Doctors have to suffer jokes about their supposedly horrendous, illegible handwriting. But several studies bolster their reputation for scratchy scribbling.There is illegible handwriting in Australia. We know this from a 1976 study in the Medical Journal of Australia, which tells how the handwriting of “a large number of” doctors and non-doctors was tested and compared. The handwriting was graded, and four different statistical tests were performed on the results. The study’s author, H Goldsmith, reports that “in all of these tests the doctors’ handwriting came out significantly worse. Thus the only conclusion which could be established from these results was that doctors’ handwriting is indeed less legible than others.”
On the other hand, so to speak, there may be moderately legible handwriting in some parts of America….
So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian.
Posted
Friday, April 18th, 2008 at 12:03 am
under Newspaper column.
