Until children can produce letters quickly and accurately, it is assumed that handwriting disrupts and limits the quality of their text. This investigation is the largest study to date (2596 girls, 2354 boys) assessing the association between handwriting fluency and writing quality. We tested whether handwriting fluency made a statistically unique contribution to predicting primary grade students’ writing quality on a functional writing task, after variance due to attitude towards writing, students’ language background (L1, L2, bilingual), gender, grade, and nesting due to class and school were first controlled. Handwriting fluency accounted for a statistically significant 7.4% of the variance in the writing quality of primary grade students. In addition, attitude towards writing, language background, grade and gender each uniquely predicted writing quality. Finally, handwriting fluency increased from one grade to the next, girls had faster handwriting than boys, and gender differences increased across grades. An identical pattern of results were observed for writing quality. Directions for future research and writing practices are discussed.

在孩子们能够快速准确地写出字母之前，人们认为手写会破坏并限制他们的文本质量。这项调查是迄今为止规模最大的一项评估手写流畅度与书写质量之间关联的研究（2596 名女孩，2354 名男孩）。我们测试了手写流畅度是否对预测小学生在功能性写作任务中的写作质量有统计学上的独特贡献，因为写作态度、学生的语言背景（L1、L2、双语）、性别、年级和嵌套由于班级和学校首先被控制。手写流畅度占小学生写作质量差异的7.4%，具有统计学显着性。此外，对写作的态度、语言背景、年级和性别各自独特地预测写作质量。最后，手写流畅度从一个年级到下一个年级都有所提高，女孩的笔迹比男孩快，而且不同年级的性别差异也越来越大。对于书写质量，观察到相同的结果模式。讨论了未来研究和写作实践的方向。