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The End of Handwriting

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Re: The End of Handwriting

#201

Post by kleiba »

1718627440 wrote: post #194
IAmBroom wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating! Can anyone from other countries chime in?

I find the discussion very weird. I'm from Germany, cursive is taught in class two. There were people in class who never got it, but mostly one or two. I don't get how people can stand writing in printing letters, doesn't it take too much time to essentially stop writing after each letter?

Germany consists of 16 states, and they all have different school systems. Where I live, children are not taught cursive at all.

Re: The End of Handwriting

#202

Post by 1718627440 »

bluGill wrote: post #121
skirge wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't want to be replaced by machine you need a skill which machine can't replicate and train that skill somehow. Or become a very good machine operator.

Machines have been writing with pens for longer than I've been alive - since 1958 according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plotter#History . For that matters, pens are a type of machine. if you use a pen you are a machine operator.

A pen is a tool not a machine, or does your pen have a motor?

Re: The End of Handwriting

#203

Post by gigaflop »

chakspak wrote: post #23

I'm a software developer, so I type a lot. Typing is very practical for throughput and speed. But I still make time for writing by hand. I find it to be very valuable, because it forces me to think differently about things and sit with ideas longer. I also find journaling almost impossible to do on a computer but very accessible in a notebook. Writing by hand is also portable and adaptable. You can write on paper, su…

This echoes a lot of my own thoughts. I've taken to carrying a pen and small notebook around. At first, it was to help spend less time on my phone while eating out or something, and to keep track of all of those 'wow cool ideas' about building MTG decks, and 'what if' scenarios for a Pathfinder game I'm in.

Having all of the former pages on hand, made it so that I could cross-reference a current idea with one I'd already been sketching on some days or weeks back. I could see that I wanted to use the same card in 3 places, and then force myself to consider which one to put it in. I could sit and stare at something I'd written, and turn it over in my head, take a sip of my beer, and contemplate, "What are the motivations of this fictional character?"

I'd forced myself to start thinking more long-term. I ran a Pilot g2 down to about 1mm of ink remaining, filled the whole notebook out, got a new one.

It's a notebook with nothing important or classified, I regularly allow friends and family to scribble a page here and there, and have torn out a few bits to use as a kindling for a firepit with a faulty igniter.

Re: The End of Handwriting

#204

Post by IT4MD »

silvestrov wrote: post #170
IT4MD wrote: post #7

I don't see a lot of people still writing with quills, and there's a reason for that, yet there have been no catastrophic consequences, excepting maybe for "Big Quill". Personally, I think this veers into hyperbole a bit. The degradation in motor skills is barely measurable when compared to common tasks required of people today and we're talking about a skill that has less and less use cases every day. I believe this…

> degradation in motor skills If writing was so important for motor skills then it is very weird that kids only needs this single exercise. Why don't we have many different things to do with hands then? Like gym lessions which teaches many different sports/exercises instead of doing many years of the same exercise.

Nothing in the study accounts for other factors. I played a number of musical instruments growing up, and if I had ignored handwriting, I'm fairly sure I would still have better than average fine motor control.

Re: The End of Handwriting

#206

Post by loloquwowndueo »

swannodette wrote: post #157
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please share what the right fountain pen, ink and paper would be for a left-handed person to avoid smearing everything to kingdom come! (Asking with honest curiosity as a fellow leftie who would love to be able to use a fountain pen). I swear by uniball jet stream pens, they feel much nicer than a ball point and dry fast enough for me to use them but would love a true fountain pen setup instead!

I have 2 Sailor Pro Gear Slims 14K and one Sailor Pro Gear 21K. The later is the best writing experience. I'm not an ink maniac but I tried a few and I found that Sailor inks tend to dry reasonably quickly while still having a good flow. Midori paper and Tomoe River both perform very well. If I'm going to do a whole page of writing smearing from hand moisture can be a problem, especially w/ non-Sailor inks so in that…

Ouch, the 21k is 420 bucks. I want. Thanks for the info, I truly appreciate it.

Re: The End of Handwriting

#207

Post by Podrod »

bluGill wrote: post #136
picafrost wrote: post #29

Physically written materials are such a huge part of our archaeological understanding of the human past. In my mind digital materials are always dangerously close to non-existence, even if cloud redundancy and our apparent inability to fully delete things from the internet make us feel digital materials are well protected. The persistence of this data basically boils down to magnetic fields. Without power, these will…

The vast majority of written works did not survive. Paper will rot, and inks fade - in the typical case you only get a couple hundred years (deserts like Egypt give you thousands - which is why archaeology is so interested in Egypt, there is a lot more remaining to study but we have no idea how Egypt reflects people elsewhere). Before the printing press, books had to be copied by hand each copy separately - this is a…

A hell of a lot more texts survived from ancient Mesopotamia thanks to them writing on clay tablets. If the town burnt down the tablets just get better preserved.

Re: The End of Handwriting

#208

Post by cjohnson318 »

elros wrote: post #10

PSA for people with "bad cursive handwriting" but who would like to improve it: Write with FOUNTAIN PENS. Ideally on thicker paper, with something soft below (like more paper for example). Different writing systems evolved alongside different utensils. Cursive evolved to be written with a quill or a fountain pen. Ballpoint pens are an amazing invention and they have their place, but they optimize for price and practi…

I disagree about the thicker paper part. It's the "sizing" of the paper that's important, that's the preparation of the paper that makes it more or less absorbent. Moleskine/Lechturn and similar notebooks have a sizing on the paper that makes it less absorbent and easier for a fountain pen to glide over. Printer paper is way more absorbent and creates more drag causing you to use more effort. Source: I use a cheapish but decent Lamy fountain pen on both kinds of paper, and I write cursive and shorthand for speed, but print for long term legibility.

Re: The End of Handwriting

#209

Post by adamsilkey »

elros wrote: post #10

PSA for people with "bad cursive handwriting" but who would like to improve it: Write with FOUNTAIN PENS. Ideally on thicker paper, with something soft below (like more paper for example). Different writing systems evolved alongside different utensils. Cursive evolved to be written with a quill or a fountain pen. Ballpoint pens are an amazing invention and they have their place, but they optimize for price and practi…

Any suggestions on how to get into fountain pens? I handwrite a lot, but fountain pens have always intimidated me.

Re: The End of Handwriting

#210

Post by rickreynoldssf »

I was an artistic kid and essentially came up with my own distinct handwriting "font". It was beautiful. 35 years later, all typing, I've lost most of it. Now my handwriting is illegible especially because that "font" is still the way I write but I don't have the muscle memory to execute it any more. The whole use it or lose it is very real.
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