Dysgraphia

Dysgraphia is related to dyslexia as both are language-based disorders. In dyslexia, the impairment is with word-level skills (decoding, word identification, spelling). Dysgraphia is a written language disorder in serial production of strokes to form a handwritten letter. This involves not only motor skills but also language skills—finding, retrieving and producing letters, which is a subword-level language skill. The impaired handwriting may interfere with spelling and/or composing, but individuals with only dysgraphia do not have difficulty with reading (Berninger, Richards, & Abbott, 2015).

The characteristics of dysgraphia include the following:

Variably shaped and poorly formed letters
Excessive erasures and cross-outs
Poor spacing between letters and words
Letter and number reversals beyond early stages of writing
Awkward, inconsistent pencil grip
Heavy pressure and hand fatigue
Slow writing and copying with legible or illegible handwriting (Andrews & Lombardino, 2014)

Additional consequences of dysgraphia may also include:

Difficulty with unedited written spelling
Low volume of written output as well as problems with other aspects of written expression

Dysgraphia is not:

Evidence of a damaged motor nervous system
Part of a developmental disability that has fine motor deficits (e.g., intellectual disability, autism, cerebral palsy)
Secondary to a medical condition (e.g., meningitis, significant head trauma, brain trauma)
Association with generalized developmental motor or coordination difficulties (Developmental Coordination Disorder)
Impaired spelling or written expression with typical handwriting (legibility and rate) (Berninger, 2004)

Dysgraphia can be due to:

Impaired feedback the brain is receiving from the fingers
Weaknesses using visual processing to coordinate hand movement and organize the use of space
Problems with motor planning and sequencing
Difficulty with storage and retrieval of letter forms (Levine, 1999)