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Writing by hand is good for your brain

nealstephenson.substack.com

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Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#551

Post by altairprime »

I’m 2.5 years through college in pencil and paper. I’m 45 and the Apple Pencil sucks compared to regular paper and pencil. It was fun for the procreate course but I would never depend on it for actual note taking. My retention is off the charts compared to my fellow students who are largely not taking notes that I can tell, at least when they’re younglings rather than my middle aged self. Apparently the biggest problem with modern students and note-taking is that they cannot handwrite rapidly because they never learned cursive.

Don’t be involuntarily incapable like your peers, kids. If your school didn’t teach you cursive, teach yourself ASAP. Not calligraphy, not oblique italic roundhand, just pick a cursive and do an entire drill book end to end and make sure to take hand breaks whenever it hurts for 5min.

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#552

Post by jibal »

Diogenesian wrote: post #252
john_strinlai wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it was funny seeing this right below the comment saying " I _love_ buying a used book and finding a previous reader's notes in the margins. It's the greatest. ". different strokes. if you want to ensure you don't get sick from a line being crossed out, buy new.

This is so condescending. The reason I buy used is that the overwhelming majority of books are out of print and not available digitally. Which makes the vandalism especially egregious!

Learn what words mean. That comment is not remotely condescending, and scribbling in one's own book (with no indication here that the owner intends to sell it) is not vandalism.

Oh, I recognize your name ... wrong about so many things.

From another one of your comments here:

> No, my argument is that it's totally obnoxious to lend or resell a book that you've written in

But the person who advocated for writing in one's books if desired said nothing about lending or reselling them ... YOU were the first person here, in your response to them, to whine about BUYING such books. Talk about obnoxious!

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#553

Post by kstenerud »

burkaman wrote: post #246
rendaw wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've been downvoted to oblivion, but I figured I'll use you as a meat shield since there isn't a single other reply of criticality here AFAICT. The study talks about connections and frequency, but that seems like a very coarse measure for something as complex as the brain. > Increased connectivity within the theta (3.5–7.5 Hz) and alpha (8–12.5 Hz) frequency bands has been linked to mechanisms underlying sensorimot…

This is a fair response and I think would be a good top level comment, you don't need a meat shield. The reason the parent was downvoted was that it isn't criticism, it's just a declaration that they didn't read the article. There are a lot of citations in the paper backing up the idea that handwriting promotes learning, though (or at least spelling, memory, recall, and letter recognition/understanding). It reads to…

The issue is that the title "Writing by hand is good for your brain" does not follow from the cited study. At all.

The EEG measurement is the only real thing in the study, but there was no actual learning task anywhere at all.

Meanwhile, mr "I’m not an expert on how the brain works, but..." blithely goes on with his non-expert opinion, even talking about fountain pens and the various pen tip qualities in a manner smacking of audiophile.

And so the article reaches #1 on HN (supposedly the place of reason), and stays there for hours as everyone ignores the elephant in the room.

This is how junk science is born.

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#554

Post by imp0cat »

spudlyo wrote: post #255
BeetleB wrote: post #226

I always wrote by hand - probably because I spent over a decade in academia dealing with equations. I always have a pen in my pocket (without a pocket protector!) About a decade ago I went back to writing with fountain pens after a nearly two decade hiatus. Oh, the joy! But very sad he has no (real) tips on dealing with hand fatigue - other than to write in cursive. I always had hand fatigue for writing long stretche…

The muscles in your hand and fingers are small and tire pretty easily. The muscles in your arm and shoulder are bigger and can do a lot more work. Back in the day, folks who were taught "business cursive" like the "Palmer Method" were taught to keep their hand mostly static, and to guide the pen strokes using their arm. The way I do it is by planting my forearm on the desk as a pivot point, and moving my arm and shou…

That's quite similar to the "start from the shoulder and use your whole arm to strum" concept when playing the guitar.

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#556

Post by balls187 »

hurril wrote: post #230
BeetleB wrote: post #226

I always wrote by hand - probably because I spent over a decade in academia dealing with equations. I always have a pen in my pocket (without a pocket protector!) About a decade ago I went back to writing with fountain pens after a nearly two decade hiatus. Oh, the joy! But very sad he has no (real) tips on dealing with hand fatigue - other than to write in cursive. I always had hand fatigue for writing long stretche…

I also write with fountain pens these days. Do you have a favorite model?

Not OP, but Sailor KOP Naganita Togi.

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#557

Post by imp0cat »

rgbrgb wrote: post #209

today I posted a show HN that got insta-flagged by an AI detector. I had written the post then gone back and forth with claude, getting to a refined version I thought was much better. claude said it would hit way better with hn (me?). after getting flagged I found the original, reposted, and it is actually so much better. not polished, not a masterpiece, I'm nowhere close to a professional writer. But it's like a hum…

Did you use a fountain pen to write and refine the post? ;)

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#558

Post by christoph »

noufalibrahim wrote: post #515
postalcoder wrote: post #20

A corollary to this is, when reading books, mark them up! Don’t be precious with them. Destroy the spine so it’s easier to read, fold pages, write the important stuff inside the front cover of the book. Cross out stuff you disagree with, draw a big circles around the stuff that resonates. Not only does it make consumption a lot more engaging, it makes a revisit of that book extremely rewarding. Don’t get caught up tr…

Mortimer Adler (of how to read a book fame) has notes on this https://socrates.acadiau.ca/courses/engl/rcunningham/2022-23... MAny a times, the books I read don't have enough place to scribble so I keep a A5 half folded as a bookmark and write notes on that with page numbers. Once the book is over, I read through the points and try to reconstruct. I use a mechanical pencil myself since I like the teeth and my handwri…

Grandparent and parents always taught me books were sacred and shouldn’t be marked or damaged, not gonna side with either side as I do like finding small notes, etc. in 2nd books from time to time. I tackle it with a cheap little Canon Selphy photo printer I use for spitting out random hard copies of photos periodically from my phone. I always make sure to print an extra of any photo I really like. I then use these as my bookmarks in any book I read… I always have 20 to 30 odd non-fictions on the go at once in various states of reading.

This acts as a note keeper, bookmark and sort of time capsule for me. When I finish a book, i’ll always leave it in there. I don’t know why… but I just like the idea of random people (and my kids!) finding these random photos and notes in my books long after i’m gone! The photo in the book also links it to that period of my life.

I found a strange polaroid in a 2nd hand book when I was a little kid, then some years back I used a photo of my own as a bookmark, the memory bubbled back up, and here I am now. Wife and I kept saying we don’t print enough hard copies of photos, so this helps fix that a little bit as well - you could say I now print too many!

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#559

Post by 8note »

ekelsen wrote: post #389
Diogenesian wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so condescending. The reason I buy used is that the overwhelming majority of books are out of print and not available digitally. Which makes the vandalism especially egregious!

It was extremely common back in the 1500/1600s, when books were far more rare and valuable to write in them. Almost every copy of these truly old books has something written in them, often by multiple people as the owners changed. That's part of the history of the book.

they also would get all the words scraped off and get a new book written on the pages, often some religious text.

and so now, some ancient math tehcniques can be unearthed by finding all the layers of writing in a book

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#560

Post by 8note »

jjice wrote: post #273
Diogenesian wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, my argument is that it's totally obnoxious to lend or resell a book that you've written in, and it's a shallow way of taking notes to begin with. It is precisely what Socrates warned us about.

I'd say this is a problem with the seller's communication, not the use of the book. If the seller didn't specify that the book was marked up, I agree with your sentiment. The act of writing in a book and selling it isn't the issue, but setting false expectations to whoever you're selling it to is. > and it's a shallow way of taking notes to begin with Are we really going to speak down to how someone uses a bunch of p…

if youre buying a used book, why not open it and see for yourself before buying it?
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