COMPARISON OF HANDWRITING LEGIBILITY FOR MANUAL HANDWRITING AMONG TYPICALLY DEVELOPING INDIAN CHILDREN

Handwriting involves the integration of many skills, including perceptual motor skills, motor planning and cognition visual motor skills, as well as control of kinesthetic and tactile abilities to grasp and maintain control of the writing tool, as well as motor control The aim of this study was to compare the handwriting skills of typically developing Indian children on ETCH-M (Evaluation Tool Of Children Handwriting – Manuscript). A sample of 200 typically developing Indian children were included in the study using convenience sampling method. The age ranged from 6 years to 9 years. It was found that ETCH-M is an assessment tool which can assess the Handwriting skills of Indian typically developing children in 6-9 years of age group. Independent sample t- test was done to compare the mean raw score of each group. There was a significant difference with statistical value of p< 0.001. The handwriting evaluation depends upon six characteristics of writing: Handwriting legibility, letter formation, uniformity of letter size, uniformity of letter slant, spacing between letters and words, alignment of lines of writing. KEYWORDS: Handwriting, legibility, occupational therapy, vernacular medium.