Dysgraphia is a specific learning difficulty in written expression, handwriting and spelling. A child may have difficulties in all or one of these areas and although they may be able to talk about their ideas, they might have difficulties with:

• the mechanics of handwriting (motor-based dysgraphia)
• organising and expressing their ideas in writing (language-based dysgraphia)

When a child has dysgraphia, writing may be hard, taking a long time to complete and causing frustration and stress. The spatial orientation and planning aspects of writing can be particularly challenging. This includes planning the white spaces between letters and words, writing in a straight line and/or producing lines of text that are vertically spaced.

Staying in the margins, using punctuation and choosing between capital and lowercase letters may also be hard. Letter formation itself might also be problematic, and children with dysgraphia are often eager to avoid handwriting, particularly in front of their peers. They may feel embarrassed when writing on the board, produce less text than is necessary for written assignments, and can generally perform poorly on assessments that require written answers.