<p>I think my son lost some points on the SAT writing portion because of his extremely poor handwriting. While graders are not supposed to be judging on the basis of handwriting, it stands to reason that they would be subconciously less inclined to give a good score to an essay they really had to struggle to read.</p>
<p>I am not sure there is much that can be done about it. I have had poor handwriting my entire life. When I was in grammar school a handwriting teacher would come once a month to evaluate the writing of everyone in the class and those that did badly were singled out for public humiliation. I practiced for hours since I dreaded the day Mrs Donnely would come each month but month after month and year after year the results were always the same; I would end up being made to stand in front of the whole class while being told that my penmanship was the worst she had ever seen. Unfortunately, in 1960 there were no computers for typing essays and no sense that that kind of treatment can cause terrible anxiety in a child.</p>