History Main / TheIllegible

* In the ''All Creatures Great And Small'' series of books by Creator/JamesHerriot, about Herriot's life as a vet in Yorkshire, he details when his boss at the vets' practice decided it would be a damn good idea to employ a practice manager/secretary to deal with routine admin and paperwork. The candidate is a terrifying spinster of a certain age, who glares balefully at the three vets and points out that they ''all'' have appalling handwriting which really needs to be improved, if they expect her to transcribe and type it for practice records. She then points at
Siegfried Farnon, the practice owner, and tells him he has the worst handwriting of all.

* Billy from ''VideoGame/{{Kindergarten}}'' is this even by kindergartener standards. Both Ms. Applegate and Monty remark that his handwriting is atrocious, and it takes the latter until lunch to decipher a short note from him.

* ''Fanfic/ACertainDrollHivemind'': Aino Sumiko, as noted in [[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9805735/2/A-Certain-Droll-Hivemind the second chapter]], and it's given to a ThirdPersonPerson that has a habit of NarratingThePresent:
--> "Can you get me the stuff on this list?" she said, handing me a freshly written list. "I'll pay you back."\\

->''Let's see, Mosquito's [=ABLs=]... Jesus Christ... Are these even in a human language?''

* ''ComicStrip/Blondie1930'': In one strip, Dagwood's handwriting is said to be so bad that a banker addressed him as "Doctor" when he left.
* In one ''ComicStrip/HagarTheHorrible'' strip, Hagar, who's illiterate, wishes he could read the prescription a doctor gave him. So does the pharmacist (or whatever he is, since he's in the Viking age[[note]]Probably an apothecary[[/note]]).

-->'''Theo''': What language are you writing?\\
'''Aster''': Q.\\
'''Theo''': You invented a personal alphabet then?\\
'''Aster''': It's the standard alphabet.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

[[folder:Web Original]]
* Serves as a RunningGag in the ''Podcast/BlackJackJustice'' episode "The More Things Change". Jack and Trixie are hired by a woman who wants them to convince her aunt that the man she wants to marry is a good person. She suggests copious notes and that her aunt likes good penmanship. Jack retorts that they can do the former but she'll probably have to eat the latter. Jack later refers to the notes they're taking as a lot of not-very-much with bad penmanship to boot. During a discussion on the case later, Jack snarks at Trixie's notes.
-->Your penmanship is awful. Auntie Viv would be appalled.
[[/folder]]

* Subverted in ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse'': Steven tries having [[spoiler:a partially-healed Centipeedle]] write something, and she produces a bunch of scribbles. Except [[EloquentInMyNativeTongue she was writing in the Gem language]], which Pearl notes is surprisingly legible.

* In one ''ComicStrip/{{Blondie}}'' strip, Dagwood's handwriting is said to be so bad that a banker addressed him as "Doctor" when he left.

Often TruthInTelevision. Not to be confused with TheUnintelligible, which deals with a character that cannot be understood when speaking.

* In the French comic ''ComicBook/MammouthEtPiston'', the titular character receives a postcard from a friend but is incapable of deciphering more than a word or two, even after enlisting the aid of friends. One yells "He writes like a damn doctor!" in frustration, and the final panel is a pharmacist cheerfully reading the postcard out loud to Mammouth and friends.

* ''Creator/DaveBarry in Cyberspace'' claims that, though people learn to write neatly in "cursive" in childhood, their handwriting degenerates into random marks as they grow older. The typical example provided is a scribbled note allegedly written by President UsefulNotes/HarryTruman on August 3, 1945, intended to be an order of waffles for breakfast but interpreted as, "Let's drop the atomic bomb."

* Anna Yamada from ''Manga/TheDangersInMyHeart''. Her handwriting is arguably at kindergartener level, and is so messy that she erases ''whole pages'' to the point where she made a small wad of eraser bits. Ichikawa's sister Kana thought the note that Yamada left at their house when he was sick came from a guy.

* In the Harry Potter fic, ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/4710065/chapters/10756880 Run that by me again?]]'', Hermione knows that Harry didn't enter himself in the Triwizard Tournament because the handwriting on the note is legible.
* Inverted in the Franchise/HarryPotter fic ''Where Shadows Go'', when the partner in Snape's Healer practice jokes that Snape can't be a "real doctor" because his handwriting is too ''legible''.

* A meta-example: Some earlier games by Creator/{{CAVE}} and Creator/{{Atlus}} have a copyright notice written in [[SurprisinglyGoodEnglish perfect English]], except for the last sentence, which reads "Violator and subject to severe penalties and will be prosecutedt to the full extent of the jam." Over a decade later, CAVE's current CCO Tsuneki Ikeda conjectured that this was due to someone on their legal team having bad handwriting, since "law" ''can'' look like "jam" if the handwriting's messy enough.