Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The End of Handwriting

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 338 posts

Re: The End of Handwriting

#211

Post by loloquwowndueo »

oddthink wrote: post #118
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 tried fountain pens for a bit back in grad school, but they honestly weren't great. They were imprecise, blobby, scritchy on the paper. Subscripts and superscripts would smear out. The best experience, IMHO, was a 0.5 mm mechanical pencil, but those smeared, so I eventually switched to pilot v5 or muji pens. But that sounds like math, not cursive, you say? Well, yes, but there are paragraphs of thinking and doodlin…

Technical pens (staedtler) are great for math writing and quite precise (I studied engineering and used these a lot for notes with lots of formulas, diagrams, math notation etc), but the ink does take a bit to dry so it can be smeary particularly for left-handed use. They’re also a bit unforgiving with writing angles (likely not optimized for writing, for sure but they do work)

Re: The End of Handwriting

#212

Post by 1718627440 »

kleiba wrote: post #201
1718627440 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I switched from Thuringia to Saxony and have younger siblings that were in Saxony and they don't differ in that regard. I thought "Schulausgangsschrift" was mandatory. Where do you went to school? What did you do in class two in German lessons? This was basically the main thing we learned there (I think).

Re: The End of Handwriting

#213

Post by skeezyboy »

bluGill wrote: post #142
skeezyboy wrote: post #80

silicon valley resident assumes rest of world is like silicon valley and that everyone has a smartphone

Everyone has a smartphone is close enough to the truth. There are people living in mud huts that have smart phones, even though they cook on an open fire and use candles for light. More than half the world population has smart phones, and even some very poor countries have surprisingly high penetration.

>There are people living in mud huts that have smart phones, even though they cook on an open fire and use candles for light.

How are they charging it and what network serves mud-huts?

Re: The End of Handwriting

#214

Post by eviks »

Tagbert wrote: post #196
eviks wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The studies you linked are garbage not related to the only part that matters - learning. What they measured is that if you ride a bike while listening your legs will have higher muscle activity, and so will your brain that managed those legs. There is only downside in distracting yourself to have to copy everything verbatim instead of, you know, actually focusing on the material being presented

good handwritten notes do not copy everything verbatim. You tend to summarize as you write it. That is part of the learning process.

While you're summarizing, what happens to the concurrently presented material which you're also supposed to summarize? How does that affect the quality of summarizing, and do you know of any study that proves the loss of focus is worth it?

Re: The End of Handwriting

#215

Post by skeezyboy »

bluGill wrote: post #142
skeezyboy wrote: post #80

silicon valley resident assumes rest of world is like silicon valley and that everyone has a smartphone

Everyone has a smartphone is close enough to the truth. There are people living in mud huts that have smart phones, even though they cook on an open fire and use candles for light. More than half the world population has smart phones, and even some very poor countries have surprisingly high penetration.

>Everyone has a smartphone is close enough to the truth.

Again, youre dreaming. Not even close to 6/7 billion smartphone owners.

https://www.gsma.com/newsroom/press-release/smartphone-owner...

Re: The End of Handwriting

#216

Post by lubujackson »

cyocum wrote: post #111

I find these articles both baffling and frustrating at the same time. I find it frustrating because I spent recess after recess locked inside to practice cursive. After many months of this, my handwriting had not improved. The teachers finally relented and stopped punishing me because the punishment never actually improved my handwriting. My handwriting is now print only and is still horrible and has never improved.…

Worth mentioning that English itself has only been around since the 1600s, basically when Chaucer was around.

Re: The End of Handwriting

#217

Post by taeric »

cyocum wrote: post #111

I find these articles both baffling and frustrating at the same time. I find it frustrating because I spent recess after recess locked inside to practice cursive. After many months of this, my handwriting had not improved. The teachers finally relented and stopped punishing me because the punishment never actually improved my handwriting. My handwriting is now print only and is still horrible and has never improved.…

I don't remember being punished for bad handwriting, but I know I got chided for it a lot. And I know we spent a lot of time on it. It definitely sucked, at every level of the experience.

I also find it odd that people have some off assertions on why we learn cursive. I'm sure there is a multitude of reasons, but I find it hard to think it has any strong advantage over other ways.

I do get a kick out of my kids being baffled that I write in cursive. At this point, I think I get as much fun out of that as I do anything else.

Re: The End of Handwriting

#218

Post by dranudin »

IAmBroom wrote: post #186
XorNot wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teaching cursive seems like a weirdly American obsession, because during school in Australia it just...wasn't a thing. Like teachers did take you through what "running writing" was, but we were never required to actually master it the accomplishments level was just "can you write? Good let's move on to how sentences are structured".

Fascinating! Can anyone from other countries chime in?

For me, in Germany, it was always cursive from the beginning to the end of school. We learned to write in the first class of elementary school. I still only write cursive and cannot write any other style, by hand. And only with a fountain pen. The style I was taught is called "Lateinische Ausgangsschrift". At a catholic elementary school in NRW. If you are interested here is an overview of the different cursive styles: https://www.schulschriften.de/html/schreibschrift.html

Re: The End of Handwriting

#219

Post by taeric »

noosphr wrote: post #176
elric wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at this book, it seems very similar to how I was taught in the late 80s early 90s. We were forced to use fountain pens, and would get berated if we got ink on our hands. I'm not sure if I can tell the difference between Tamblyn's business penmanship" and "looped cursive" and any other type of cursive to be honest. The difference in individual handwriting seems to be much larger than the difference in overarch…

The shape of the letters is largely irrelevant, the source of motion is the important part. In regular cursive it is the fingers that move the pen. In business penmanship it is the shoulder that moves the hand which is incidentally holding a pen. Here is a video that gets most of the basics right: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TWpFsv9Ib0 Here is one that gets it wrong: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vCPPcweLKWQ Th…

Really enjoying that first video. Thanks!

Re: The End of Handwriting

#220

Post by 2b3a51 »

woodpanel wrote: post #43

As someone who values fast typing, and optimizing it as a way to minimizing the gap between thought and implementing it (e.g. from smart auto-completes to vim mode, etc ) I can hardly fathom how any like minded person can willingly throw away this amazing tool called hand-writing. Sure, it doesn’t „scale“ into large texts as good as a keyboard, but beats „the digital“ still when it comes to immediacy, expressiveness…

> "hand writing comes with close to zero dependencies: no software, no os, no booting time, no charging - just hand, surface, and optionally an instrument. It is offline first, offers great privacy, and fun."

I'd add that you can shift sideways into drawing diagrams, or mathematical notation, or devise your own symbols on the fly in the blink of an eye without any friction, apart from the overall manual experience. So a way of capturing thoughts quickly before they evapourate. Then these notations can be rendered into electronic texts at leisure.

Post reply on HN