Female vs. Male handwriting

Learned: Today. I wondered out-loud to myself in the car with Shan about this subject and of course wanted to look it up.

There seems to be a highly significant difference between the handwriting of females and males. This seems to be especially true in environments such as school. When children are toddlers, they don't write too often and, to put it plainly, all of their handwriting usually sucks. As life goes on, when people mature both physically and mentally, the difference in handwriting between the two genders seems to decrease. Regardless of gender, *cough* mature adults often adapt a more universal and *cough* mature style (often some kind of customized version of cursive).

However, throughout a person's educational career (give or take a couple years), it seems there is a noticeable difference between male and female handwriting. Exceptions aside, females seem to have a more expanded and clean style of handwriting, usually with more curves (whether it is actually cursive text, printing, or a combination of the two). Males, on the other hand, seem to have smaller handwriting made with more sharp strokes, which often results in a more sloppy final product.

What I've figured (seeing as there's no real evidence that I've come across, scientific or not, that explains why this happens) is that as young girls, females naturally have a head start on fine-motor skills, so perhaps both males and females continue writing as they did as children. Males continue with their cramped chicken scratch, and the females continue with their cutesy looping print. I think it's more due to a social component (the feminine desire to be non-threatening and pleasant.)

Schools stop concentrating on handwriting at around the time males are ready, fine-motor-wise, to pay attention to it.

The social aspect is pretty huge, though. I think of all those junior-high notes: girls present themselves through their handwriting, and the impulse is generally florid.

I think this handwriting gender split disappears as we get older. I definitely remember writing painfully cute notes in middle school. Now my handwriting more so resembles a neutral gender style. Kinda messy, but whatever.

To summarize, I'd definitely have to say it starts off with fine motor skills and the rate at which the differing genders mature, and then it progresses into a solely social component.