<p>DS scored a 5 and a 4 on his March essay. When I read the rubric, I feel like his essay was a 5. He has very messy, scrawling penmanship. I had to use context to figure out about 10 of the words. It seems that would affect the score depending on the patience and fatigue of the readers. Thoughts?</p>
<p>The graders spend 2 minutes on each essay and have hundreds to read everyday. One or two illegible words are ok. However, if the handwriting is so bad to the extent that they can’t understand what you’re trying to say, they will take off points or just give it a 1.</p>
<p>Graders will not explicitly deduct any points if the handwriting is poor but generally legible. They will grade what they can read: If a word or sentence can’t be read, they’ll treat it as though it were an omission, which is alright because the essays are graded as drafts.</p>
<p>With that said, psychological bias is relevant. Cleanly written essays likely tend to be higher quality because handwriting quality correlates with carefulness otherwise, so graders may hold some unconscious negative presumptions about ugly handwriting. This will vary grader to grader. Most of the time, it’s negligible, I’d guess.</p>
<p>My handwriting is embarrassingly bad, but I don’t have reason to believe this ever hurt me. Graders develop keen knacks for deciphering handwriting. One should write as well as he or she can given the time constraints.</p>
<p>Although graders are not technically supposed to grade based on handwriting, it can play a role. If the writer has a hard time reading the essay, they will not want to take the time to fully read the essay.</p>