5 ms·
I find that the more time I spend around computers, the more I actually want to hand write things. I've recently gotten into the habit of keeping notebooks for
by toomanybeersies 9y ago
I find that the more time I spend around computers, the more I actually want to hand write things. I've recently gotten into the habit of keeping notebooks for various things, I even wrote a letter by hand to someone (something I haven't done since I was a child).
There's something so permanent about handwriting, compared to an ephemeral computer file. There's also the fact that notebooks don't run out of battery, or need signal.
As far as actual penmanship goes though, I have pretty terrible handwriting, it's getting better. For some reason, buying a fountain pen has markedly improved my handwriting.
- WalterBright 9y agoI've spent many hours attempting to transcribe my grandparents' handwritten letters. It's very difficult to decipher. Ironically, even the letters they'd mash out on a typewriter are difficult to decipher, but it's a lot easier than the handwriting. It's not just my grandparents. Their relatives also all had wretched handwriting. I've shown them to many people, and they can hardly make it out, either. I don't think good penmanship was commonplace :-)
- sseagull 9y agoThis isn't the first time I've said this, but I believe doing serious genealogy will 'cure' most people of their love of cursive, and maybe writing things by hand in general. You get better at reading it, but there is much more bad handwriting out there than good.
- WalterBright 9y agoWith all this work on facial recognition, voice transcription, etc., I'd love to see some AI work on decoding handwriting. It would be a great boon to me.
- NoGravitas 9y agoI harp on and on about this, but the looped cursive of the 19th and 20th centuries is horrible for legibility. Many of the common letterforms blur together, especially when written quickly. There were reasons for adopting it at the time, but it really shouldn't be taught anymore. Today we should be teaching cursive italic, for several reasons (legibility, ease of teaching).
- KateGladstone 9y agoI think as you do on this matter. I wish I knew how to get in touch with you. Meanwhile, there’s always the Society for Italic Handwriting, to shic( I belong: italic-handwriting.org Kate Gladstone CEO, HandwritingThatWorks.com DIRECTOR, the World Handwriting Contest handwritingrepair@gmail.com
- KateGladstone 9y agoI think as you do on this matter. I wish I knew how to get in touch with you. Meanwhile, there’s always the Society for Italic Handwriting, to which I belong: italic-handwriting.org Kate Gladstone CEO, HandwritingThatWorks.com DIRECTOR, the World Handwriting Contest handwritingrepair@gmail.com
- rtpg 9y agoI've been using handwriting more often as well. One great benefit is that, unlike when typing, your writing speed is usually slow enough to where your brain can go over it a couple times for sanity checks. There's also the free form advantage (especially if you're just writing notes, it's fine to just draw little diagrams in the corner, scratch things out). Even writing out pseudo-code ends up being very useful. Thinking while staring at an IDE is usually very difficult, I've found. IDEs are great for looking up and reading code (jump to definition, extra metadata) though
- saurik 9y agoYou can't compare to yourself with computers earlier: you have to compare to a hypothetical yourself that never had a computer. I am pretty confident I would be doing an insanely large amount of writing were I to not able to type.