Will you be marked down for poor handwriting/sentence structure in exams?

You won't be marked down for handwriting but for longer answers or the writing element if the examiner struggles to read your writing it may lead them to miss any good vocabulary or language features you use.

Whilst writing essays or taking exams, clarity is definitely important. While you won't be penalised solely for poor handwriting or sentence structure, if your writing is hard to read or understand, examiners might miss important points you've made, which can affect your marks. For example, examiners have noted that hard-to-read handwriting can lead to missed marks because they can't accurately assess your answers. ​To ensure your work is marked fairly, aim for clear, neat handwriting and a clear, developed sentence structure.

You won't be marked down for poor handwriting, however, if your handwriting is illegible then your paper will be passed to a senior marker who may not be so generous in their marking! In English exams, you will be marked down for poor sentence structure (AO6).

Only in the writing section Jameson!

As long as your writing is legible, you won't actually be 'marked down' for that in the writing section either - examiners are trained to be positive, and look for marks, not for faults.

As far as sentence structure goes, that's probably the most important part of your question... are you comfortable identifying and using short, complex and compound sentence structures? Could you use a long sentence with polysyndeton or asyndeton (Charles Dickens uses these an awful lot!) or a short, dramatic sentence of just three words? Well, could you? ;-)

If you can use a variety of different sentence structures, you'll get credit for this and if not, just check out this link and get up to speed: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zbvqkty - the videos make it sound easy!

Hope that helps!

Mark