There are 7 underlying causes for poor handwriting.

These range from holding a pen in an unhelpful position to having many slightly varying pictures in the mind of what a letter looks like. On this last point, how can you "copy" something in a drawing fashion if you are confused on what it looks like - which example picture should you copy? And what if those pictures flash by so fast that you could hardly see them? It would be like looking at a moving blur or lots of similar shapes all written one on top of the other.

Other people, for reasons of boredom or poor attention have not learned to develop the basic letters cursively and to join them up. So, not wanting to be seen to still be doing "child's writing", they scrunch their letters close in the hope that the reader will not notice. Frequently, this is done subconsciously and the writer doesn't even understand what has happened. And the reason for poor attention? That may be due to Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), which is another set of characteristics under the umbrella of dyslexia.

In the Dyslexia Development Programme clients are taken through the 7 causes to establish the underlying reasons. 4 of the 7 causes can be improved upon during the programme.