Handwriting is STILL important
I’ve been having back-and-forth conversations with a friend of mine on the value of teaching kids to hand write in school; he was of the opinion that its no longer relevant whereas I still still believe in the value of handwriting. His rationale: tablets are so common these days that typing skills is more relevant. Mine: handwriting will still be an important skill even in a diminished, tablet world – hey, some tablets provide you with stylus-writing option. Besides i can mind map, draw and colour with ease while writing whereas some apps are fiddly.
Up until now I found it difficult to defend my position until I read this article. Ok so this article might not fully explain why handwriting is still relevant but at the very least, I believe that it backs up my thoughts on why switching between typing on writing in important; the process of switching keeps you fresh. If you need to take a break from one (typing) then you can switch to another (handwriting).
Care to share your thoughts?
MMA
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Even leaving aside the benefits for your brain, writing, or anything else, it becomes a question of being able to communicate. There are still many jobs where instructions, notes, or other such things occasionally need to be handwritten. Even in our digital age. If you lack handwriting that other people can actually read and understand, you are failing to communicate.
2 thumbs up for that reply. Ill have plenty of material to for my friend now :)
I have mixed thoughts about it, but it probably is important to do both. It is kind of like working the brain. If you only work the left brain, you never get the chance to work the right brain and test your capabilities. As a writer, I do work on the computer when writing blogs or comments (such as right now), but my actual projects are composed longhand. The benefits offered–being forced to slow down and think, interacting with the text in a way that is impossible with a screen, feeling the physical sensation of carving each word–are too great to pass up.
–JW
The left and right brain connection is a very good point to raise.
I often struggle to write something on the keypad. When that happens, I do 2 things – I take a break then I take a pen + paper out and go for it. The only downside to this is that I have transfer the notes to the laptop / tablet i.e. rework. But the upside of getting thoughts to paper outweigh rework.
I forgot to mention that: the transfer process is one of the most helpful things you can do for your writing because of how it forces you to go through everything over again.
–JW
Totally agree – a form of quality control