The End of Handwriting

People often credit my bully handwriting to my Catholic schoolhouse education—like a nun with a ruler and a sensation for corporal punishment perfected my penmanship. But that’s not why. It’s due to the fact that of my mom. An technologist by trade, she tin execute the benignant of cleanable artifact letters that lone travel with years of moving connected a drafting board. As a kid, I worked to mimic her people arsenic good arsenic her incredibly ornate cursive. I don’t signifier those skills astir capable arsenic an adult, though: As a reporter, velocity trumps quality erstwhile it comes to taking notes. Now, with truthful overmuch of my occupation being done connected a keyboard, I interest adjacent that scrawl is astatine risk.

Mine is not an isolated devolution. Parents, educators, and chap penmanship advocates person been lamenting the end of handwriting for years. Email began edging retired cards and letters decades ago. Then smartphones deed the market, and our reliance connected insubstantial notes, partition calendars, and Post-it reminders dwindled. In US nationalist schools, the absorption has shifted from handwriting to typing, arsenic much and much kids are exposed to iPads and computers in tandem with pencils. And successful the past fewer years, AI has made it truthful that humans hardly request to think, fto unsocial jot thing down. Now much than ever, it mightiness look arsenic though handwriting is doomed.

It’s not.

While the handwringing and emotions are astatine an all-time high, the lawsuit for handwriting is stronger than ever, too. Sure, immoderate of the attachment is nostalgia. In the US, there’s adjacent a weird consciousness that knowing cursive is immoderate benignant of civic duty for Americans. All of those arguments for handwriting place something: There are existent benefits to learning to clasp a pen successful your manus and usage it.

US nationalist schools inactive necessitate that kids beryllium taught handwriting, truthful it’s not yet a mislaid art, but determination is immoderate grounds that integer natives are little “ready” for penning present than students successful the past, says Karen Ray, a lecturer successful occupational therapy astatine the University of Newcastle successful Australia. In 2021, Ray coauthored a study examining whether kids who grew up with devices possessed the aforesaid good centrifugal skills arsenic kids who did not. While those students met the expected show levels connected manual dexterity tests, their wide centrifugal proficiency was little than erstwhile norms. Ultimately, the researchers hypothesized, clip spent holding devices alternatively than pencils mightiness beryllium impacting whether kids had each the centrifugal skills they needed to larn handwriting erstwhile they entered kindergarten.

But if kids ever person entree to devices, does it truly substance whether they tin constitute with their hands? Yes and no. If the past fewer years of integer nomad enactment and vibe coding person taught america thing it’s that, professionally, handwriting whitethorn not beryllium each that indispensable successful a batch of fields. The occupation is that learning handwriting mightiness beryllium indispensable to larn everything else. “We don’t yet cognize what we are losing successful presumption of literacy acquisition by de-emphasizing handwriting fluency,” Ray says.

Among the half-dozen experts I spoke to for this piece, determination were differences successful sentiment connected whether motivation panics implicit penning acquisition were warranted. For example, successful galore states lawmakers person passed authorities to ensure kids larn cursive successful US nationalist schools. Some experts enactment this, but galore don’t deliberation learning cursive, specifically, is each that important. But astir each hold that knowing however to constitute has cognitive benefits. It helps students larn to read, and chances are if they person to deliberation astir thing agelong capable to constitute it down, they’ll retrieve it much thoroughly than if it’s typed.

“Handwriting itself truly does matter,” says Robert Wiley, a science prof astatine the University of North Carolina astatine Greensboro whose probe focuses connected however the encephalon processes written language. “Not successful an implicit sense; radical aren’t going to beryllium illiterate. But volition immoderate children person a harder clip learning due to the fact that they’re missing that practice? Yes.”