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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

#681

Post by dv35z »

Multicomp wrote: post #660
beej71 wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another recommendation for this.

I've done that for a time, then fell off for the past few years. Today, I'm getting out my journal right after I hit 'send' and I'm doing this. To whoever is reading this and may be in a similar situation, let's start the streak up again today! EDIT: I did it and am glad I overcame the inertia - it was a little over a whole year since I pulled out the journal, so if whoever out there is still on the fence, give it a…

Do you keep a daily journal normally - and for the daily pages, do you have a separate notebook for them, or a folder full of pages, or what?

Thanks for inspiring us!

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#682

Post by ksenzee »

nyrikki wrote: post #679
ksenzee wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 typica…

To clarify my point, I am fairly sure the issue is not fountain pens requiring less pressure to write with than everything else, but rather ballpoint pens requiring more pressure than all earlier pen technology. I have not used a dip pen myself, but I can't imagine it would require pressure to write.

In other words, all of the writing tools in common use since ~1950 make it easy to separate your letters, but before the ballpoint pen became commonplace, every writer had had the experience of using a pen that makes connecting letters easier than separating them. That's the experience most of us today are missing.

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#684

Post by emptybits »

jambalaya8 wrote: post #347
emptybits wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from shallow, uncritical notes, consider that annotating in a margin is evidence that a reader is actively engaging with a text. Very often when I write in margins it's to question or argue against what's written (e.g. "really? what about ...", or "no, contradicts ...") which, to me, seems in line with the dialectic process Socrates promoted. Multiple sides, truth-seeking. Sure, having a spacious notebook on th…

Sometimes you have the drastic misfortune of someone totally off the rails writing crazy crap in it though, or a 3 year old experimenting with crayons. Not what the Stephenson article is about, but that sucks. Amazon's used prices are usually set by booksellers that base their prices on stuff like this for some books... When you get to like old cheap paperback romances though, or that .01 plus shipping, you might or…

Buying a used book sight unseen from Amazon or from a reseller who doesn’t have a reputation for reporting used condition reliably … that’s a buyer’s choice. It’s not left to (mis)fortune.

Anyways, my point was to counter the parent post’s claim that notes in margins are shallow or unsocratic. Some are, some aren’t IME.

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#685

Post by tharkun__ »

Hendrikto wrote: post #644
tharkun__ wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard agree on highlighting. I never understood it. Well highlighting and also the post-it notes marking of pages. It's just too much. Never worked for me. I only did it when I was forced to by teachers! But not for the reasons you're stating. It was just more like "unreadable". There would've been essentially a post-it note on every single page. Or I'd highlight like half the page. It's a bit like bookmarks in browse…

> Hard agree on highlighting. I never understood it. […] It's just too much. Never worked for me. I only did it when I was forced to by teachers! > There would've been essentially a post-it note on every single page. Or I'd highlight like half the page. That just means you are not good at highlighting. Which is likely why your teachers wanted you to practice it. If you highlight half the page, I totally understand wh…

They didn't want me to highlight. They just wanted everyone to do highlighting and post-it-noting.

And it's not like there was some sort of actual objective or teaching. Who knows, maybe I would've "gotten it" :shrug:

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#686

Post by exmadscientist »

Multicomp wrote: post #665
exmadscientist wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The G2 definitely does glob. That's one of its bigger faults. (Others being that I, personally, prefer a line width between the 05 and 07 options -- obviously this is world-stoppingly critically important -- and that really old ones, I mean really old, tend to get disgusting sticky grips.) Mostly they're just nice for being fairly rugged and reliable in a way most nicer pens just aren't, for carrying loads of ink, an…

I do one slightly different, if they carry the G2, they likely also carry a pack of retractable Pilot Precise V5s in a 4 pack of black. I prefer V7s or V10s, but even a v5 in black has a better/softer grip than a G2, does not glob like a G2, has a cool needlepoint that plays nicer for fine writing than a G2, and has a stronger clip than a G2. The downsides are A) nontransparent barrel B) people tend to steal them mor…

The V5 is a great pen! They used to be my daily driver, and if you want what they do well, they're hard to beat. (Fountain pens can and will, but they're fussy, and everyone knows it. They're basically V5s on steroids: same highs, same lows, just more of them, with more choice and customization possible.)

But I would never call them "robust". Unfussy, yes. But a G2 glob is just a minor annoyance. A V5 leak, and they do leak, is a real problem. They're also prone to quick deaths if they roll off a table. G2s don't care about such minor mishaps.

So the G2 is my vote for "sprinkle everywhere".

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#687

Post by setopt »

BenFranklin100 wrote: post #582
setopt wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paperlike is indeed nice for handwriting, but it has drawbacks. The increased friction makes it uncomfortable to use your fingers to navigate the iPad for long, and since it makes the finger motion along the screen less smooth, it sometimes prevents the iPad from correctly interpreting drag-and-drop or multi-finger gestures in my experience. It also makes writing very noisy compared to the stock iPad, and also compar…

Across a decade, I’ve used a Paperlike on five different iPads ranging from the iPad Mini, standard iPad, iPad Pro, both Gen 1 and Gen 2 Apple Pencils plus other styluses and never once experienced the problems you suggest. I’m making this comment on an iPad wth aPaperlike protector in fact. To the contrary, the noise levels when writing are dramatically lower and I simply cannot imagine anyone becoming fatigued beca…

Interesting. I wonder what’s the difference in our usage, perhaps the amount of force we normally use when swiping and writing?

Regarding noise, one of the main reasons I stopped using it was because my partner complained about the «scratching» noises when we were home officing together during Covid lockdown, and I personally also found it loud. I didn’t get complaints on the iPad before getting the screen protector.

Regarding the friction, I personally found swiping uncomfortable over time, but I guess that might depend on a lot of factors, including force used when swiping and skin type (oily vs dry skin, skin thickness and sensitivity, etc.)?

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#688

Post by pims »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #608
pims wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm left-handed and always tilt paper at least 45° clockwise, effectively writing from below. Never had any smudging issues, even with fountain pens, as my hand simply never goes over any ink. Left-handed people who write from above by bending their wrist have always confused me, as it's both less comfortable and does not completely avoid smudges.

You meant counterclockwise, I guess? Because clockwise would mean to write from above, not below? Interested because my son is learning to write and is the only leftie in the family, so I struggle to help him.

You had me triple check but it's definitely clockwise, i.e. the top of the sheet is actually facing top-right from my perspective:

           ______________
          /              /
         / Hello        /
        /     /|       /
       /    __/       /
      /    (  )      /
     /     / /      /
    /    /   /     /
   /    /   /     /
  /____/   /_____/
      /   /
The arrow below the o of hello being the pen, and the thing below being my left hand and arm (I actually have fingers IRL, ASCII art is difficult)

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#689

Post by xolve »

Diogenesian wrote: post #74
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 buy used books: it sucks to see someone else's notes scribbled all over the page. It's like a really annoying guy whispering at you with vapid explanations while you're trying to pay attention to a lecture. "Cross out stuff you disagree with" actually makes me sick. It also seems useless for understanding and retention, since highlighting is almost always misleading and margin notes are almost always empty. If you…

I would hate reading a censored book. But a second had book with side notes and highlights is a chief reason for me to buy second hand book. Call it a time traveling mail box.

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#690

Post by celurian92 »

Silly question, if we believe the concept of evolution then we evolved to write by hands to materialize our thoughts. But as in some future we might not have paper to write on ( though we have writeable devices)

this gives me a question like when would our brain think its time to evolve from handwritting to typing and then typing to Brain computer interface so that we can write at the speed of thought?

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