The Demise Of Handwriting

[GabrielleDuVent]

http://i1128.photobucket.com/albums/m496/gclef1114/Tutuguans/IMAG0211-1_zpsa861f8a2.jpg

 

Personally, the family scanner requires booting up a hefty scanning software and then waiting downstairs then running back upstairs to see if it scanned, then cropping and editing, then uploading the image. And my phone camera usually cuts out part of the message.

 

 

The percentage of the population who have something worthwhile to write about is the same as it ever was. The fraction of those people who actually get to write and publish is going up, owing to access to blogging etc.

 

Unfortunately the signal to noise ratio is worse for the same reason, which means you have to put a bit more effort in to sort the wheat from the chaff. Pretty handwriting is not a guarantee the content is worthwhile anyway.

 

 

This, and...

 

 

...this.

 

That's the thing I'm trying to say. I've felt that typed words are, in the end, "cheap"; easy to write, easy to delete, easy to forget about. Heck, I have over thousand posts on here and I hardly remember 1/3 of what I posted. And they're the product of my own brain!

 

Written words, on the other hand... I remember a little more vividly, and they are "more worthy", simply because we tend to be a little more self-critical of what we write by our hand. Emotions are intensified; logical sequences become more solid. In the world of vocable abundance, a lot of what we read today online have very little meaning and a lot of drivel. So much so that a good majority of us don't finish an article we read online, while we quite often do in print (someone actually did a study on that, published it online, then moaned that probably 10% or something would actually read the entire study... oh the irony).

 

If we do not feel that we have worthy things to write about with pen and paper, we won't write with pen and paper. I think all of us would be a lot more careful and selective on Twitter if, say, we had to handwrite every Twitter message. There are a lot of things I definitely won't write on paper that I'd type about.

 

My mate told me once that it is much harder to say things on paper than online, when we first started corresponding. He said that saying "I love you" is not that difficult; typing makes one a little self-conscious but that moment passes quickly; but writing it with pen and paper requires a lot of courage. Since typing is "cheaper" for some of us, we become more vocal; but it might be that we mean it less intensely.

 

And when we instinctively know that some words shouldn't be said lightly, we won't say it. We won't write it. And if the topic isn't worthy of writing, we won't actually take pen and paper and write about it either. Honestly, do you reckon that teenagers today would steadily write about Angry Birds if they were forced to correspond by hand only? I doubt it; recalling my teenage years, which was only a few years ago, I most definitely would not have written home about Badger Badger flash movie. But a touching Merchant Ivory film, I definitely would have written home about.

 

There are a lot of silly news online today, but most respected newspapers have very serious tone (most of the time). I feel - instinctively - that we have a gut feeling, inside, that words on paper must be treated with more respect than virtual words.

[GClef]

P.S. Considering the subject in this thread... Why are we all typing and not posting tutuguans (as proposed by GClef)... Just a thought

 

http://i1128.photobucket.com/albums/m496/gclef1114/Tutuguans/IMAG0212-1_zps862f511a.jpg

[GClef]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://i1128.photobucket.com/albums/m496/gclef1114/Tutuguans/IMAG0215-1_zps7d90a325.jpg

[GClef]

http://i1128.photobucket.com/albums/m496/gclef1114/photobucket-53930-1362095276983_zps88ce7e73.jpg

 

Yes, this is a re-post from another thread.

Edited September 18, 2013 by GClef

[Octo]

http://i1128.photobucket.com/albums/m496/gclef1114/Tutuguans/IMAG0211-1_zpsa861f8a2.jpg

 

As one of those in the USA still limited to dial-up connections to the internet, I find threads loaded with images take a LONG time to download. A long thread full of images may take 15 minutes. I enjoy reading the script or seeing photos, but there is a trade-off between time and value

[GClef]

As one of those in the USA still limited to dial-up connections to the internet, I find threads loaded with images take a LONG time to download. A long thread full of images may take 15 minutes. I enjoy reading the script or seeing photos, but there is a trade-off between time and value

A-ha! Finally!

For this reason, I really do try to not flood threads that I didn't start with tutuguans.

If you land on one of mine, and you have a "slow" connection...it's gonna be a while.

But a savvy poster will remove the images in the quoted post, so as not to repeat the image, and take up space.

Edited September 18, 2013 by GClef

[smiorgan]

 

Personally, the family scanner requires booting up a hefty scanning software and then waiting downstairs then running back upstairs to see if it scanned, then cropping and editing, then uploading the image. And my phone camera usually cuts out part of the message.

 

 

That's the thing I'm trying to say. I've felt that typed words are, in the end, "cheap"; easy to write, easy to delete, easy to forget about. Heck, I have over thousand posts on here and I hardly remember 1/3 of what I posted. And they're the product of my own brain!

 

Written words, on the other hand... I remember a little more vividly, and they are "more worthy", simply because we tend to be a little more self-critical of what we write by our hand. Emotions are intensified; logical sequences become more solid. In the world of vocable abundance, a lot of what we read today online have very little meaning and a lot of drivel. So much so that a good majority of us don't finish an article we read online, while we quite often do in print (someone actually did a study on that, published it online, then moaned that probably 10% or something would actually read the entire study... oh the irony).

 

If we do not feel that we have worthy things to write about with pen and paper, we won't write with pen and paper. I think all of us would be a lot more careful and selective on Twitter if, say, we had to handwrite every Twitter message. There are a lot of things I definitely won't write on paper that I'd type about.

 

My mate told me once that it is much harder to say things on paper than online, when we first started corresponding. He said that saying "I love you" is not that difficult; typing makes one a little self-conscious but that moment passes quickly; but writing it with pen and paper requires a lot of courage. Since typing is "cheaper" for some of us, we become more vocal; but it might be that we mean it less intensely.

 

And when we instinctively know that some words shouldn't be said lightly, we won't say it. We won't write it. And if the topic isn't worthy of writing, we won't actually take pen and paper and write about it either. Honestly, do you reckon that teenagers today would steadily write about Angry Birds if they were forced to correspond by hand only? I doubt it; recalling my teenage years, which was only a few years ago, I most definitely would not have written home about Badger Badger flash movie. But a touching Merchant Ivory film, I definitely would have written home about.

 

There are a lot of silly news online today, but most respected newspapers have very serious tone (most of the time). I feel - instinctively - that we have a gut feeling, inside, that words on paper must be treated with more respect than virtual words.

 

This is what I read from your argument:

 

1. Handwriting and handwritten notes are more memorable, have more emotional resonance and require a bit more thought because the medium they’re written in has no delete key.

2. The content of handwritten notes is therefore more credible and worthwhile than typed messages.

3. People who use only typed communication have fewer worthwhile things to say than people who use handwriting.

 

#1 is fair and to be expected from this community, #2 is fallacious and biased due to #1, #3 is elitist (bleep) adopted by the people who believe #2.

 

Also, the general tone of this thread is

 

4. If only our schools would teach cursive our children would grow up to be better people and not the slovenly wastrels they are.

 

I’m sure nobody here really meant that, but that’s what is coming across.

 

And yeah, typing is cheap, but revising is also cheap. You don’t know what I put in my first draft.

Edited September 18, 2013 by smiorgan

[HDoug]

I've posted this before so excuse me if you've already seen it. It's a longish article by Daniel Chandler, professor of media and semantics at Aberystwyth University (Wales, UK) about the differences between writing by hand and by keyboard.

 

"Planners tend to think of writing primarily as a means of recording or communicating ideas which they already have clear in their minds; Discoverers tend to experience writing primarily as a way of 'discovering' what they want to say."

 

Now, which one is which?

 

The Phenomenology of Writing by Hand

 

Doug

[RJR]

 

Warning: a longish and possibly coma inducing post; please do not read if you are suffering from sleep deprivation or have consumed alcohol recently.

 

 

Gleaned (with bias) from various news sources

 

According to a 2012 study of 2,000 Brits by print and post specialist Docmail, one in three Brits describe handwriting as ‘nice’ but not something they would want to do every day and a sixth of Brits don’t think handwriting should still be taught in schools.

 

Meanwhile back in the USA; an April 2013 article in the Washington Post states, “...most states (are) adopting new national standards that don’t require such instruction... cursive could soon be eliminated from most public schools. Since 2010, 45 states ... have adopted the Common Core standards, which do not require cursive instruction but leave it up to the individual states and districts to decide whether they want to teach it”. As it happens, cursive is not on the tests that rate schools under the No Child Left Behind law, and increasingly schools gear their curricula to excel at those tests, says Kathleen Wright, a national project manager for Zaner-Bloser, a publisher of education writing materials in an ABC news article.

 

Morgan Polikoff, assistant professor of education at the University of Southern California's Rossier School of Education, told The New York Times, "Cursive should be allowed to die. In fact, it's already dying, despite having been taught for decades”.

 

Steve Graham, an education professor at Arizona State University and one of the top U.S. experts on handwriting instruction, said he has heard every argument for and against cursive. “The truth is that cursive writing is pretty much gone, except in the adult world for people in their 60s and 70s.”

 

Should we care?

 

In a June 28th 2013 article, CBS news sites a 2010 study finding that preschool students who wrote out letters rather than just viewing them showed changes in brain activity when they later viewed those letters. "Coupled with other work from our lab, we interpret this as the motor system augmenting visual processing," said study researcher Karin Harman James of Indiana University in a statement. "In the case of learning letters, printing helps children recognize letters."

 

From a Jan, 28, 2011 piece by ABC news, ..."But handwriting seems, based on empirical evidence from neuroscience, to play a larger role in the visual recognition and learning of letters.” says associate professor Anne Mangen at the University of Stavanger's Reading Centre. Mangen points to an experiment involving two groups of adults in which participants were taught a new, foreign alphabet. The group that learned the letters by hand consistently scored better on recognition tests than those who learned with a keyboard. Brain scans of the hands-on group also showed greater activity in the part of the brain that controls language comprehension, motor-related processes and speech-associated gestures. "Now we have studies that show for some important aspects of reading, digital technology may not be as important as handwriting," she says.

 

Offered or your consideration,

RJR

[Unky]

Having taken a course on teaching students with dyslexia this past summer, there is research from Yale University stating that cursive is a much more efficient way to write especially for those whom are dyslexic. There is also research explaining that writing in cursive helps children put meaning to both phonemes(letter/sound relationships) and words. In Ohio there has been legislation passed to identify and intervene children with dyslexia. The woman who co-wrote the legislation will be speaking to our congress and cursive will be one many topics brought up.

[proton007]

 

This is what I read from your argument:

 

1. Handwriting and handwritten notes are more memorable, have more emotional resonance and require a bit more thought because the medium they’re written in has no delete key.

2. The content of handwritten notes is therefore more credible and worthwhile than typed messages.

3. People who use only typed communication have fewer worthwhile things to say than people who use handwriting.

 

#1 is fair and to be expected from this community, #2 is fallacious and biased due to #1, #3 is elitist (bleep) adopted by the people who believe #2.

 

Also, the general tone of this thread is

 

4. If only our schools would teach cursive our children would grow up to be better people and not the slovenly wastrels they are.

 

I’m sure nobody here really meant that, but that’s what is coming across.

 

And yeah, typing is cheap, but revising is also cheap. You don’t know what I put in my first draft.

 

Thats one way of looking at it.

 

I look at it in the following way.

 

Modern technology makes it possible to convey ideas instantaneously. Type in the message, press 'send' and its on its way.

 

In comparison, when you don't have this convenience, you need to find a place to sit down and write a message. It may happen now, or in a few hours. The thought ruminates, and refines itself in the mind. Then you get to put it on paper.

 

For those involved in developing devices, haptic feedback is a major issue. The feeling of pressing an 'A' and a 'T' on the keyboard is the same.

On the contrary, its totally different when writing the same letters. Close your eyes, and if you randomly press a letter there's no way to tell which letter you pressed. In writing you can tell what you wrote.

 

A typewriter sits somewhere in the middle. Its not handwritten, but is permanent because its on paper.

 

A friend of mine who works in journalism has experienced the transition from the print media to the online one. According to him:

-- The nature of online media is ephemeral.

-- Changes can be made as and when needed, even the entire article can be redacted, as opposed to print where its permanent once printed. You can publish a corrigendum later, but the previous version is permanent and can be used as evidence.

-- The drop in editing standards on a lot of publications can be attributed to this phenomenon to some extent.

-- Lazy investigative journalism is also somewhat related. Google is everyone's friend, a lot of articles just end up being a rehash of some other publication.

-- Its easier to write opinion rather than report, because (1) typing and pressing send is easier than ever and (2) the consequences may not be as serious as in the past.

 

 

To me, 'typing' and pressing 'post' is more akin to a vocal conversation, not a written one.

Edited September 19, 2013 by proton007

[dcwaites]

It's not just handwriting that is disappearing, but reading and writing of any sort.

I am peturbed by the number of reviews of things, including pens, that consist of somebody raving on randomly at a video camera for 10, 15, 20... minutes, and which is then posted on YouTube, when a succinct 100 or 200 word written review would have sufficed. I could then read the review in 1 or 2 minutes, and do something else productive for the rest of the 20 minutes.

[inkstainedruth]

It's not just handwriting that is disappearing, but reading and writing of any sort.

I am peturbed by the number of reviews of things, including pens, that consist of somebody raving on randomly at a video camera for 10, 15, 20... minutes, and which is then posted on YouTube, when a succinct 100 or 200 word written review would have sufficed. I could then read the review in 1 or 2 minutes, and do something else productive for the rest of the 20 minutes.

I think I might disagree with you theren (at least to some extent). For some people, reading the review will be enough -- but for other people, seeing the demonstration is more useful. I'm a visual person: seeing some other person show me how to do something is often a more effective method for me to learn something than to read about it (at least for the first time). After I have seen the basics I'm more comfortable with then turning to written material.

Here's a non-pen example: knitting. I do better if I can see good diagrams in a book, or watch a how-to video, for a particular stitch or technique. When I was working on a sock pattern that had a crochet edge on the cuff, I went to a bookstore and looked through a bunch of crochet books to see which ones had the best (IMO) diagrams, since I didn't know how to crochet at all.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[smiorgan]

@HDoug -- your link seems to take me back to this thread

 

@RJR -- thanks for that. Note the evidence is still empirical, but still, it seems to differentiate between handwriting and keyboard as acquired cognitive tasks. One comment -- I inferred from the 2010 study mentioned that the children had better recognition of their own handwriting. Did they do better with each other’s handwriting? The 2011 study (last para) would suggest yes.

 

@Proton -- a few comments

 

You trivialise typing -- not everyone hunts and pecks. When I type a letter T, I use my left index finger, and when I type A I use my little finger on the same hand. I do this while looking at the screen at what I type. Granted it’s not as romantic as handwriting but it still has elements of an acquired cognitive task, like handwriting.

 

Also you are mixing up the formation of ideas and the conveyance. People who actually write electronically use the same process to formulate and publish ideas -- find a quiet place, write more than one draft, think before you publish.

 

Your comment about typing and pressing post being akin to verbal communication is well made. Pressing send is easy and immediate, and therefore less thought is put into content in many cases. However the realm of electronic communication is not one homogeneous mass of voices, but has several different modes. I have different uses at work for

• instant messaging
• email
• corporate discussion boards
• announcements
• blogs
• wikis
• technical reports.

As you go down that list the transient nature of the message decreases and the value increases, and most importantly is subject to greater peer review.

 

As for transitions in journalism, there will always be editors, there will always be hacks; and editorial standards are a completely different argument to whether handwriting improves content.

 

The problem with electronic communication is that people are not trained on how to write for that media, and so the message delivered is ephemeral and low value, and therefore the medium is perceived as ephemeral and low value.

 

So yeah, handwriting is a great developmental tool for children and should be used -- but the internet isn't going away, so while you're teaching kids to handwrite teach them how to write for the web as well.

 

On a personal note I despise computers, looking at a screen all day, working in an open plan office with all that noise. Handwriting ideas is one way to reduce distractions. OTOH I can take meeting minutes either by hand or touch-typing, and the content tends to be the same -- so I don’t think I have any issue with recognition.

Edited September 19, 2013 by smiorgan

[proton007]

@smiorgan

 

I agree with your points in relation to work, but I also feel a lot of the technology is devoted to improving work. Yes, technology has advantages (as you mention) at work, but when talking about writing in general, it also involves personal writing. Blogs, for instance, do not have the same appeal for me as a handwritten journal.

 

The idea of the point about journalism is how technology has affected our way of work. The process is the same, but the weightage of different tasks of the same process have changed. Proof reading for instance, is not as important because the scope of making changes is broader, and we can rely on automated checks.

I have felt that these changes have a detrimental effect on the production and consumption of ideas, but others may have different (potentially better) views.

 

As for your point on touch typing, yes, I do the same and agree on the cognitive part, but its just not as personal IMO.

 

I just find its a choice ultimately. There are those who are attached to their handwriting, and others who see it as an archaic way of communication.

The point is, what's the aim of writing? It may be different for everyone. Some view it as a therapeutic activity, others as a way to think, and some as a means of getting a message across. The opinion on the decline of handwriting will thus, vary accordingly.

[smiorgan]

@smiorgan

 

I agree with your points in relation to work, but I also feel a lot of the technology is devoted to improving work. Yes, technology has advantages (as you mention) at work, but when talking about writing in general, it also involves personal writing. Blogs, for instance, do not have the same appeal for me as a handwritten journal.

 

The idea of the point about journalism is how technology has affected our way of work. The process is the same, but the weightage of different tasks of the same process have changed. Proof reading for instance, is not as important because the scope of making changes is broader, and we can rely on automated checks.

I have felt that these changes have a detrimental effect on the production and consumption of ideas, but others may have different (potentially better) views.

 

As for your point on touch typing, yes, I do the same and agree on the cognitive part, but its just not as personal IMO.

 

I just find its a choice ultimately. There are those who are attached to their handwriting, and others who see it as an archaic way of communication.

The point is, what's the aim of writing? It may be different for everyone. Some view it as a therapeutic activity, others as a way to think, and some as a means of getting a message across. The opinion on the decline of handwriting will thus, vary accordingly.

 

Yes, I broadly agree, technology has changed the way we approach tasks.

 

However the main change is more content, everywhere. I don't know if the change in editorial process is workflow itself or the amount of time an editor has for one task, because the perceived effort (by people paying for the overheads, not necessarily for the task executor) is less. We're all being challenged to do less with more.

 

One of our managers is fond of this anecdote:

 

"In the old days of sending a telex, you'd spend the morning drafting the text and the afternoon sending it, and you'd view that as a good day's work. These days you just send an email, and bang, five minutes and it's done".

 

This is a fallacy that ignores all the peripheral activity in composing the message -- talking to others and getting their approval, writing and revising, etc. The email does not only take 5 minutes to compose -- if it did, then the content is probably not worth reading.

 

Trouble is, we're swamped with low value communication. This is partly self-limiting as the author of a low-value communication will tend to be ignored, and therefore forced to improve when "playing the email game". But at the same time the author has an expectation that they have been heard, meaning that when their email goes ignored it reinforces silo mentalities.

 

Yes, I've been looking at this a lot lately.

[msnovtue]

Maybe it's just me, but it seems that the "Death of Cursive" is very much a US phenomenon. Having just spent time in part of Europe coincedentally when school was starting, I was delighted to find that not only were parents and kids buying up pens, pencils and paper, fountain pens were on many students shopping lists as well, and there were a nice variety of lower priced, decent quality pens available.

 

And for the record, I hate touchscreens. I have never had very good fine motor control in my hands--my handwriting is terrible, and typing-wise, I am the Typo Queen. But nothing is as frustrating as trying to use a touchscreen--especially a small one like on a cell phone. I can never actually hit what I want. I love my technology, but I very deliberately bought a Samsung Galaxy Note Tablet--it comes with a nice, fine-point stylus that is also used for its writing app. I see no reason I can't mix new and old theories, and frankly, it works quite well for me. Why does it have to be one or the other?

[RobertP]

Having taken a course on teaching students with dyslexia this past summer, there is research from Yale University stating that cursive is a much more efficient way to write especially for those whom are dyslexic. There is also research explaining that writing in cursive helps children put meaning to both phonemes(letter/sound relationships) and words.

 

Just for clarification. "More efficient" than what exactly?

 

More efficient than some form of electronic text capture, yes I can see that. Cursive as opposed to some form of printing I can't see, I'm afraid. My eldest daughter has severe dyslexia and struggled hugely with the cursive taught at school. She fared a lot better when printing, both reading and writing. Her dyslexia coach actually helped her work out a clear and neat way to print to help with school.

 

My son also has mild dyslexia and also struggled with cursive. He could read and write cursive ok, but it was hard work, slow and made the rest of his learning experience tough. Once he got out of the grades where cursive was compulsory, he adapted to a cursive/printing cross which flows great for him and is extremely neat and legible.

 

Yes, it was great that they were taught cursive and learning the basics helped them both considerably in developing a clear and legible personal handwriting style. But continually forcing cursive for cursive's sake is taking things too far in my opinion. For some it works great, for others not so well. Just as my experience as a left handed school starter in the early 70's taught me, there is no one right way that suits everybody. I was forced to have my paper vertical on the desk as that was the "right" thing to do. I can't write like that, I have my paper turned at about 60 - 70 degrees and write closer to vertical than horizontal. That way I personally can write well, legibly and don't smudge anything. The teachers refused to let me though as that was not the "correct" way to write.

 

As I mentioned in my earlier post, all three of my kids mix hand writing and hand sketching with all forms of electronic communication. They chat and text, and write (some) essays on their laptops, plus hand write, hand draw and hand decorate school/work project books.

 

A healthy mixture of both is key these days. Using computers is an amazing way to learn a huge amount and writing in Word or whatever helps get information down quickly and is easy to edit. But taking the time to hand write drafts or at least the bullet point structure for a report supports the thought processes required to get the content right.

 

Trouble is, we're swamped with low value communication.

 

That is a big problem. When I look at the constant stream of low value blurb that, for example, my niece produces on facebook and twitter I am heartbroken. She is a bright girl (well actually she is nearly 30 now!), has a degree and a decent job in the city, but blurts out garbage in little snippets all day long.

 

There is little or no thought behind a huge percentage of social media communication because it is so easy and quick and convenient to just write "something" to keep yourself visible online.

 

Electronic communication is not bad in its own right, however, it does lack the enforced reduction in speed and closer relationship to the written word that hand writing brings with it and because of that it requires IMHO more self discipline to get "right". That self discipline is unfortunately not present a lot of the time.

 

But then again all of this isn't really new. Every generation has issues with how advances in society and technology change the previously held beliefs and social structure. As Oscar Wilde said: "By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community." Maybe social media is just doing the exact same thing only without a journalist as middleman - possibly it's a good thing?

 

Rob

[Unky]

I apologize for not being specific, cursive is more efficient than manuscript writing. There is recent research stating that keyboarding is better dyslexics when completing work. Many dyslexics find cursive challenging because it causes them to use all their creativity, imagination, and ability to show what they know. I agree that not every strategy works for every student, and balance is key to success. The link below is to an article about the link between writing and learning.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704631504575531932754922518.html

[RobertP]

I apologize for not being specific, cursive is more efficient than manuscript writing. There is recent research stating that keyboarding is better dyslexics when completing work. Many dyslexics find cursive challenging because it causes them to use all their creativity, imagination, and ability to show what they know. I agree that not every strategy works for every student, and balance is key to success. The link below is to an article about the link between writing and learning.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704631504575531932754922518.html

 

Thanks! From what I have gathered over the last years supporting my kids, there seems to be a huge range of dyslexia "types" (for want of a better word). And how people struggle to see and correlate letters to words can be dramatically different. I guess I was just lucky that the two case in my family were both similar and they could support each other

 

Nice article. It reinforces a lot of things that feel like they should be just plain old, simple common sense. You don't learn a sport or other craft from ONLY reading or watching a program on TV about it, you have to physically do it. So crafting letters and words with a pen must be better than just hitting a key.