"At its broadest definition, dysgraphia is a disorder of writing ability at any stage, including problems with letter formation/legibility, letter spacing, spelling, fine motor coordination, rate of writing, grammar, and composition."                                                                                        (Chung, P, 2020)

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Dysgraphia is a specific learning disability of written expression. Like dyslexia, it can be an invisible disability. It may be surprising to know that dysgraphia not only involves motor skills, such as handwriting, but also language skills. Those with dysgraphia may struggle with letter and number formation and have difficulty producing legible characters automatically. Handwriting involves multiple motor, sensory, cognitive, language, and attention / executive function processes. This can also overflow into areas such as math if a student transposes (or rearranges) numbers or writes them backwards.

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While poor handwriting is the most common symptom of dysgraphia, students often struggle with spelling, grammar, and punctuation.  At school, problems are seen such as difficulty taking or copying notes, messy or incomplete answers on papers, and trouble starting and completing written assignments. 

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Writing is an intricate process that requires the successful culmination of many different foundational skills. People with dysgraphia often struggle to retrieve stored information to produce written language in the form of words, sentences, and paragraphs. Writing is a highly complex task and involves many executive functions. Some of these include working memory, specific attention, planning, organizing, and retrieving information. It often co-occurs with dyslexia.  The best interventions for dysgraphia involve graphomotor skills, executive functioning skills, and language processing skills.                                                                               (Berninger and Wolf, 2016)

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