Measuring handwriting speed at home: a fixed-text copy task with the character rule, a legibility check and the pen and paper logged

Goal

Produce a record of how many characters a person writes by hand in a fixed time, with the definitions that affect the number fixed in the header, so that sessions months apart and with different pens can be compared.

Prerequisites

Source texts of one kind (prose from one book, or a list of addresses) long enough that no trial reaches the end; a timer; a fixed pen, paper and writing surface for the first series, with any change logged; a second reader for the legibility check, or the writer after at least a day.

Steps

1. Header: the character rule (letters, digits and punctuation count; spaces do not; a crossed-out word counts nothing), the trial length (2 min), the legibility rule (a character is legible if the reader transcribes it correctly without seeing the source), the source kind, and the writing conditions: pen type and tip, paper (lined or plain, size), surface, sitting or standing, and the hand used.
2. Per session: date, local time, any change since the last session (new pen, sore hand, different chair), and the identifiers of the texts used.
3. Copy one untimed line as a warm-up; do not record it.
4. Run three 2-min trials on three different texts with a minute's pause between them; write the trial number and date on each sheet at once. Stop at the timer; do not finish the word.
5. Count the characters on each sheet by the header rule and write the count on the sheet; keep the sheets, or a photograph of each, with the log.
6. Legibility: the second reader transcribes each sheet without the source; count the characters transcribed incorrectly or skipped as illegible. Record legible characters as the count minus the illegible ones, and the median across the three trials as the session value.
7. If a trial was interrupted, mark it invalid, run another, and keep the invalid sheet.

Expected result

A session table with three raw counts, three illegible counts and a median legible count per 2 min, plus sheets that allow a recount; a pen or paper change appears as a dated break in the header rather than as an unexplained jump.

Limits and test basis

Proposed protocol; no speed, trend or comparison with typing is claimed. The character rule makes texts comparable in characters, not in difficulty; addresses and prose are separate series. A writer transcribing their own sheets after a day is a weaker legibility check than a second reader and is logged as such. Three trials show one session's spread, not a person's "true" speed.