Can handwriting survive, and does it matter?

Among the WhatsApp messages I received the other day was an old photograph of a book inscription. The former colleague who sent it to me asked if the handwriting was mine, and it took me several seconds of peering and squinting to realise that it wasn’t. The ‘S’, to begin with, was quite different, as was the ‘N’.

There was a time when I would have been able to identify it on the spot; nowadays, I can’t recall when I last wrote by hand. I’m not alone in this, of course: a recent British survey of 2,000 people showed that one in three respondents had not written anything by hand in the previous six months.

Those in school would respond quite differently, though even that may change in future. Quite a few educational institutions in Europe, notably in Finland, have revised their guidelines for handwriting education and instead emphasise digital methods. In the US, too, many schools have removed cursive handwriting instruction from the curriculum.

Tapping and typing are taking over, though some worry that gains in speed and legibility are offset in other significant ways. Studies have shown that writing by hand promotes neurological connections, fine motor skills, and better knowledge retention. Others point out that such research is provisional, with few participants. (Since we’re all subject to habit and muscle memory, it probably makes sense to hang on to your notebook and pen for now.)

Medieval scribes, however, would have welcomed keyboards. The marginalia on illuminated manuscripts show just how onerous their duties were. “Writing is excessive drudgery,” is a typical comment. “It crooks your back, it dims your sight, it twists your stomach and your sides.” Pithier remarks include: “A curse on thee, O pen!” and “Oh, my hand”. One also has to empathise with the hapless transcriber who groaned: “Now I’ve written the whole thing. For Christ’s sake give me a drink.”

Some contemporary authors are happy to put up with cramps and calluses as part of their trade. Michael Ondaatje has said in a recent podcast that he can only commit a manuscript to his computer after he’s written at least two or three drafts in longhand. Among the others who prefer to write their books by hand are Neil Gaiman, Joyce Carol Oates, and Joshua Ferris.

For Barack Obama, the computer can lend “half-baked thoughts the mask of tidiness”. So, he writes his first drafts on yellow legal pads, including all of the 750-plus pages of his presidential memoir, A Promised Land.

Salman Rushdie, though, has another point of view. He mentions in an earlier interview that when he reads sentences in his handwriting, he finds it hard to be objective about their quality. His judgement is more neutral when he sees them typed on the page or screen. However: “I'm endlessly printing it out and scribbling all over it and putting the scribbles back into the computer. So, I sort of use both processes.”

Other reasons to write by hand include the ability to focus without the blinking cursor, and evading the lures of the Internet. Claire Bustarret, codex manuscript specialist at a Parisian research centre, makes another valid point: “Paper allows much greater graphic freedom: you can write on either side, keep to set margins or not, superimpose lines or distort them. There is nothing to make you follow a set pattern.”

Other reasons to write by hand include the ability to focus without the blinking cursor, and evading the lures of the Internet.

In her book, The History and Uncertain Future of Handwriting, she points out that the ways we write and record have, after all, changed several times over the centuries: on clay, papyrus, parchment, and paper, with reed, quill, pen, and typewriter. The importance we grant to handwriting as we know it only reflects our recent history and culture.

“We will lose something as we print and write in cursive less and less, but loss is inevitable,” she says. “In fact, it may be the only constant in the history of handwriting.” In precarious times, anxiety over such losses can reveal more about us than about technology. This nostalgia for a serene past, real or imaginary, also manifests in the fetishization of fountain pens and a greater appreciation of calligraphy.

As a 2013 Los Angeles Times editorial puts it: “States and schools shouldn’t cling to cursive based on the romantic idea that it’s a tradition, an art form or a basic skill whose disappearance would be a cultural tragedy.” What should be celebrated are greater democratisation and accessibility. You can make a note of that.