My Handwriting Is OK

axxuy

Replying to: Technology Killed My Handwriting

I’m just old enough to have learned cursive in school. I guess there were a few more classes to learn it after me, but not many. I have never had remarkable penmanship, one way or another.

This was all firmly in the computer era. All the essays and papers I turned in were written on a computer in 12pt Times New Roman and printed. Computers and word processing software have been the default way to do “real” writing for as long as I can remember. Handwriting is for taking notes. It’s for writing grocery lists. It’s for small, ephemeral bits and pieces of writing, not anything long enough to make a point¹. And that was just as well. Handwriting was slow and uncomfortable for me.

Fountain Pens

Then in college I was introduced to fountain pens. It’s a fun hobby, with so many different styles and designs, and oh my goodness all the inks. But the real revelation for me was just how much more comfortable and pleasant is was to write that way. I’m left handed², you see. And the mechanics of writing mean that when you use your left hand to write with a normal pen, you are digging down into the paper the whole time. No wonder it’s so tiring. So when I started using fountain pens, suddenly it actually felt nice to write. These pens don’t need any more pressure than their own weight; your hand just glides across the page. On top of that, the nature of the community of hobbyists surrounding them means that you can easily end up with a bunch of fancy pens that now you need to “justify” having.

The upshot of all this is that I do regularly write things by hand even now that school is well behind me. I wrote the first draft of this blog post out by hand. I’ve been doing this for years now. Writing by hand is a normal part of everyday life for me, even though I am surrounded by computers and keyboards.

The Decline and Fall ^{[citation needed]} of Handwriting

I suspect that I am unusual in this respect, and that Matt’s experience is the more “normal” one. But I went down a research rabbit hole to find out if that’s actually the case. Or rather, I tried to. I was not able to find anything substantial via Google or DuckDuckGo on how common writing by hand is these days. I turned up plenty of articles about how writing by hand is better for your memory and brain than typing on a computer, and those all had an assumption that people don’t do the latter as much—but not citations. I found anecdotes, but not surveys or studies. I wasn’t exhaustive by any means. Maybe I just needed to reformulate my search terms one more time, needed one particular keyword.

It feels reasonable to say that people don’t write by hand as much as they used to. It’s intuitive that keyboards and phones have displaced it. But what feels reasonable and intuitive, and what is true are different things. I would feel much more comfortable if I could find actual data. Indeed, I feel a little suspicious that I can’t.

Confessions of a Pen Snob

There’s another thing that I’m uncomfortable with. Something I’m a little reluctant to write about. It’s easy for me to feel a little smug and superior that I write by hand. And there’s another layer brought in by my hobby: I use fancy, nice pens, that are better than everyone with their ballpoints. There’s no good reason for it. No, the studies about the benefits of handwriting don’t count. This is a feeling that is simply born out of “I do this and they don’t, therefore I am better than them.” That’s what sidetracked me into the research session. I realized that I didn’t have any evidence that “most people” don’t actually write as much as I do.

Now, this sense of “superiority” was not to Matt in particular, but in general. And it wasn’t really serious. It was only a passing thought, a flash of feeling, nothing in so many words as I’ve put it in here³. But I don’t like how easy it was to feel over something not only trivial but baseless.

I want to think that kindness is always the default. If not for the world at large (surely that would look very different if it was), then at least for me. Intrusive thoughts are normal and they don’t usually bother me (unless I purposefully dwell on them to write like this). But they are an uncomfortable fact of life.

Conclusion

To finish, I suppose I’ll circle back around to the actual topic of Matt’s post. My handwriting, after all of this, is ok. It’s serviceable, but I have to work to decipher words I’ve written too often to call it good. I have a tab with a handwriting course open in my browser. I tell myself that someday I’ll take some time to do some real deliberate practice. It’s hard to find the motivation. There is so much to do, and writing letter-shapes over and over again is just not very fun. It’s also rare that anyone else needs to read my handwriting. It’s actually common for me to write things and not come back to read them. Most of the entries in my journal, for example.

But quality handwriting or not, it is nice to know that I can get my thoughts out with nothing more than a piece of paper and a pen or pencil. I agree with Matt’s closing point. Do write by hand. It’s worthwhile. But I’ll add: don’t worry too much if it’s not pretty. It doesn’t have to be, it just has to be legible.

Reply to this post via email