Examiners are people too. If you meet someone for the first time, you almost immediately form a judgement about them: maybe it’s the way they talk or maybe it’s how they’re dressed.
It’s the same in exams. As I said, examiners are people too and they form immediate impressions about the candidates. Indeed that’s what they are trained to do when they mark a paper: read it through once quickly and decide roughly what they think about it. Only then do they read it more slowly and carefully to see how technically proficient it is.
Problem. If you make a bad first impression, it may be too late to get the examiner on your side, even though your writing is really rather good. This is something you need to think about carefully if your handwriting is horrible and no one can tell where your paragraphs begin and end.
If you don’t believe me, read about this research on handwriting. If you don’t want to do that, the idea is that examiners will give better grades to work that looks good. They don’t mean to, but it is part of human nature. So if you are looking for that extra 1%, you should certainly think about how your writing appears. This means handwriting, but it also means clear paragraphing.
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