Does Handwriting Have a Future?

Handwriting, that antique art form of loops and curves instilled in me in grade school, is rarely taught these days. My students print and sometimes can't read my cursive writing.  Of course, this is a minor problem in our changing world. Yet to people like me concerned with writing in its various dimensions, the shift in technology from old to new is important.

What is the point of handwriting? That is the title of a fine article (in Hazlitt) by Navneet Alang, who connects handwriting to the body and identity in fascinating ways.

First, I agree with his contention that cursive writing expresses feelings and personality in a way that the printed word cannot.  Even though some dismiss handwriting as a lost art, a crude form of writing, hopelessly outdated, or a sign of a bygone age, Alang shows that this form of writing is distinctly human and, what's more, helps one retain and understand what he or she is writing. Why? In part because it's slower.

And it has a future in 21st century technology:  the digital pen soon to be part of Microsoft's new Edge browser will let users write by hand atop web pages; so this antique writing, ignored by most English teachers over the past thirty years, may find a rebirth on screens.

While the speed and efficiency of typing on the computer will continue to dominate the way we write, capturing the speed of our thoughts, the slower pace of cursive writing and its personal impact have many benefits.

The author shows how studies of penmanship have an important bodily dimension, and how language, the body and the identity we create through writing come together. Fascinating!  Valuable!

Cursive Redux

There has been a lively debate this month on Andrew Sullivan's Dish about cursive writing, with persuasive arguments on both sides.  One of these comments prompted my latest post here.

I still think that, while printing may be more legible in many cases, students should be taught the basics of cursive handwriting since taking notes in college and at meetings requires the speed of handwriting; and they should be familiar with it so they can read the cards and notes (and maybe even old-fashioned letters!) of retro-folk like me who refuse to print my greetings in ink.  I am unsure if cursive is really better for cognitive learning.

I encourage those interested in this issue to visit www.dish.andrewsullivan.com.

Sullivan and his team have, for years, provided one of the most diverse and interesting series of posts imaginable, with links to articles and books in many fields.  Reading it, even when I disagree or get turned off, is an education.

Cursive Revisited

Earlier, I wrote a piece about the strange and sad demise of cursive handwriting, having noticed that my adult students print their in-class written assignments, as if they were children.  Teachers for the most part have given up on teaching this, contending that it takes too much time.

It does take time--sometimes too much--and the issue remains controversial as a recent (April 30) debate among New York Times bloggers reveals.

Suzanne Ascherson, a representative of an early childhood education company, might have a vested interest in her argument, which is that learning to write cursively improves brain development. "Cursive handwriting," she says, "stimulates brain synapses and synchronicity between the left and right hemispheres, something absent from printing and typing."

She cites the College Board's conclusion that students who wrote in cursive on the SAT essay exam "scored slightly higher" than those who printed.

Yet she does not present any evidence of her theory that learning handwriting actually helps in the areas of thinking, language, and working memory. Of course, her essay is only a brief blog post.

I agree with her than students need several options.  For me, a combination of printing and cursive writing works well in note-taking, where printing would seem to slow down the process.

What is missing from this debate is the problem I have discovered: that students who never learned to write cursively cannot read it, so that when I write them a note or make a comment on their essays, they say, "Huh?"

If teachers cannot spend time practicing the Palmer method that I learned in the 4th grade with their kids, they should let them become familiar enough with it so they can at least read what is written cursively.

In the meantime, I would like to see more evidence supporting the benefits of learning cursive writing.

Letters and Longhand

The mail carrier brings a daily deposit of disappointment: amid the bills and ads and other junk mail, rarely is there a hand-written letter or card.  Except for birthdays and holidays, there is seldom a touch of the personal. Letter-size envelopes sometimes look promising until I see they are marked "Occupant" or something equally disspiriting.

All this came to mind as I read the book Script & Scribble by Kitty Burns Florey, who is literate, witty and informative as she makes a plea for the hand-written word, which seems about to go the way of the dodo.

It shouldn't be: as she notes, TV didn't kill off radio, cars did not displace bicycles, yet the prevalence of email, along with cheaper long distance calling, has made the art of letter writing extinct.

Of course, as etiquette experts Amy Vanderbilt and others remind us, thank-you and sympathy cards have to be in longhand; even Etiquette for Dummies insists on hand-written notes on quality stationery for such occasions.

But many people I know use the informal email to thank us for cards and gifts: it's cheap and fast. Who, Florey asks, needs elegant handwriting today, the kind the nuns taught her (and me)--except cake decorators?

The underlying educational implications of students who never learn to write but only print, the subject of a previous post, is a more serious and bothersome issue. The day may already be here when youngsters cannot even read longhand, much less write it.  Instead, they must always be dependent on an external power source.  Even in classes or at meetings where jotting down notes rapidly requires the speed of longhand.

As Florey and others remind us of the many authors who, even in today's world, write by hand, we realize how much is lost by the refusal of teachers to teach penmanship or cursive writing.  Even a mixture of the two, as I sometimes find myself doing for the sake of legibility--half-printing, half-writing--is better than no cursive writing at all.

Having puzzled over far too many illegible student essay exams over the years, I know how difficult some handwriting can be to read; but that is no reason to abandon it. 

Florey's solution to the classrooom problem is to teach kids "one good, plain, solid, simple, easy, basic, legible, attractive--and fast--method" from the beginning, rather than teaching printing, then (in many cases) moving on to cursive.

Like me, she is concerned not only with efficiency but with aesthetics. Her elegant book is filled with examples of beautiful handwriting, with information on italic writing, pens, calligraphy and a fine discussion of those many authors, including J. K. Rowling, William Boyd, Martin Amis and John Updike, who have insisted on longhand in the digital age.

For years, I have begun most of my essays and other works on a legal pad, with a ball-point pen (the kind frowned on by our teachers in the 1950s: too messy). Revising, of course, is made pleasant and even enjoyable on the word processor, but nothing can replace the look and feel of my own handwriting: I am inscribing on paper a part of myself. It is a physical act and it focuses my attention on the words as they tumble out of my mind in a personal, intimate way that machines (whether typewriters or computers) cannot match.

So I am glad to read in this book about studies--and teachers who agree with these studies--that good handwriting can influence academic performance for the better; they insist that our advances in technology do not eliminate the need for the teaching of handwriting. We remember what we commit to paper, by hand.

Since writing this (10-27-12), I have discovered news about Philip Hensher's recent book, The Missing Ink, which poses the question: As handwriting disappears, will "some part of our humanity disappear as well?"  According to the reviews, his book is a personal response to this question.

I am glad to see him making his point that handwriting reveals individuality in an age of text messaging and other electronic forms of typing.  (update 1-23-13).

The future of handwriting

As I have watched the progress of the young man I tutor, now 16, I continue to be amazed that he still prints.  He says his teachers haven't the time (or interest?) to teach cursive writing. His sister, graduating from college soon, also never learned to write cursively.   I find this amazing.

I recall some of the exams from my university teaching days, not long ago, and how many of the male students, it seemed, printed everything. I was glad to be able to read their work, but I would think the demands of time would force them to write.  I never investigated the issue or thought much about handwriting until recently.

I can remember clearly moving from the infantile printing stage to cursive, then at age 12 or so, my efforts to improve my handwriting and make it more sophisticated: a statement of my unique self. I continued practicing in high school until I got the form I now use, which is legible, if not elegant.  I can't imagine taking notes in class without knowing how to write cursively.

A recent article by Philip Hensher in the Guardian, based on his new book, The Missing Ink, brought all this to my attention.  He  does not mention this shortcoming in American education, which I gather is widespread over here; instead he focuses on what he calls the vanishing practicing of handwriting in an age of texting and email, when nearly everyone types.  He laments the slow death of the personal, the idiosyncratic, the sensuously rounded shapes of writing by pen; in short, the personal element.

Hensher, who teaches at the Univ. of Exeter, laments the omnipresence of cell phones and other gadgets that make communication less human and personal, more mechanical, than the traditional method of writing with ink.

It is true, of course, that sloppy handwriting has cost business millions, as countless pieces of mail get returned each year by the postal service because they are illegible (not to mention doctors' prescriptions that are indecipherable).  If it's bad for business, I guess, the message filters down to the educational establishment that teaching cursive writing, at least in this country, is one of those frills we can dispense with.

Writing mechanically as I am now enjoying doing is faster, and speed is important in modern society. So is clarity. But, as Hensher points out, what about slowing down a bit and being thoughtful as we write?  What about our writing as an expression of the individual's inner self, his or her personality?  Nothing can replace for me the first handwritten draft of an article, with all of its cross-outs and erasures; it is an artifact, a tangible sign that, like my ancestors, I have inscribed something onto paper.  The physicality of writing is a hard thing to dispose of. Unnatural.

Typing on the word processor is wonderful, but are we to write sympathy notes, greeting cards, and thank-you messages electronically?  If someone fills out a lengthy application in a medical office, must he print it laboriously, like a third grader?

Handwriting used to be essential in communication; now it is becoming marginalized. This is not a major tragedy, just another sign of depersonalization.  In the U.K, apparently, at least half of the teachers still devote some time to teaching handwriting (according to a study cited by Hensher).

Prof. Hensher would be appalled at the printing that the students I have encountered call writing.  If he revises his book, he might want to include a look at classrooms on this side of the Atlantic. I hope I am wrong--that some American students are being taught to write in that flowing, mature, possibly elegant thing called cursive.