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The importance of handwriting is now better understood

economist.com

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Re: The importance of handwriting is now better understood

#91

Post by taeric »

jmkd wrote: post #32

If your handwriting looks good and gives satisfaction you will do it more. It truly helps embodying thoughts and ideas, and provides another significant layer (like flavour in a recipe) of learning and understanding. I was fortunate to be taught Marion Richardson [0] style handwriting aged 8 or so, and decades years later my handwriting is still universally complimented. I hand write letters for pleasure and take not…

Is that true, though? I'm happy with my handwriting, but rarely ever get to write anything. Far more time spent at a keyboard.

I'll try adding this to my routine. Curious if I can track an increase in my mood and general happiness if I'm writing more.

Re: The importance of handwriting is now better understood

#92

Post by zellyn »

edgyquant wrote: post #71
lgrebe wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marion Richardson Handwriting was first published in 1935 and continued to be used in schools until the 1980s. It consists of five copy books, each with a different level of difficulty, and a teacher's book that explains the methods and materials to be used. You can download the copy books for free from this link: [Writing and Writing Patterns]( https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.54007 .)

This seems very clearly a bot post. This is a non-sequitur to the other comment and the way it redescribes the context seems fishy and too artificial.

I don't see any evidence that this is a bot post. It's the only post in the thread that actually points to scans of the Marion Richardson source materials mentioned in the parent comment.

I guess it doesn't matter now, since it's been flagged… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: The importance of handwriting is now better understood

#93

Post by makeitdouble »

barrysteve wrote: post #40
silcoon wrote: post #17

I've direct experience on the power of handwriting to memorise concepts. When at the UNI, I was studying CS (while working part-time) less than 10 ya, and classes where full of laptops. I was take notes during lectures using only pen and paper and similarly I was taking my notes about the main concepts from the courses books. Then I was re-writing them again in a more summarised way, and then underline this notes and…

There was a book linked on HN a month ago about the Deisng of UI/UX experiences. One chapter mentions how cars are simple and easy to use despite being more complex than a phone numpad, because the linkages between the car controls and your mental mapping is one-to-one. Having to endlessly recombine your mental mapping with a numpad or digital pad to generate letters/sentences is much worse for humans than driving, o…

That doesn't sit right with the fact that we remember passwords or other sequences with our fingers or can type whole paragraphs without minding the keyboard.

There might be a threshold to be good with an input method, but it feels contrived to me to assume that only the most basic ones can be mastered and become intuitive.

Re: The importance of handwriting is now better understood

#94

Post by zellyn »

jmkd wrote: post #32

If your handwriting looks good and gives satisfaction you will do it more. It truly helps embodying thoughts and ideas, and provides another significant layer (like flavour in a recipe) of learning and understanding. I was fortunate to be taught Marion Richardson [0] style handwriting aged 8 or so, and decades years later my handwriting is still universally complimented. I hand write letters for pleasure and take not…

For some reason, a perfectly cromulent comment [1] on this thread was commented upon as being “bot-like” and then flagged to death.

It linked to a scan of the Marion Richardson “Teacher's Book” hosted on the internet archive [2].

The actual booklets are strangely absent from the internet (if indeed these were used into the 1980s). I suppose things that aren't old enough to be exempt from mickey-mouse copyright extension are a grey area?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37913649

[2] https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.54007

Re: The importance of handwriting is now better understood

#95

Post by bayindirh »

taeric wrote: post #91
jmkd wrote: post #32

If your handwriting looks good and gives satisfaction you will do it more. It truly helps embodying thoughts and ideas, and provides another significant layer (like flavour in a recipe) of learning and understanding. I was fortunate to be taught Marion Richardson [0] style handwriting aged 8 or so, and decades years later my handwriting is still universally complimented. I hand write letters for pleasure and take not…

Is that true, though? I'm happy with my handwriting, but rarely ever get to write anything. Far more time spent at a keyboard. I'll try adding this to my routine. Curious if I can track an increase in my mood and general happiness if I'm writing more.

Yes, I keep notes by writing them and, it reduces stress and makes me remember them more easily. Keeping them on the computer doesn't have the easier to remember component. I can only search them easier.

Re: The importance of handwriting is now better understood

#96

Post by _fdsfs12123 »

jmkd wrote: post #32

If your handwriting looks good and gives satisfaction you will do it more. It truly helps embodying thoughts and ideas, and provides another significant layer (like flavour in a recipe) of learning and understanding. I was fortunate to be taught Marion Richardson [0] style handwriting aged 8 or so, and decades years later my handwriting is still universally complimented. I hand write letters for pleasure and take not…

What writing tool is this system designed for? Does it work well with "regular" ball pens and pencils?

Re: The importance of handwriting is now better understood

#97

Post by fastball »

Such research is actually why we started building our note-taking app[1] around digital notecards.

When I was in university I was reading a lot of this literature, and came to the same conclusion as many of the researchers – the problem seems to be that typists just type too fast, and default to writing down everything a lecturer says instead of synthesizing/summarizing information as they go (which requires actual understanding).

So we developed our (short-form digital notecard) format in the hopes that it would encourage users to slow down a bit and actually think about the notes they were making, and compartmentalize them as they went. We haven't actually done any studies ourselves, so I have no idea if it actually helps our average user, but for me personally it has made me take better notes.

Mildly tangential but this is also why we have decided not to add any LLM features to our app yet – although very tempting to add the hot new thing, I personally feel that outsourcing your thinking to an LLM (in the case of a PKM system / "second brain") will almost certainly be a net negative for most people.

[1] https://supernotes.app

Re: The importance of handwriting is now better understood

#98

Post by thwarted »

ryanklee wrote: post #52
silcoon wrote: post #17

I've direct experience on the power of handwriting to memorise concepts. When at the UNI, I was studying CS (while working part-time) less than 10 ya, and classes where full of laptops. I was take notes during lectures using only pen and paper and similarly I was taking my notes about the main concepts from the courses books. Then I was re-writing them again in a more summarised way, and then underline this notes and…

> It's sad that this incredible ability of our brain to learn concepts from the small movement of our hands, probably sculpted by our evolution, is going to get lost in future generations. We haven't been writing that long. And the vast majority of people never did.

But the vast majority of people use their hands. It's not the writing, the assertion it's that it's the movement associated with/occurring at the same time as thinking that reenforces learning. That writing of words using hands (interaction with the environment) can help with learning abstract (non-physical) concepts is an extension of that.

Re: The importance of handwriting is now better understood

#99

Post by QuarterReptile »

Lanolderen wrote: post #8
hknmtt wrote: post #3

I have started to journal last month. I came to it through pens when I randomly decided to find a good pen when I got interested in it through some youtube videos(wow, YT actually working as intended, for once). To anyone interested, Pentel Energel 0.7mm is the best gel pen in the entire world, hands down. For oil-based ink, it would be Uniball Jetstream, i guess(i am gel guy). I always wanted to journal and thought…

Join the Signo RT 0.38mm cult. Embrace the tiny font.

0.28 is the only way to go.

Re: The importance of handwriting is now better understood

#100

Post by lolinder »

jncfhnb wrote: post #78
silcoon wrote: post #17

I've direct experience on the power of handwriting to memorise concepts. When at the UNI, I was studying CS (while working part-time) less than 10 ya, and classes where full of laptops. I was take notes during lectures using only pen and paper and similarly I was taking my notes about the main concepts from the courses books. Then I was re-writing them again in a more summarised way, and then underline this notes and…

I dislike these kind of statements. I can’t take notes. I learned very explicitly that I will retain information much better if I take no effort to write it down and instead just focus and listen. If I do take notes, I’ll look down at my page at the end and see 20ish words written in different sizes and spaces and then throw it away because it’s clearly useless. That is to say, it’s all just personal preference. Expl…

> If I do take notes, I’ll look down at my page at the end and see 20ish words written in different sizes and spaces and then throw it away because it’s clearly useless.

For me, the point of taking notes has never been the final product. I went through college taking at least a page of notes per lecture, but never once did I actually go back and reference them. The notes were valuable for getting the material into my brain, not for use later.

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