increasing number of people, at work, who are switching completely from writing to typing?

No one can say precisely how much handwriting has declined, but in June a British survey of 2,000 people gave some idea of the extent of the damage. According to the study, commissioned by Docmail , a printing and mailing company, one in three respondents had not written anything by hand in the previous six months. On average they had not put pen to paper in the previous 41 days. People undoubtedly write more than they suppose, but one thing is certain: with information technology we can write so fast that handwritten copy is fast disappearing in the workplace.

In the United States they have already made allowance for this state of affairs. Given that email and texting have replaced snail mail, and that students take notes on their laptops, “cursive” writing – in which the pen is not raised between each character – has been dropped from the Common Core Curriculum Standards, shared by all states. Since 2013 American children have been required to learn how to use a keyboard and write in print. But they will no longer need to worry about the up and down strokes involved in “joined-up” writing, less still the ornamental loops on capitals.

This reform prompted lively controversy. In an editorial published on 4 September 2013, the Los Angeles Times hailed a step forward. “States and schools shouldn’t cling to cursive based on the romantic idea that it’s a tradition, an art form or a basic skill whose disappearance would be a cultural tragedy. Of course, everyone needs to be able to write without computers, but longhand printing generally works fine […] Print is clearer and easier to read than script. For many, it’s easier to write and just about as fast.”

Some states, such as Indiana, have decided to go on teaching cursive writing in school. Without this skill, they assert, young Americans will no longer be able to read birthday cards from their grandparents, comments by teachers on their assignments or the original, handwritten text of the constitution and the Declaration of Independence. “I have to tell you, I can’t remember the last time I read the constitution,” countered Steve Graham, a professor of education at Arizona State University.

This minor revolution is causing quite a stir but it is by no means the first of its kind. Ever since writing was most likely first invented, in Mesopotamia in about 4000BC, it has been through plenty of technological upheavals. The tools and media used for writing have changed many times: from Sumerian tablets to the Phoenician alphabet of the first millennium BC; from the invention of paper in China about 1,000 years later to the first codex, with its handwritten sheets bound together to make a book; from the invention of printing in the 15th century to the appearance of ballpoint pens in the 1940s.

So at first sight the battle between keyboards and pens might seem to be no more than the latest twist in a very long story, yet another new tool that we will end up getting used to. What really matters is not how we produce a text but its quality, we are often told. When we are reading, few of us wonder whether a text was written by hand or word-processed.

But experts on writing do not agree: pens and keyboards bring into play very different cognitive processes. “Handwriting is a complex task which requires various skills – feeling the pen and paper, moving the writing implement, and directing movement by thought,” says Edouard Gentaz, professor of developmental psychology at the University of Geneva. “Children take several years to master this precise motor exercise: you need to hold the scripting tool firmly while moving it in such a way as to leave a different mark for each letter.”

Operating a keyboard is not the same at all: all you have to do is press the right key. It is easy enough for children to learn very fast, but above all the movement is exactly the same whatever the letter. “It’s a big change,” says Roland Jouvent, head of adult psychiatry at Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris. “Handwriting is the result of a singular movement of the body, typing is not.”

Furthermore pens and keyboards use very different media. “Word-processing is a normative, standardised tool,” says Claire Bustarret, a specialist on codex manuscripts at the Maurice Halbwachs research centre in Paris. “Obviously you can change the page layout and switch fonts, but you cannot invent a form not foreseen by the software. Paper allows much greater graphic freedom: you can write on either side, keep to set margins or not, superimpose lines or distort them. There is nothing to make you follow a set pattern. It has three dimensions too, so it can be folded, cut out, stapled or glued.”

An electronic text does not leave the same mark as its handwritten counterpart either. “When you draft a text on the screen, you can change it as much as you like but there is no record of your editing,” Bustarret adds. “The software does keep track of the changes somewhere, but users cannot access them. With a pen and paper, it’s all there. Words crossed out or corrected, bits scribbled in the margin and later additions are there for good, leaving a visual and tactile record of your work and its creative stages.”

But does all this really change our relation to reading and writing? The advocates of digital documents are convinced it makes no difference. “What we want from writing – and what the Sumerians wanted – is cognitive automaticity, the ability to think as fast as possible, freed as much as can be from the strictures of whichever technology we must use to record our thoughts,” Anne Trubek, associate professor of rhetoric and composition at Oberlin College in Ohio, wrote some years ago. “This is what typing does for millions. It allows us to go faster, not because we want everything faster in our hyped-up age, but for the opposite reason: we want more time to think.”

Some neuroscientists are not so sure. They think that giving up handwriting will affect how future generations learn to read. “Drawing each letter by hand substantially improves subsequent recognition,” Gentaz explains.

Marieke Longchamp and Jean-Luc Velay, two researchers at the cognitive neuroscience laboratory at Aix-Marseille University, have carried out a study of 76 children, aged three to five. The group that learned to write letters by hand were better at recognising them than the group that learned to type them on a computer. They repeated the experiment on adults, teaching them Bengali or Tamil characters. The results were much the same as with the children.

Drawing each letter by hand improves our grasp of the alphabet because we really have a “body memory”, Gentaz adds. “Some people have difficulty reading again after a stroke. To help them remember the alphabet again, we ask them to trace the letters with their finger. Often it works, the gesture restoring the memory.”

Although learning to write by hand does seem to play an important part in reading, no one can say whether the tool alters the quality of the text itself. Do we express ourselves more freely and clearly with a pen than with a keyboard? Does it make any difference to the way the brain works? Some studies suggest this may indeed be the case. In a paper published in April in the journal Psychological Science , two US researchers, Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer, claim that note-taking with a pen, rather than a laptop, gives students a better grasp of the subject.

The study focused on more than 300 students at Princeton and the University of California, Los Angeles. It suggested that students who took longhand notes were better able to answer questions on the lecture than those using a laptop. For the scientists, the reason is clear: those working on paper rephrased information as they took notes, which required them to carry out a preliminary process of summarising and comprehension; in contrast, those working on a keyboard tended to take a lot of notes, sometimes even making a literal transcript, but avoided what is known as “desirable difficulty”.

On the basic issue of handwriting France has chosen to take the opposite course from the US. In the early 2000s the ministry of education instructed schools to start teaching cursive writing when pupils entered primary school [aged six]. “For a long time we attached little importance to handwriting, which was seen as a fairly routine exercise,” says school inspector Viviane Bouysse. “But in 2000, drawing on work in the neurosciences, we realised that this learning process was a key step in cognitive development.”

“With joined-up writing children learn words as blocks of letters, which helps with spelling,” Bouysse explains. “It’s important in a country where spelling is so complex! However, the ornamental capitals in the patterns published in the 2013 exercise books have been simplified, with fewer loops and scrolls […] They are important, though, because they distinguish proper names or the start of a sentence.”

Some handwriting advocates regret the disappearance of these ornamental effects. “It’s not just a question of writing a letter: it also involves drawing, acquiring a sense of harmony and balance, with rounded forms,” Jouvent asserts. “There is an element of dancing when we write, a melody in the message, which adds emotion to the text. After all that’s why emoticons were invented, to restore a little emotion to text messages.”

Writing has always been seen as expressing our personality. In his books the historian Philippe Artières explained how doctors and detectives, in the late 19th and early 20th century, found signs of deviance among lunatics and delinquents, simply by examining the way they formed their letters. “With handwriting we come closer to the intimacy of the author,” Jouvent explains. “That’s why we are more powerfully moved by the manuscript of a poem by Verlaine than by the same work simply printed in a book. Each person’s hand is different: the gesture is charged with emotion, lending it a special charm.”

Which no doubt explains the narcissistic relationship we often entertain with our own scrawl.

Despite omnipresent IT, Gentaz believes handwriting will persist. “Touchscreens and styluses are taking us back to handwriting. Our love affair with keyboards may not last,” he says.

“It still plays an important part in everyday life,” Bustarret adds. “We write by hand more often than we think, if only to fill in forms or make a label for a jam jar. Writing is still very much alive in our surroundings – in advertising, signing, graffiti and street demonstrations.” Certainly the graphic arts and calligraphy are thriving.

Perhaps, in their way, they compensate for our soulless keyboards.

This article appeared in Guardian Weekly, which incorporates material from Le Monde

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Full-page handwriting recognition and automated essay scoring for in-the-wild essays

• Published: 13 March 2023
• Volume 82 , pages 35253–35276, ( 2023 )

Cite this article

• Annapurna Sharma   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4661-6826 1 ,
• Rohit Katlaa 1 ,
• Gurleen Kaur 1 &
• Dinesh Babu Jayagopi 1  

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Scoring of handwritten essays in school education settings is a time-consuming task. Normalized assessment and prompt feedback enable a student to improve the articulation, comprehension and overall presentation of ideas. In this work, we present a system that can take in input as the images of the essay sheets and outputs the grade/score of the essay. We show a pipelined approach by combining a handwriting recognition model and automated essay scoring. Current handwriting recognition systems show an excellent transcription performance on the existing public domain dataset. These datasets are primarily captured in a constrained manner. The performance and efficacy of these models on unconstrained data are crucial for text understanding. In our work, we adapt an existing full-page handwriting recognition model to the unconstrained handwritten essay dataset. The full page handwriting recognition model is a deep learning model based on CNN and LSTM layers with explicit modules to identify the start of line, line normalization and text line recognition. The unconstrained dataset is from a national essay competition where students upload the essay after scanning the essay. This dataset is wild in nature as the background, margins, text-fonts and the scanning device make it challenging both visually and algorithmically.We have curated a subset of this dataset for all the experiments in this work and intend to make this dataset publicly available. We further analyze the performance on the downstream task of essay scoring using a set of classical handcrafted features and transformer-based contextual embeddings.We have formulated the problem of essay scoring as a regression task. The pre-trained embeddings/handcrafted features, for each essay, are used as representative features for the essay scoring model. Our results show that there is only a slight performance degradation in the essay scoring task due to transcription errors from the handwriting recognition module. We also show analysis with rubric level scores and handcrafted features to develop a subset of features that directly impact the rubric level score on the essay.

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This work was supported by Visvesvaraya PhD Scheme, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India under grant number MEITY-PHD-2541.

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Sharma, A., Katlaa, R., Kaur, G. et al. Full-page handwriting recognition and automated essay scoring for in-the-wild essays. Multimed Tools Appl 82 , 35253–35276 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-023-14558-z

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Handwriting and Writing Essay

The summary.

Since the advent of computers, handwriting has become a thing of the past for many. Many students have resorted to handing in typed assignments as they consider handwriting a tiresome activity, but a few still submit handwritten assignments. Using computers to type is easy and one is able to produce neat work.

It is also easy to correct typing errors using delete and back space keys when typing as opposed to handwriting. Besides, many schools only teach handwriting in the lower grades. Nevertheless, handwriting is convenient for scribbling short notes and reminders.

Moreover, handwriting provides a clear reflection of one’s personality; something that typed work can never bring out. For example, rushed scratches in handwritten piece of work could mean that the writer was angry while writing. It is for this reason that we can recognize one’s handwriting even without reading a word.

Furthermore, Julia Cameron insists in her book titled The Artists Way that writing once in a while is good exercise for the hand muscles. It is always surprising how teachers can write so much on the blackboard considering how tiresome the task can get. On the other hand, typing is less tiresome and one can type volumes of materials within a short time.

The many technological developments since the 21 st century has made work easy for us, but we always tend to cling to the old ways of doing some things. Why is this so? There are various advantages associated with doing some things in the old fashioned way.

First, some of the things we do in the old fashioned way are artistic. They represent acts that have been perfected over time and we would rather hold on to them because somehow we have learned to do them so well and find it hard to adopt the new ways.

For example, writing is an art that one perfects over years to be able to write neatly. Therefore, one would decide to hand write instead of typing because the result for either is the same.

Second, old fashioned ways of doing things have proven to be at times easier and cheaper. This is because the new technologies that act as alternative are either expensive to acquire and their usage requires some kind of training or may not be easily portable.

For example, owning a notepad computer may be too expensive for some people. Even if one decides to buy a desktop, it will still not be portable; therefore, one resorts to the old fashioned methods, i.e. handwriting.

Third, most of the old fashioned methods of doing things involve both the hand and the brain. This has some health benefits through exercising both hand and brain. This is, however, not the case for new technologies like typing where one just presses keys and tabs thus only exercising the hands.

Fourth, doing things the old fashioned way reveals one’s personality more than doing them the modern way. This is because we use our hands and creativity in most cases to produce the final piece of work. This, if well-done, could be more attractive to the eyes than the work done using the modern method.

For example, the work done by a person with neat and legible handwriting would always attract many readers as it stands out from the rest. Besides, things done using the old fashioned way is better appreciated. For example, a good handwritten piece of work is likely to be complemented than if the same piece of work was typed.

But how can the modern children learn the old fashioned way of doing things? We can use the following avenues to learn the old fashioned methods of doing things. Schools provide the first avenue for us to learn. We are taught how to write, cook, and hand sew.

Through such subjects, we are taught to perfect our hand skills while at the same time use the knowledge for examination purposes. Apart from school learning, we can acquire some of these skills by observing other people. For example, one may learn how to cook by just watching other people do it.

Better still, one can undergo some form of training so as to be able to do things the old fashioned way. For example, one may have to be trained for some time to gain the skills of hand sewing.

But for what reasons would one still resort to using these old fashioned methods even if the modern technology is available? First and foremost, the testing of one’s skills leaves very little room for modern technology. For example, sit-in exams demand that one presents handwritten work.

Besides, if one was trained using the old fashioned methods, e.g. in carpentry and sewing, then such a person will have no option, but to practice using the same old methods.

Second, people would do things the old fashioned way because they have the passion for doing it. This becomes a good enough reason for them not to adopt the modern way of doing things. For example, one could hand sew, not because they cannot access a sewing machine, but because they have the passion for hand sewing.

Third, the modern ways of doing things may at times be expensive making them inaccessible to many people. For example, students may resort to handwriting instead of typing because they do not have a computer of their own and it would be expensive to hire typing services.

All in all, doing things the old fashioned way reinforces one’s other skills. Doing things the old way provides the opportunity to perfect one’s work other than letting the machine do everything. This makes people to be cautious in their work to produce good results.

Keeping to the old fashioned ways of doing things also help us to keep our traditions and culture close. For example, people could use fire wood to cook instead of electric and gas appliances for fun and while performing traditional rituals especially during borne fires.

To sum up, the old fashioned skills that we learn can have a significant influence the world since more and more people are now beginning to embrace their culture. We can use these skills to earn one some cash simply by being creative and producing pieces of art work that are capable of attracting many customers. We can even use these skills to solve environmental problems.

For example, if someone makes traditional baskets, then all environmentally conscience people would opt to use such baskets as opposed to plastic bags. The old fashioned skills also have important health benefits, which can never be found in new technologies. For these reasons, let as all appreciate the old fashioned way of doing things and use them whenever it is appropriate.

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Recent IELTS Essay: Handwriting Skills for Children

Below is a recently reported essay question with some useful ideas. This essay question appeared in 2015 and again in 2020. Read through the ideas and learn any new vocabulary.

Some people think that it is important to teach children the skill of handwriting. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

Reasons in Support of Children Learning Handwriting Skills

• poor handwriting skills or illegible writing can have negative effects on school performance
• these are basic and fundamental requirements for any school child
• in some situations it is better to write by hand rather than type
• children learn better when they are forced to write something by hand

Other Ideas

• being proficient in the use of modern technological devices by touch typing is essential for the future
• time could be better spent on developing other useful skills and knowledge
• therefore less time should be spent focusing on this

Feel free to post more ideas if you have them.

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Hello Liz, I have learnt a whole lot through your videos and model answers and I would like to appreciate all that you do for us. I had my ielts general test today and this question came out! However, I didn’t cover this question but I could say seeing your answer right now makes me happy because I stated some similar points. My result will be out in 7 days and I’m hoping to give you the good news. Thanks Liz

Fingers crossed for your results 🙂

liz i wanna ask you something that why nowadays you don’t post any IELTS material and YouTube videos as well

I just posted a new lesson two days ago: https://ieltsliz.com/uk-us-spelling-main-differences/ . Regarding videos, I’m too sick to make videos and have been for a few years now.

Get well soon Liz. Wishing you a healthy recovery. Thank you for all you have and still do for us.

Kind Regards,

Can we use “Kith and Kin” instead of friends and relatives in writing essay 2 ?

No. This is a formal essay about you should stick with appropriate language. Your aim is not to be creative or descriptive. Your aim should be to avoid errors.

Hi Liz, Thank you for all the splendid work you’re doing. This is my problem, I write really slow, and even after practising there seems to be no improvement. It’s seriously affecting performance in Writing. Please, do you have any tip for solving this issue?

If your typing skills are good, you could consider taking the Computer Delivered IELTS test. Otherwise, you will just have to keep practising. There is no other way. You must be able to write about 180 words for task 1 and about 280 words for task 2 in 1 hour. You can use any type of handwriting as long as it is clear to see and shows proper use of capital letters and punctuation.

Hi Liz, I’ve practised cursive handwriting since my childhood. Is it okay to use a cursive handwriting in ielts exam? Or is it advisable to write in print type writing where the letters are not conjoined? Please let me know which option is better to use especially for the Writing section. But I must mention that when I start writing, my handwriting automatically switches to cursive handwriting.

Your handwriting needs to be clear – otherwise – anything goes. Write in any style you want – just make it easy to read.

Ms Liz im weak in enlish ,specially academic writing task 1 and 2.despite knowing all grammar.it is to much difficult for me using paasive in writing. can u tell me how can i improve myself as a good writer….

https://ieltsliz.com/liz-notice-2015-2016/

Hi Liz, Could you please advise me on this essay. Can I get band 7 for it? I don’t know which area I should improve my writing, thank you so much Liz. It is thought by some that children should be taught to write rather than just be good at touch-typing. In my opinion, I support that idea because I believe that handwriting is very important for all literary people, especially for children even though they are living in the computer era. Firstly, handwriting is an essential skill for all pupils who are attending primary to high schools. This is because there are a number of areas in which the schools require them to use their handwriting ability such as taking notes, doing tests and writing homework. If the children were not able to write or wrote but poorly, they might not get the desired results regardless of their good understanding of the subjects, which in turn influence their overall performance. Secondly, learning something by writing it down enable most people to understand more deeply and remember longer. Take for example children who are studying mathematics. Learning math requires the learners to understand the formulas which can be complicate. If the children learnt a formula by writing it down and then analyzing each of its parts, they would be able to understand it more clearly than those who did not. Last but not least, handwriting is also an important skill in later life. There are many situations in reality with which people need to deal by using their handwriting skills such as writing their personal names at bank or completing a form. Those who are able to do these well when necessary are more effective than those who are not and just type all the times. In conclusion, children should practice writing by hand at early age because this skill enables them to study well at school and is vital in their future. Parents and teachers ought to help kindergartens and young pupils practice frequently to ensure the skill is competent to them after the first years of school life.

Sorry I don’t mark writing. https://ieltsliz.com/ielts-essay-correction/ All the best Liz

Thank you for your response Liz. I followed your techniques to complete my essay. Thank you so much for that. I have seen some other teachers’ technique but I think yours are most closed to marking criteria. For example, you use most complex sentences in the essays. I really wish to know if my sentences are good enough and my supporting points are not overgeneralizing and clear. Thank you Liz. Kind regards, Tina

Hey Liz How can I write to you to correct my writing in the 2 Ielts tasks ? best regards

For the question “to what extent do you agree or disagree”, do it really necessary to mention the “extent” in thesis statement such as “partly”, “totally”, “strongly”? Can I just state “I agree” or “I disagree” in my statement?

No, you can just state what your opinion is. You don’t actually need to use the words “partially” or “totally”. See my model essays on the writing task 2 page. All the best Liz

Hi Liz, Could you please check my essay on this topic? Thank you.

In today’s society, people are increasing likely to rely on typing words by computers to deal with daily issues. This growing trend arouses the debate on the importance of learning handwriting skill at an early age. In this essay, I will present my reasons why I strong support the view that it is significant to educate children writing by hand. One reason for this is that handwriting is a basic tool for study. Young students not only need to acquire academic knowledge by listening to the lectures, but also need to make notes, do homework, and take tests. Most of these should be performed by hand written. Poor handwriting could result in negative effects on the performance. For example, an illegible handwritten answer might confuse the reader and cause misunderstanding; therefore, legible work is graded more favorable than messier counterparts. A further reason is that there is a link between golden career opportunity and beautiful handwriting. It is socially acceptable that a person, who could manage proper handwriting skill is always welcome as a well-educated and decent one. Although this view might be biased to some extent, indeed it works commonly. For instance, job applicants with excellent hand written resume in the labor market, tend to be easier to have ideal jobs on all occasions. It is benefited from their skilled handwriting style, which enhances good impression to recruiters, so they are expected to have more opportunities to win particular positions. In conclusion, I agree that it is very consequential for children to learn handwriting skill, because it could help them to succeed in both academic performance and future.

Liz, my teacher said I have actually changed the topic completely,”the question doesnt ask you the benefit of a good hand written skill”, I dont think so . In my opinion, I support the view that handwriting is important to children,so I need to present the benefits of what the children could get from hand writing. In addition, my teacher changed some words, for example, in the first paragraph, he used : I will argue why I strong support the view that it is …..(but some teacher said it can be “I will present my reasons,..”). In the second paragraph, he used: One ‘argument’for this is , instead of mine”one reason for this…” However, I checked another book, it is said the correct one is “one reason for this …”

…..I am so confused…could you please help me with it?

Thank you .

You don’t have to state in the body paragraphs “I will argue why I support…” or “I will present my opinions” because you should already have given your opinion in the introduction. The body paragraphs just explain your main points “Firstly, one reason why handwriting …”. So your writing method for body paragraphs is fine. Although it must be said that your teacher’s method is not wrong, it just isn’t vital. These are all minor differences which will not change your score one way or the other way.

The best way to your a thesis statement for an opinion essay is “In my opinion, I agree that children should be taught …”. You don’t need to tell the examiner what the essay will do, you need to give your answer “do you agree or disagree?”. All the best Liz

Thank you so much! I feel that I could have a better sleep tonight….. I was scored 5 by my teacher so ….

Thank you so much.

I think your teaching method is so useful, and I want to steal some of your ideas ha ha ~ if you dont mind….

Thanks a gain.

Have a lovely day,

Elsa from AUSTRALIA

My ideas are all to help you – feel free to take them all 🙂 Liz

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Writing Experience — Importance of handwriting

Importance of Handwriting

• Categories: Writing Experience

About this sample

Words: 361 |

Published: Mar 28, 2019

Words: 361 | Page: 1 | 2 min read

Works Cited:

• Adichie, C. N. (2004). Purple hibiscus. Algonquin Books.
• Ang, I. (2001). Silent citizenship: Critical citizens and cultural politics. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 4(2), 165-181.
• Bonham, V. (2011). "Women’s voices will not be silenced": Women and silence in contemporary Nigerian fiction. Research in African Literatures, 42(3), 119-133.
• Clark, A. H. (2010). A rhetorical analysis of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's TED Talk, "The Danger of a Single Story." Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric, 1(1), 1-9.
• De Weerdt, Y. (2013). The silence of women in African literature: A comparative analysis of Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi. Journal of International Women's Studies, 14(3), 91-105.
• Groom, H. (2012). Religion and silence in the fiction of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 47(1), 53-68.
• Hadjioannou, M. (2016). "You are a story": Silence, storytelling, and feminist resistance in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novels. MFS Modern Fiction Studies, 62(1), 61-80.
• O'Callaghan, E. (2013). A comparison of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus and Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 48(2), 269-286.
• Ogundimu, F. (2014). Culture, violence and narrative strategies in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus. Nordic Journal of African Studies, 23(2), 90-103.
• Zajicek, A. M. (2017). The sound of silence: Contemporary Nigerian women writers and the question of voice. Women's Studies, 46(2), 127-142.

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Essay: Handwriting

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Handwriting is a form of expressive moment frozen on the paper, through which physiological and psychological functions are revealed. The handwriting of a person undergoes certain variations with his changing frame of mind and emotions [14]. The person’s disposition, whether glad or contented, happy or excited, sad or disappointed, are spoken out through his handwriting. These emotions can be characterized through various handwriting indicators or traits of writing like Baseline, Slant, Pen-pressure, Size, Strokes, Spacing, Margins, Loops, ‘i’-dots, ‘t’-bar etc. These features and the emotions depicted by them are further described. A. Baseline The line on which most of the letters rest is known as baseline [5]. It is an important factor in inferring the emotional stability of the writer. It reveals the writer’s attitude about reaching his goals and the kind of mental energy he applies to various situations [14]. There are four most common baselines namely, Ascending, Descending, Straight and Wavy Baseline whose significant emotional characteristics are described in the following table [6], [10], [30] TABLE 2. TYPES OF BASE LINE AND RELATED EMOTION B. Slant Slant is the predominant angle of the upward or downward stroke or in simpler terms, it is the relative alignment of the letters to the baseline. It is a significant factor in interpreting the inner mind of a person as it discloses the person’s truthfulness and emotional responsiveness. It indicates the degree to which the writer expresses his real emotions and feelings to the world around him. The slants in handwriting varies from extreme left through left, vertical and right to extreme right [6], [14], [30]. TABLE 3. TYPES OF SLANT AND RELATED EMOTIONS C. Pen-Pressure Pen-pressure is defined as the force which we apply on the writing surface with the writing instrument. Pen-pressure corresponds to the intellectual vitality, mental energy, intense feelings, determination, passivity and emotional intensity. The pressure exerted maybe heavy, light or average. [5], [6], [14], [29]. TABLE 4. TYPES OF PRESSURE AND RELATED EMOTIONS D. Size The size is an unstable peculiarity which varies according to the disposition of the writer. Usually the size of handwriting is cataloged as large, overly large, medium, small and microscopic sized handwriting. However, the sudden transformation in the size of one’s handwriting from normal to microscopic portrays that the writer is sinking down in dejection [14]. It describes a deeply distressed or sorrowful emotional status of the writer. TABLE 5. SIZE TRANSFORMATION AND EMOTION CONNECTION E. Margin Each side of the page and the entire layout has a meaning which communicates much about the person’s aspiration and the desire for appreciation. The margin could be either left, right or the text could be all over the page. Wide right margin indicates the writer’s agonize about future and fear of the unknown. It may widen temporarily resulting from a particular stressing situation and will return to normal width once the crisis has ended. TABLE 6. MARGIN AND RELATED EMOTIONS F. Zone A line of handwriting is separated into three zones namely the upper zone, lower zone and middle zone. The zones signify three diverse parts of thought and are dependent on emotional vigor of the writer. ‘ Dominating Middle Zone: The size and formation of middle zone discloses the level of content and joy being experienced by the writer. Abrupt alteration in the middle zone and the diminishing of letters with respect to the rest of the two zones shows the occurrence of some incidences which lead to insightful sorrow. ‘ Upper Zone: It represents the anger, stress, aggravation, nervousness and concern. Letters with upper loops resembling balloon on a thread shows abnormal thinking similar to the writing. It hints about mentally ill or a psychotic person who distorts the reality around him instead of trying to interpret it [32]. ‘ Pointed Upper Loop Zone: TABLE 7. ZONES AND RELATED EMOTIONS IV. EMOTION RECOGNITION THROUGH HANDWRITING ANALYSIS The process of automated emotion recognition through handwriting analysis is a multi stage procedure [13], [24]. It begins with collecting the handwritten samples on plain white A4 size paper. These samples are then scanned and converted to JPEG format images which are then processed for handwriting analysis. The analysis and classification based on these processed images results into the recognition of corresponding emotions. The system architecture is depicted in Fig 1. The entire processing includes the following steps: A. Image Pre-processing Image pre-processing is the technique in which the handwritten sample is translated to a digital image by executing certain operations on it to extract the required information [18], [19]. The scanned image is studied appropriately, analyzed and processed to manipulate it. The output of this analysis enables us to understand the image and the features in it in an easier manner [8]. This process is carried out with an objective to emphasize the characteristics of the handwriting which are to be extracted and classified to recognize the corresponding emotions. B. Segmentation It’s a process used to partition a digital image into multiple sets known as segments. Therefore by this way the image is represented into more meaningful way which will become easier to analyze it. Image segmentation usually locates the object’s lines, curves and its boundaries as the image has its own limitations and problems like image data ambiguity and information noise [19]. Segmentation includes the thresholding and binarization of the image [18]. At this stage, the pixels which represent certain objects such as text or line image like graphs, maps are extracted. With the help of binarization, the pixels that are true regions with foreground being of single intensity and background being of different intensities are marked [26]. text in here…

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Home / Essay Samples / Education / Learning / Handwriting

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