No one can say precisely how much handwriting has declined, but a
British survey of 2,000 people gave some idea of the extent of the damage. According
to the study, one in three respondents had not written anything by hand in the
previous six months. On average they had not put pen to paper in the previous
41 days. People undoubtedly write more than they suppose, but one thing is
certain: with information technology we can write so fast that handwritten copy
is fast disappearing in the workplace. This minor revolution is causing quite a
stir but it is by no means the first of its kind. Ever since writing was most
likely first invented, in Mesopotamia in about 4000BC, it has been through plenty
of technological upheavals. The tools and media used for writing have changed
many times: from Sumerian Tablets to the Phoenician Alphabet of the first millennium BC; from the invention
of paper in China about 1,000 years later to the first codex, with its
handwritten sheets bound together to make a book; from the invention of
printing in the 15th century to the appearance of ballpoint pens in the 1940s. So
at first sight the battle between keyboards and pens might seem to be no more
than the latest twist in a very long story, yet another new tool that we will
end up getting used to. What really matters is not how we produce a text but
its quality, we are often told. When we are reading, few of us wonder whether a
text was written by hand or word-processed. But experts on writing do not
agree: pens and keyboards bring into play very different cognitive processes. Handwriting
is a complex task which requires various skills: feeling the pen and paper,
moving the writing implement, and directing movement by thought. Children take
several years to master this precise motor exercise: you need to hold the
scripting tool firmly while moving it in such a way as to leave a different
mark for each letter. Operating a keyboard is not the same at all: all you have
to do is press the right key. It is easy enough for children to learn very
fast, but above all the movement is exactly the same whatever the letter. It’s
a big change. Handwriting is the result of a singular movement of the body,
typing is not. Furthermore pens and keyboards use very different media. Word-processing
is a normative, standardized tool. Obviously you can change the page layout and
switch fonts, but you cannot invent a form not foreseen by the software. Paper
allows much greater graphic freedom: you can write on either side, keep setting
margins or not, superimposing lines or distorting them. There is nothing to
make you follow a set pattern. It has three dimensions too, so it can be folded,
cut out, stapled or glued. An electronic text does not leave the same mark as
its handwritten counterpart either. When you draft a text on the screen, you
can change it as much as you like but there is no record of your editing. The
software does keep track of the changes somewhere, but users cannot access
them. With a pen and paper, it’s all there. Words crossed out or corrected,
bits scribbled in the margin and later additions are there for good, leaving a
visual and tactile record of your work and its creative stages. But does all
this really change our relation to reading and writing? The advocates of
digital documents are convinced it makes no difference. “What we want from
writing is cognitive automaticity, the ability to think as fast as possible,
freed as much as can be from the strictures of whichever technology we must use
to record our thoughts. This is what typing does for millions. It allows us to
go faster, not because we want everything faster in our hyped-up age, but for
the opposite reason: we want more time to think.” Some neuroscientists are not so
sure. They think that giving up handwriting will affect how future generations
learn to read. Drawing each letter by hand substantially improves subsequent recognition. Drawing each letter by
hand improves our grasp of the alphabet because we really have a “body memory”.
Although learning to write by hand does seem to play an important part in
reading, no one can say whether the tool alters the quality of the text itself.
Do we express ourselves more freely and clearly with a pen than with a
keyboard? Does it make any difference to the way the brain works? Some studies
suggest this may indeed be the case. They say that
note-taking with a pen, rather than a laptop, gives students a better grasp of
the subject. Students who took longhand notes were better able to answer
questions on the lecture than those using a laptop. For the scientists, the
reason is clear: those working on paper rephrased information as they took
notes, which required them to carry out a preliminary process of summarizing
and comprehension; in contrast, those working on a keyboard tended to take a
lot of notes, sometimes even making a literal transcript, but avoided what is
known as “desirable difficulty”. Handwriting is not a routine exercise but is a
learning process in cognitive development. It’s not just a question of writing
a letter: it also involves drawing, acquiring a sense of harmony and balance,
with rounded forms. There is an element of dancing when we write, a melody in
the message, which adds emotion to the text. After all that’s why emoticons
were invented, to restore a little emotion to text messages. Writing has always
been seen as expressing our personality. With handwriting we come closer to the
intimacy of the author. That’s why we are more powerfully moved by the
manuscript of a poem than by the same work simply printed in a book. Each
person’s hand is different: the gesture is charged with emotion, lending it a
special charm. Which no doubt explains the narcissistic relationship we often
entertain with our own scrawl. Handwriting plays an important part in everyday
life. We write by hand more often than we think. Writing is still very much
alive in our surroundings: in advertising, signing, graffiti and street
demonstrations. In a certain way, they compensate our soulless keyboards.
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