The Fall and Decline of Handwriting

[Ben]

I thought this was an interesting story. I'm curious regarding where other APS members, especially by age, fall into this.

For me, older but tech savvy, I find that my handwriting skills have declined somewhat from lack of use. I find myself in the group that mostly handwrites reminder notes to myself (because I find it much faster than typing on a smart phone). For general writing, I do fall into using electronic methods 90% of the time.

I grew up in the era of handwriting and typewriters. I do remember that by college, when word processors became somewhat mainstream, I enjoyed writing school reports much more than when I was in grade school having to either handwrite or type stuff. Though I wrote (and write) much more than if electronic means were not available, my handwriting ability has certainly declined, and again, I grew up in the handwriting era. I have to wonder at how this affects younger younger generations that grew up with "electronic writing".

Also I thought the article made a good point about predictive text and spellcheck. As convenient as they are, having a machine correct everything for you can eventually degrade your abilities since you no longer have to think about it. On a tangent, I still like to every once in a while break out pencil and paper when I'm doing something that requires basic math skills just to keep them going.

Dave Broadway, managing director for Docmail print and post, added: 'Technology puts everyone on a level playing field when it comes to the ability to communicate clearly.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2163175/Could-forget-WRITE-The-typical-adult-scribbled-hand-weeks.html#ixzz1yjAk8Z3u

The quote reminds me that "level playing field" too often means "dumbing down".

[K Frame]

Technology puts everyone on a level playing field when it comes to the ability to communicate clearly."

B. S.

You can lead an idiot to writing paper, but you cannot make him ink.

Type cogently, either.

[mtnbkr]

I take notes by hand during meetings and conference calls because I find typing them distracting while I'm trying to listen to the speaker.  Otherwise, I barely write anything at all. 

My handwriting has always been bad, but it's really bad these days.

Chris

[Tallpine]

My handwriting totally went to hell while taking notes in college 

[SADShooter]

Technology may indeed create a level playing field. However, as in every endeavor, a level field doesn't automatically translate to equal ability. For the record, my handwriting/penmanship were atrocious long before the keyboard became ubiquitous.

[MicroBalrog]

This is indeed true.

I have never been able to write clearly, which affected not only the legibility, but the quality of my essays and the grades I got for them.

Once I moved to an environment where I could write all of my work on a computer, my grades took a steep upwards turn.

[lupinus]

My handwriting sucks. It's legible, but certainly not....purdy. My wife's only a couple years younger then I am and was in the first year they basically taught all of a week or two on cursive, which is insane IMO.

Computers are great, but people should still be able to WRITE.

[mtnbkr]

My wife's only a couple years younger then I am and was in the first year they basically taught all of a week or two on cursive, which is insane IMO.

Why?  I've never understood the point of cursive writing.  Even in the best of cases, it can be difficult to read. 

Chris

[RoadKingLarry]

A computer might correct spelling and provide a legible font but it can't replace a basic ability to compose a coherent sentence. I'm not aware of an word processor programs that will correct for the proper usage of word like there and their.  One little "game" I play is when I compose emails at work I leave spell check off. The goal being to not have spell check find errors.

My handwriting basically just sucks. It always has, no amount of forced repetition or punishment, including spankings ever made it better.  If I have to hand write something someone else might need to read I will print.

[MillCreek]

I am thrilled that I only very rarely now have to spend hours trying to interpret the chicken scratches of some doctor or nurse in a medical record. Thank goodness for the electronic medical records now. My own handwriting is still pretty good: I print in block capitals. My cursive is pretty bad. Ms. MillCreek has the elegant cursive handwriting of the school teacher she is.

[grampster]

My cursive abilities were never very legible.  Part of the problem is that I am left handed and most writing instruments in my day were high level smearable inks.

Then when I went into LE, we had to write reports and began to devolve into printing as it cut down on smearing and my reports were more legible, which was important if one went into a trial months or years down the road and had to have one's mind refreshed.

I maintain to this day that my typing course as a junior in high school was one of the most valuable courses I ever took.  About halfway into my short LE career we began having to type our reports.  My typing skill became invaluable.  Word processors brought easy correction to typing errors.  Of course now we have computers and spell check and easy access to correct spelling from google et al.  

I still mostly write notes to myself about stuff and I print 'em by hand unless it's a long list of projects etc; those I type and print from my computer.  I can't remember the last time I used cursive.

[Ben]

I should have pointed out most of my "handwriting" is printing. I never had very legible cursive for the same reasons as Grampster - left handed, smeared ink, plus teachers were always trying to correct my "wrong-handeness". Had I been able to hold pen in hand the way that was comfortable to me when learning cursive, I might have been better at it.

[roo_ster]

My handwriting legibility peaked in the second grade.  I learned both printing and cursive.  Cursive exists because it is faster than printing.

Sadly, I got to the point where my cursive was legible only to my own self.  This was in the trasitional time between hand-written assignments and word-processed.  I had to have someone else process them, as I did not own a PC.  To make my writing legible to the typist, I devolved to printing clearly on every other line.  Then, I did the same with class notes.

I never learned to touch-type very well, but I am good enough for coding, which requires thought more than typing speed.

[vaskidmark]

Although I was drilled 60+ years ago on the Parker Method until my fingers bled, I stopped using it for all but "Thank You" and condolence letters (yes, actual letters, not a scrawled signature on a purchased card).  For me printing was faster than cursive, and importantly, much more legible days/weeks/months/years later.

My current non-social writing skills have gotten me called "Doctor" at hotels and told by pharmacists that they would have "that" filled in 30 minutes if only it were on a prescription pad.

I "learned" to type by transcribing my father's lab notes, which required the left index finger to follow his crabbed writing.  Thus, I still type with the pointer and middle finger of my right hand, and occassionally the thumb for those computer keyboard functions requiring a great stretch.  Going along at about 35 - 45 WPM has been good enough for both me and those who wanted me to do typing.  As I get older and my eyes want to convert (bad joke about presbymyopia) I seem to hit one key over from the one I wanted a bit more often.  But since I am in no hurry and actually want to spellcheck I catch most of the errors.

What really convinced me to work tjhe keyboard more than the pen was that I could have more clutter on my work surface.  Sad, but true.

stay safe.

[Perd Hapley]

Why?  I've never understood the point of cursive writing.  Even in the best of cases, it can be difficult to read. 

Chris

Like roo_ster said, speed. If done correctly, cursive is faster than printing, but still legible. I would agree that it is probably less important, now that business and personal communication is much less frequently done with paper and pen. Still, it's good to be able to write something by hand quickly, and still legibly.

My wife is (was) an English teacher, and she says my penmanship is good, so that's good enough for me. 

I take notes by hand during meetings and conference calls because I find typing them distracting while I'm trying to listen to the speaker. 

This. I type OK, but I don't know that I'll ever be one of those people who can take lecture notes with a lap-top.

[MicroBalrog]

Simple solutiion: record the lecture.

[Perd Hapley]

Simple solutiion: record the lecture.

Gee. You think that one up all by yourself?

[Hawkmoon]

I initially received an 'F' on my final exam for drafting class (manual, with a pencil and tee square on paper) in high school because the teacher was sure I had used a lettering template. When I replicated the "traced" text freehand in front of his wondering eyes, my grade was adjusted from an 'F' to an 'A.' My handwriting (cursive) was nearly as good.

That was then ... and this is now. I can still print very well (a career as a technical draftsman in the era before CADD became king will do that), but my cursive has devolved sufficiently that if I scribble a note to myself, there's at least a 60 percent probability that 24 hours later I won't be able to read it.

And I do blame it on computers.

As for spelling -- I don't blame that on spell check, I blame that on reading so many illiterate posts on the Internet that my brain starts to think that's the way it should be spelled (insert whatever "it" you wish).

[MechAg94]

My handwriting totally went to hell while taking notes in college 

This struck home for me I think.  There were so many times in high school and college where we had to take notes at a blistering pace because a teacher would put slides up and tell us to write it all down.  Speed outweighed neatness by a long shot. 

Of course, I started using Word Perfect on a Tandy 1000.  I can think and get my thoughts down on paper typing much easier than writing.  I can't do a neat draft from scratch writing. 

I have had to write fast in meetings or during govt audits in my professional life.  I can't think of a time when my handwriting mattered. 

[Ben]

As for spelling -- I don't blame that on spell check, I blame that on reading so many illiterate posts on the Internet that my brain starts to think that's the way it should be spelled (insert whatever "it" you wish).

i dont knw waht UR saying thr but txt U L8R anyway

[MrsSmith]

For us girls, neat and pretty cursive was a point of pride, when I was a kid. I still prefer to hand write, in proper cursive, Christmas cards, condolence and thank you notes, and such. Notes to myself and my endless to do lists are all in my own mixed print/cursive shorthand that is sometimes legible to others and sometimes not.

When it's time to write for publication, thank G*d for computers or I'd never have been published. In the "get it on paper" draft stage, hand written pages are a mess of scatch marks, arrows pointing paragraphs and sentences to other locations, and editors marks. Even I don't always know what the hell I was trying to accomplish when reading it later. Not only that but speed is an issue. I can't keep up with my thoughts when writing things by hand. It's still hard at 70 wpm typing on a keyboard, but it's better and I don't get frustrated and quit.

I have to say that if they had to cut something from the grade school curriculum, I suppose the time spent on cursive is the least detrimental. Printing, no, but cursive isn't critical. Unlike spelling. My kids had their last spelling classes in 6th grade. None of the three can spell for crap. That's just ridiculous.

[Perd Hapley]

My kids had their last spelling classes in 6th grade. None of the three can spell for crap. That's just ridiculous.

Um, like I'm pretty sure that's spelled "rediculous" now? Cuz thats how I always see it. If your going to be in publishing you should probably learn to wright better then that.

[KD5NRH]

This struck home for me I think.  There were so many times in high school and college where we had to take notes at a blistering pace because a teacher would put slides up and tell us to write it all down.  Speed outweighed neatness by a long shot.

This is why, IMO, shorthand should still be offered at all schools, if not required as a first semester course.

[zahc]

I have a book on Pittman Shorthand. It seems like a very nice script; in fact, I have often thought of how I would reform English spelling, and Pittman shorthand comes damn close to what I would come up with anyway...there's no way I could learn it, though, without heavy-duty drilling. It's basically like learning to write all over again; there is no relation to normal English spelling.

I don't mind so much that computers are taking over, but I do wish standards of layout and typography were so much higher. The lowest-common-denominator that I fear isn't computers themselves, but the lack of standards WITHIN computer-generated correspondence--give a man a word processer, and now he thinks he's a typesetter. Or rather, he doesn't know what a typesetter is, because graphics arts have been obsolete for 20 years now. It's saddening, but typical, that publications have worse typography and layout now than they did 50 years ago, despite all this technology. The content generation chain has been dehumanized by desktop publishing--it's like it would be if radio hosts were entirely replaced by computer voices, or something. The typesetter has been replaced by a computer. The content generators are happy to not think about typesetting, which was fine when there were humans setting the type, but now it's a computer, and so the entire world gets whatever typesetting Word or desktop publishing software has programmed in. Nobody uses hair spaces around em dashes, nothing is kerned properly, and justification looks like crap. Also, nobody uses diereses anymore.

[Boomhauer]

A computer might correct spelling and provide a legible font but it can't replace a basic ability to compose a coherent sentence

This. Pretty handwriting does not make a well written sentence.

My handwriting is *expletive deleted*it for a number of reasons. Poor fine motor control is one reason. Another is teachers insisting that I write down everything they threw up on a powerpoint slide as "notes" (I got in trouble more than once because I wasn't copying down Every. Single. Word. of lengthy paragraphs they would put on each slide of seemingly endless powerpoint presentations*. I cannot write for any length of time, my hand quickly and very painfully cramps up... writing essays by hand for tests was absolute torture for me.


*Never mind this was a complete waste of the technology they had available plus did not teach us proper note taking skills. Why bother using the ability of powerpoint to display graphics, pictures, videos, graphs, while giving a lecture and thus really engaging your students when you can just type up huge paragraphs, read said paragraphs off the powerpoint, and make your students write down every single word?