A Study on the Influence of Wearing a Glove on Handwriting by Chinese in Hong Kong

A person’s writing might be affected by a number of factors. These factors could be internal or external. This paper investigates the effects of wearing a glove when writing English cursive and block letters, Arabic numerals, Chinese, and when drawing geometric figures. Three types of gloves were chosen for the study: disposable glove, thin cotton glove, and thick cotton glove. Writing characteristics, line quality, and fluency of writing were not affected to any appreciable extent by the wearing of the 3 types of gloves. However, the influence of glove wearing on handwriting did affect writing pressure, size of words, word spacing, line spacing, and margin relationship. In addition, occasional pen slips and awkward lettering and strokes were noted in some handwriting samples. The results serve as a reference for document examiners when examining handwriting of a person writing or suspected of writing while wearing a glove(s).