Is Hand Writing Dead?
As I post today is National Hand Writing Day in the UK. So my question is Is Hand Writing Dead? Certainly we use it much less these days. Last time I was in a Starbucks in Orlando I was asked to write my name down. I had to re write it because the server couldn’t read joined up writing. What do we think?
Comments
It's still taught in school - my 6-year old grandson does writing exercises.
But I’m not that much bothered. I like the fact that correcting text is much easier now. I had to cross out a lot when handwriting was the order of the day.
My mum and I kept in touch by handwritten letter and up until quite recently I used to get an occasional handwritten card from my daughter, which was lovely. (She's busy with a baby now, so I'm not expecting any more for the foreseeable future.)
Ooo, I could go on for ages!
Having said that, I've got several letters to write to people I heard from at Christmas and because a lot of what I say will be the same to all of them I will be doing them on the computer. Printing out and posting though, rather than emailing. There's nothing like receiving a letter in the post and we get (and send) so very few these days.
I'm very glad to hear about @Baptist Trainfan 's grandson and trust that my granddaughter (4 months old) will learn to write by hand. Until I saw this thread it never occurred to me that she wouldn't.
From time to time, though, I get my sets of pens out and rediscover the pleasure of calligraphy. My aim is to be able to one day produce an illustrated piece, though I'm quite some way from achieving that.
It was nice having handwritten letters - much more personal and especially getting a letter from a friend or relative abroad, with a foreign stamp on the envelope. The letters of the past, and indeed love letters, are a thing of history now that even email is in decline, except in office communications, and people are so much more into texting.
Not having to do it saves me from the ridiculous shallow judgementalism some people display about it.
Anything that I need someone else to read is far better off typed - I sometimes struggle to read my own hand writing. I often wonder if that's a result of my primary school teachers constantly taking the pencil from my left hand and putting it in my right so that I would write properly. Of course, when I got my doctorate my hand writing really deteriorated, because a doctor (even if not medical) with legible hand writing is simply not allowed.
I have an ‘O level in calligraphy 😇
Handwriting is not dead, but it is declining.
Actually what I blame it on is changing schools at the age of 7. Each school championed a completely different handwriting style.
With me it's just borderline dysgraphia. Pens and pencils in my hands do not do what my brain tells them to, at any usable pace. I can do calligraphy as long as I'm willing to spend thirty seconds on each letter.
Neither is much impressed by my handwriting.
I’m pretty certain I have dysgraphia as well. As well as illegible handwriting and the inability to draw anything recognisable, I have issues with other fine motor issues. Only an hour or two ago I was getting very frustrated and uttering some very un-Christian words just trying to fit a new watch strap.
As a child, I always had (and to a great extent still have) a genuine aversion to writing anything down in pen or pencil, which I recently found is a common trait in dysgraphia. I was so pleased when I discovered word processors. By then I was in my 20s, so too late to do anything about school work (where I’d been written off as “lazy”) but I was at least able to write some very good essays when I trained as a Reader
I am lefthanded but when asked by teachers at schools whether they should train me to write right-handed, my mother said to leave me to do my own thing as I seemed to be managing fine. I'm grateful for that. A few years earlier I'd have had no choice.
I loved writing and had an array of fountain pens and a range of different coloured inks. I was eventually told firmly to stick to black or blue for schoolwork after some experiments with lilac, red, green and brown. We weren't allowed to use ballpoints until we got to the sixth form. In primary school we'd start off with chalk on slates (yes, really) then pencil, after which as we progressed up the school we were permitted real fountain pens. My first was a little red pen that I loved. I've no idea what happened to it; it seemed to get lost somewhere in the move to England.
The other thing is the cramp. Writing for any length of time is painful. And yes, I do hold the pen the right way. It's another dysgraphia thing. I also can't draw to save my life.
It's a miracle I can play any musical instruments. Even there though I never get to be flawless. But because it's down to control problems, it's not a case of there being particular bits I tend to mess up. I can play a wrong note anywhere, completely randomly, in a piece I know well, that I don't generally play a wrong note.
What I do remember is that at first everything was written in pencil. When I first started writing in ink, it was with a dip pen with an “ink well“ in the schooldesk to dip the pen into. I distinctly remember the gradual change in the colour of the writing from firm blue when the pen had first been dipped to very pale blue as the ink was running out.
My handwriting was poor, and I can remember my mother, sometime after I had graduated to ink, teaching me handwriting as she had been taught, and my style tends to be that of an older generation.
I still have an Osmiroid fountain pen (mine is maroon) from early in my secondary school days. It has lain idle in a drawer for decades, and then recently I was able to obtain a new nib for it, and I find that I really enjoy writing with it.
Later on I graduated to a Parker 45, and my current Parker that still tends to be my first choice for writing. Various turns of events mean that I now have three working Parker pens (the third is a Parker IM), and regularly use two (one for red ink).
Most of us brought our own ink bottles. Much scope for joy when they leaked in your bag and over your fingers...
Same story, I switched school at the same age and went from Continuous Cursive to Half Cursive (at 6 I was winning awards for penmanship, but after switching started regularly suffering from cramp).
Oddly enough, it looks just like my mother's, though as far as I know she had nothing to do with teaching me how to write. I have to look at the subject before I can tell which of us wrote something.
Some of us have difficulty even doing that
Of course, not writing on a level desk/table may have been part of the problem.
People said it was a good sermon, though.
Also I must have one of the few jobs where handwriting forms a regular part of my job ... I work in a public library and each day I scan barcodes from maybe 60-80 (at a guess) books that have arrived in our branch as reservations for our customers ... the computer displays the name of the person who has reserved the book and the reservation expiry date, these details are handwritten onto slips of paper to be put inside the book. The books are then arranged on the reservation shelf in alphabetical order of customer surnames. Similarly when a book is returned to our branch that is required by a customer at another branch, one again we handwrite the name of the library where it's needed, and attach with an elastic band.
But I mostly use my device for outlining, rough ideas and journalling. It seems easier to work out creative ideas in a pen-and-paper (like) environment, whereas a blank computer screen seems to suppress them. For me, anyway.
After trying others, I currently use a kindle scribe, because it also allows me to highlight and export quotes from books that I might like to cite in my own books or articles, and has a “sticky note” function that lets you add some jotted comments to a passage. But many folk prefer other devices of this kind.
In terms of the actual quality of my handwriting, I think it is better on the device - it’s so easy to erase and rewrite that I am becoming obsessively neat!
To be fair, the cursive used in old documents always needed to be taught. I know I find it very hard to read anything Victorian or older and I write in cursive.
I'd be asking why the software didn't print labels with all that information on it.
I now do a form of scribble. Up to nearly 8 years ago I was a minuting secretary. I had to translate my scribbled notes into a 3 to 4 paged typed document as soon as possible after the meeting before I forgot what I had scribbled about
These days, there are a number of solutions for automagically digitizing handwritten notes, probably with OCR and all the rest of it. I haven't used any of them, so can't pass judgement, but it's possible that they would make a useful addition to my workflow.
On a similar note, I assume knowledge of Shorthand is also vanishingly rare.
My sister and I stil exchange handwritten letters between Wales and Australia, but we write the address on the envelope in capital letters for the benefit of postal workers.
I like writing with a sharp pencil, so I start with my pencils on my left and move each one to the right once it's no longer sharp.
However, I am increasing photographing material rather than taking notes. I came home from my last archive trip with 138 photographs, only 2 pages of notes, and only two pencils to re-sharpen.
Not in my experience. Two of mine are still at Secondary school and loads of stuff is handwritten. Homework is generally typed if at all possible. Eldest is a student at university and gets through loads of paper.
Sixth form may use A4 and ring binders, depending on subject. GCSE and earlier will have exercise books so won't have much use for them.
Its a bugger getting old!
To me, typing makes more sense for writing in large quantities, and writing fast notes, but then I can touch type much faster (and more legibly!) than I can handwrite. And it's more sustainable in terms of being able to keep going without my fingers getting painful, cramped, overextending, etc. Like @Lamb Chopped, I have EDS and I notice the impact of handwriting more as I get older - but I think generally, for most people, the tapping of fingers on a keyboard is easier in the long run than handwriting for hours and hours.
What fascinates me is how fast young people can type on their phone. I find touch-typing on a laptop keyboard far easier, but I guess it's what you're used to, because I see students create significant amounts of writing in a fairly short time just from typing on their tiny phone screen.
Maybe my Year 11 grandson will ask me for paper and ring binders next September when he is in the Sixth Form. I agree that he uses exercise books in class now, but homework is done online.
My college student writes a lot of notes by hand, makes essay outlines by hand, and so on. Essays are mostly typed, except for the ones in exams. At high school, they seem to get a lot of printed sheets - forms to help take notes, write up experiments, and so on - but don't use much in the way of the reams of lined paper that I used to get through. I'd say my high school kid's work was about evenly split between things on his school chromebook and things on paper.
It depends on the document for me. If it was written by a scribe in a standard hand developed for legibility in the last few hundred years - chancery cursive, round hand, Spencerian script, etc - I can read it. Secretary hand of the 16th century is a little hard, but I get better as I get into the swing of a particular document. With letters and manuscripts written by ordinary people, it's a lot the same as with contemporary handwriting for me; the messier it is and the further away they get from the standard hand of their day, the harder it is to read.
FWIW, French children never learn to print - they learn cursive from the start. My son starts next year (age 6).
I still handwrite shopping lists, to do lists, the "we're running out of..." list in the kitchen, notes in my diary, birthday cards, and postcards when on holiday. My writing is legible, but tends to be about 3mm high.🔎 I don't think I've handwritten anything for work beyond notes on a scrap pad since I got the current job in 2015.
I can still write Italic and am currently doing a garden journal cum poetry workbook. The thing is to get a pen which is a pleasure to use - I have three.