Why do we have different handwriting even though we all learn to write the same letters(in our respective languages, of course)?
In: Biology
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Human brains are really, *really* good at pattern-matching. (so good we have problems with false-positives a lot of the time!)
Letters are symbols with meanings. When you see the letter “K”, you know both that it’s name is “K”, but also that it is associated with a “kuh-” sound.
One effect of our really-aggressive-pattern-matching brains is that something doesn’t need to be *exactly* the same as something else for our brain to make the connection. So two people can write “k” slightly differently from each other, but both people will still recognize each other’s “k” for the symbol that it is.
In a real sense, “good handwriting” is really just “easy-to-recognize the symbols”, while “poor handwriting” is “harder-to-recognize” the symbols. Because we don’t **need* them to all be precise, people aren’t going to write them all the same way.
Probably because people are just overall different. People have shaky hands, steady hands, or don’t practice overall. Same applies for art, I’m horrid at it while my other friends are so much better at it than I am
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I mean writing is pretty much just drawing, right? It’s a skill. Everybody has their own approach and level of control leading to a different result for everybody.
Muscle memory plays a huge role in it. The more you repeat the same “style” of writing the more it becomes ingrained. You can of course “write neater” or “write messier” but your baseline is whatever you do the most often. You can always reinforce better handwriting by forcing yourself to write neater enough that it becomes regular. I forced myself to always cross my z’s and 7’s and now it’s my normal way to write them without thinking about it.
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