Undergraduates producing handwritten essays in university exams need to transcribe information onto the page in a rapid and efficient manner under considerable time pressure. In fact, capacity models of the writing process predict that the more automated students can make the transcription process then the more resources will be available for higher order writing processes. This study examined the impact of low level handwriting processes on undergraduate writing in pressurised and unpressurised tasks. Students completed a measure of handwriting fluency and provided samples of writing from exam conditions and a formative class essay. The results indicated that, compared to a class essay, exam writing was constrained by the low level writing skill of handwriting fluency. Surprisingly, it was found that the undergraduates were very slow writers whose writing speed was equivalent to published fluency data on 11‐year‐old schoolchildren. The relationships between handwriting fluency and writing quality were also very similar to those of published data on 11‐year‐old children, with handwriting fluency accounting for large amounts of the variance in writing quality and tutor marks for exam answers. The results of the current study indicate that lower level processes constrain the higher level performance of undergraduate students to a significant extent. This limitation needs to be considered when undergraduate exams are designed and inferences drawn from exam performance.
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