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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

#671

Post by itzprime »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #275
gghackernewsgg wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how it was explained to me by a tutor: handwriting is better for learning because it's slower. The need for brevity forces you to mentally engage the material in ways that are more conducive to understanding and recall. If you can replicate that mental engagement while typing, you'd probably get similar results. This makes a lot of sense to me in light of what we know about how learning happens. I have never…

I've heard this theory too—but I feel it doesn't match how we do anything else in life. For example, you could make typing slow too by forcing people to type with two fingers, or use a really tiny keyboard. Are touch typists worse at learning? This doesn't really refute the theory—maybe touch typing is worse—but it doesn't match my logical intuition at all.

Because it is about learning. You can't learn a hard phrase on an instrument without slowing down. You can't touch type fastly without learning the motions slowly first.

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#672

Post by dredmorbius »

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…

I've come to using a pencil (usually mechanical) for this. I can write lightly (so that annotations don't dominate the printed text) and erase stray marks or correct erroneous ones. I've developed a notation convention which tends to make my intent clear without visually dominating the text. A light vertical line along sections I want to highlight, stars, question marks, or bangs, occasional comments of my own.

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#673

Post by dredmorbius »

HumblyTossed wrote: post #79
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…

No. Carry a notebook. Long after you’ve given the book away, you’ll always have your notes.

Or index cards. Zettelkasten.

Whilst reading, they double as bookmarks.

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#675

Post by b3orn »

runtime_lens wrote: post #570
dhosek wrote: post #519

On the gadget front, I really love the paperlike screen protector for the iPad. This combined with the Apple Pencil made a huge difference in the usability of my iPad for writing/drawing. I still prefer to write on paper, but it’s really great for things like my writing group where we generally meet over zoom & I can give the author a marked up manuscript (with multicolor notes). I’m also opposed to getting too preci…

I think people send too much time optimizing the notebook instead of optimizing what goes into it. I've seen beautifully organized notebooks that were never opened again and messy scraps of paper that someone referred back to after years.

There was a post about something similar here a few days ago, it called it a "dirt notebook" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48954149

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#677

Post by infinite_spin »

jagadaga wrote: post #604

Another article from that substack.com - this website has terrible UI, please stop using it. And I noticed that usually if an author uses substack - the article quality is bad. Regarding the topic - "more brain activity/connectivity" does not automatically prove better long-term intelligence or brain health.

I think the article offers some good advice, at least advice that the author believes in, and from my own anecdotal experience it seems to hold water. Writing by hand, on physical paper, does indeed seem to offer some advantages over typing or using a tablet/stylus.

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#678

Post by mindfulbun »

Quimoniz wrote: post #416
mindfulbun wrote: post #337

I love handwriting. I do daily logs of my workday. I just write what’s happening, what I’m doing during the day, what tasks are coming in, and so on. Surprisingly, it works well for a person with ADHD. It’s a method to ground myself and avoid slipping into ADHD hyperfocus. The only problem I have is doing it comfortably. My desk is cluttered with a keyboard, laptop, and monitor. There’s barely any room to write with…

Huh. Sounds just like me :D Depth helps there. Since I started working mostly on desks with a depth of 80 cm in front of me (or 31 inches that is) it's gotten usually pretty easy to squeeze in a notebook or a paper (also hanging the monitors on the wall, so that no foot is on the desk any more, gives another extra 10 cm).

I actually have around 70 cm, but for some reason it still doesn’t feel right. Maybe removing the monitor foot is key.

After reading your comment, I tried moving the monitor as far as I could to free up space. And it’s actually better. Notebook is next to the keyboard on the right side, not sure if that’s optimal when looking back and forth

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#679

Post by nyrikki »

ksenzee wrote: post #577
dhosek wrote: post #519

On the gadget front, I really love the paperlike screen protector for the iPad. This combined with the Apple Pencil made a huge difference in the usability of my iPad for writing/drawing. I still prefer to write on paper, but it’s really great for things like my writing group where we generally meet over zoom & I can give the author a marked up manuscript (with multicolor notes). I’m also opposed to getting too preci…

The cursive thing is almost certainly because he's using fountain pens. Pencils and ballpoint pens lend themselves to printing more easily, because they require pressure to write, and when you let the pressure up between letters, the line stops. The first time I picked up a fountain pen and tried printing with it, I found all my letters were connecting whether I meant them to or not, and I suddenly understood why cur…

From the OP:

> "I learned cursive as a child. Then I went for many years without using it much, and forgot some of it."

While fountain pens may be nicer for cursive, they were very late in the games only coming into the scene in the late 1800s, long after fashion had been set.

In the US we were taught either the Zaner-Bloser or the D'Nealian alphabet, and while most of the claims of cursive over manuscript are typically overblown and fall under scrutiny, with common use it may not be faster, but is easer for (the small sample of friends I have asked) to write while not looking at the paper. Not faster, but easier to write in strait lines without looking (in my experience).

Manuscript (now called printing) wasn't common when Zaner-Bloser printed the book "The arm movement method of rapid writing"[0] IIRC.

But for business writing (which both Zaner-Bloser and D'Nealian were targeting) it is not so much the fact that you aren't lifting the point, but that you are using your whole arm.

The scientific claims of Zaner-Bloser are almost certainly suspect, but before word-processors, taking notes while not watching your writing was a critical skill, or was in my experience.

That is a very different world that the scribes of old, or even Roman cursive, which would have only had quills, and which did not really connect letters.

If you look into secretary hand, italic hand, and court hand, a lot of it had to to with style and preferences, with the US Declaration of Independence being in Secretary Hand, which had been in fashion for official docs for centuries at that point. Shakespeare also wrote his plays Secretary Hand, while ladies of the era would have used 'Italian style' italics.

So unfortunately it seems there are many back explanations, the real history is clear as mud in the absence of direct evidence, or more correctly, claims like in Zaner-Bloser.

[0] https://archive.org/details/armmovementmetho00zane/page/n3/m...

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#680

Post by cratermoon »

kevin42 wrote: post #132
cratermoon wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't hold the pen too tightly. Find a pen and paper combination that doesn't require force to write. Ball point pens on cheap notebook paper are notorious for requiring too much force. On quality paper with a good pen the ink will flow effortlessly because of gravity and capillary action. You will only need a light pressure.

I'm left handed and I never really learned a good grip I could write with. So I've always struggled with handwriting. I also have an essential tremor in my left hand. As I have aged, the tremor has gotten worse. So now, I have to grip tight to minimize the tremor. I've pretty much given up on handwriting, it's embarrassing to either try to write, or have someone else write stuff for me. I ask my wife to fill stuff ou…

That sucks, sorry to hear it. Have you tried seeing if a tablet handwriting recognizer can be trained on your writing?
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