The pen is mightier than the sword keyboard
At a recent face to face meeting (real people, real time), I was left feeling somewhat archaic when I produced a fountain pen and notebook in front of a bank of laptops and tablets. Furious tapping ensued as I carefully formed each word by hand and my feeling of being outmoded increased.
Fast forward though to a series of articles which have come my way, which support wholeheartedly the notion that “writing is better for you”! Noting, of course, that for some dyslexic and aphasic individuals, the current accessibility of typing is a godsend.
Nonetheless, even though writing by hand is undoubtedly slower than typing, the benefits range from a greater understanding and recollection of content to an enhanced sense of wellbeing. There are also several studies into how writing by hand cultivates greater creativity and can even help recovery in stroke victims.
I really am not a technophobe, far from it, but I am also firmly in the camp of ensuring we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. You could argue that typing is just a stage of writing development in the same way as the invention of paper and ballpoint pens were, and the printed word has been around since the 1400s at least. However, now everyone types, every child texts; handwriting is becoming a dying art – and I am aware of the irony that this blog is also typed.
Studies have shown conclusively that handwriting forces the writer to actively engage with the information and to process it conceptually rather than merely noting the detail verbatim. When writing by hand you have to instantly précis the stream of information and in doing so you absorb nuances and sentiment and, apparently, even develop your vocabulary.
Interestingly, the use of a stylus pen and tablet (which are becoming closer each day to “feeling” real) provides the same benefits as using paper and pen and so it is the creative act of forming each letter and watching the words unfold which matters most, not whether it is old-school or modern tech.
By the way, if anyone wants to buy me a reMarkable™, I will happily place my fountain pen in its own shrine.
“He read the letter again but could not take in any more meaning than he had done the first time and was reduced to staring at the handwriting itself. She had made her g’s the same way he did: he searched through the letter for every one of them, and each felt like a friendly little wave glimpsed from behind a veil.
The letter was an incredible treasure, proof that Lily Potter had lived, really lived, that her warm hand had once moved across this parchment, tracing ink into these letters, these words, words about him, Harry, her son.”