It's history the way Fortran is history. Most people in most situations do not use it. Specific people in specific situations still use it, and it's still the best tool for that job.
Is Handwriting History?
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Re: Is Handwriting History?
#12Not until I stop writing out poetry drafts. I find a mix of writing, typing, reading aloud and recording my verse helps take a rough draft into something more coherent and whole.
Each of these methods must use varying parts of my brain as I find they often find improvements that others miss, but I always start with pen and paper, often getting a good 9/10s of it made that way.
Re: Is Handwriting History?
#13Mine is. I had better handwriting in primary school. It can be quite embarrassing on the odd occasion where I need to fill out a paper form (which itself is rarer these days).
I found that once I was writing frequent love letters and, more recently, writing poetry, my handwriting improved quite quickly.
Being left-handed, my handwriting is now merely bad. :-)
Re: Is Handwriting History?
#14I always carry a pen. I prefer handwriting to taking electronic notes and have never found a touch device I'd rather write on than paper. Aside: Teaching kids cursive also still has value in teaching fine motor skills.
> Aside: Teaching kids cursive also still has value in teaching fine motor skills.
IMO, it's the most important thing, we have to teach fine motor skills very early to little humans if we want them to be full humans.
Re: Is Handwriting History?
#15I always carry a pen. I prefer handwriting to taking electronic notes and have never found a touch device I'd rather write on than paper. Aside: Teaching kids cursive also still has value in teaching fine motor skills.
> Aside: Teaching kids cursive also still has value in teaching fine motor skills. IMO, it's the most important thing, we have to teach fine motor skills very early to little humans if we want them to be full humans.
> if we want them to be full humans
This is a circular argument. You just punted the discussion to "what does it mean to be a full human and why is handwriting a necessary part of that." I ride horses, as people have for millennia; I would never claim nonriders are less than human.
Re: Is Handwriting History?
#16Taking note is still faster in with a pen and paper. Thinking as well. And I'm on the very upper scale of computer skills. Lately I even removed some part of my project management tooling to replace it with paper. Very short term actionable data is more productive on paper for me.
You must be a very slow typist :). I can write on a keyboard much faster than on paper, and I'll bet I can outpace any regular person in this way. One could try and compete by employing some stenography shenanigans, but at that point I'll just enable abbrev mode in my Emacs and beat them again. Where typing fails me, though, is anything other than writing regular, linear text. The moment I expect needing to write a l…
> Writing by hand is amazingly flexible
Once, as an exercise I attempted to transcribe my Statistics notes into LaTeX. I was perfectly capable of inserting the proper math notation, but I never realized how versatile layouts can be so easily made on paper. Things like alternating writing sizes (doable in digital, but usually ends up looking horrible), varying levels of indentation and line height, margin notes, asides, ease of diagrams (again, doable digitally, but time-consuming), notation (crossing things out, circling, arrows, etc), and so many other things. Typesetting for print or digital requires a complete change of layout and even approaches to presentation. You don't realize how much freedom the blank paper gives you until you try translating it to the digital document.
Re: Is Handwriting History?
#17I always carry a pocket sized notebook and a pen with me wherever I go. It's still the fastest method to write something down, it always works and it's socially acceptable to use in all situations. Most people whom I meet, even in private, will see me take out my notebook at the beging of the meeting, taking notes occasionally while we interact. I don't think you could do that with a computer or phone and it allows me to remember important details and action points that I (and the person I'm talking to) would forget otherwise. At work I have larger, A4-sized notebooks that I use similarly.
One of the features that I appreciate most is that everything I write down is in chronological order and can be accessed very quickly. In seconds, I can go through last weeks notes and check if I forgot to do something, or even go back a year or more to revisit my thoughts on something that happened back then. Using a pen is also much more expressive, allowing me to highlight/format certain points as a discussion/meeting is ongoing and add illustrations, arrows etc. on the fly.
I've seen and tried some of the new epaper notepads and they're definitely getting closer, but for now they're still to slow, clumsy & fragile to replace paper for me.
Re: Is Handwriting History?
#18Taking note is still faster in with a pen and paper. Thinking as well. And I'm on the very upper scale of computer skills. Lately I even removed some part of my project management tooling to replace it with paper. Very short term actionable data is more productive on paper for me.
As others mentioned, that's certainly not my experience, but the tactile nature of taking noted by hand still helps me remember better.
I've been half-heartedly considering learning shorthand. I still like taking notes by hand, but I often realllllly wish I had a mostly verbatim record of some meetings.
Re: Is Handwriting History?
#19Taking note is still faster in with a pen and paper. Thinking as well. And I'm on the very upper scale of computer skills. Lately I even removed some part of my project management tooling to replace it with paper. Very short term actionable data is more productive on paper for me.
You must be a very slow typist :). I can write on a keyboard much faster than on paper, and I'll bet I can outpace any regular person in this way. One could try and compete by employing some stenography shenanigans, but at that point I'll just enable abbrev mode in my Emacs and beat them again. Where typing fails me, though, is anything other than writing regular, linear text. The moment I expect needing to write a l…
You must have a very limited way of expressing your self :)
I can express with a pen using symbols, drawing, spacing, diagrams, flow...
Too many people confuse taking notes with transcription, or forget to take in consideration the cost of context switching.
Re: Is Handwriting History?
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
You must be a very slow typist :). I can write on a keyboard much faster than on paper, and I'll bet I can outpace any regular person in this way. One could try and compete by employing some stenography shenanigans, but at that point I'll just enable abbrev mode in my Emacs and beat them again. Where typing fails me, though, is anything other than writing regular, linear text. The moment I expect needing to write a l…
> Writing by hand is amazingly flexible Once, as an exercise I attempted to transcribe my Statistics notes into LaTeX. I was perfectly capable of inserting the proper math notation, but I never realized how versatile layouts can be so easily made on paper. Things like alternating writing sizes (doable in digital, but usually ends up looking horrible), varying levels of indentation and line height, margin notes, aside…
Typing on a computer is much easier than by hand
Formatting otoh...