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A study on the handwriting characteristics of Doctors on prescription and exemplar writings in Mangaluru City, India

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Author Affiliations

  • 1Post Graduate Department of Criminology and Forensic Science, School of Social Work (Autonomous), Mangaluru, Karnataka, India
  • 2Post Graduate Department of Criminology and Forensic Science, School of Social Work (Autonomous), Mangaluru, Karnataka, India

Res. J. Forensic Sci., Volume 14, Issue (1), Pages 1-6, January,29 (2026)

Abstract

It is a common assumption among the public that doctor’s prescription writing is completely illegible and their normal writing is much better compared to their prescription writing. Due to the illegibility of the prescription writing among doctors, most of the patients find it hard to understand the medicines or any other details written in the prescription for them. This study aims to find out whether there is any variation between the handwriting of doctors in prescription and their standard or exemplar writings. The objectives of the study are to study the variation in class characteristics of handwriting among prescriptions of doctors and to know the dissimilarities in class characteristics of handwriting among exemplar writings of doctors. Also to identify if there are any similar handwriting characteristics maintained in doctor’s prescriptions and exemplar writings and to compare the handwriting characteristics of doctor’s prescription with that of exemplar writings. Handwriting samples were collected from 50 doctors in Mangaluru city. Three exemplar samples were collected from each doctor by dictating a content to them and similarly three prescription writing samples were also collected from each doctor. The study concludes that the variation in handwriting among the prescription and exemplar writings of doctors are less compared to the similarity which is found to be more in the samples.

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