The death of handwriting

Guardian Unlimited ^ | Feb 14, 2006 | Stuart Jeffries r

[RangerM]

When I was a teenager, I worked at a movie theater where we did not have cash registers. We had to total the concessions in our head. It amazes me that when I hand the cashier $2.07 for a $1.82 bill that they look at me like I am the stupid one.

Why is this so hard to figure out? Basic math has become an "advanced" job skill?

[woofer]

must confess that my spelling has gotten worse since using Word.

Mine's gotten better!

Spell-checker is your friend, as long as you remember your synonyms.

[caver]

Same for me, I'm a draftsman and have been for over 30 years but I haven't been on the board for about 12 years. My lettering still looks good though. I'm amazed at some people's handwriting and how they ever got through school.

[MrPiper]

FWIW, my spelling has improved since spell-check. Its nice to be able to see a corrected spelling and after using it a few times, it sticks.

I do keep a journal in pencil, just to stay attached to the old way.

I sort of discount this story due to pencil's still being cheap, someone is buying them.

[Crolis]

I have to say that while my spelling has always been good, I do appreciate the second check that a spell checker provides.

What I'm noticing when it comes to Internet correspondence is that many people have no style when it comes to formatting email. Instead of the salutation, body, complimentary close, and signature found in traditional letter writing, the email arrives as one big bundle of text,lacking paragraphs or even a clear structure.

Moreover, many of the kids today have become so adept at text messaging or their Nintendo joysticks, that they don't even use proper typing discipline, relying on a fast version of hunt-and-peck.

While that can get you by, to save time they abbreviate and truncate many of the words they use to communicate, generating text which has the appearance of a cat walking across a keyboard.

[razorback-bert]

Spelling, let us talk of grammar.


I often have to read something five or six time to understand what is being written.


Journalists are the worse offenders.

[em2vn]

Was your left hand damaged?

[Personal Responsibility]

I grew up before computers and my handwriting was god-awful. It still is, but now I can type everything. I am very, very thankful that embarassment is out of my life.

[The_Victor]

My handwriting was always atrocious. When I became and engineer I learned to letter everything, but at least now I can write legibly.

[Moonmad27]

Fine quote from one of the best episodes - thanks! (Best TV show ever - and more "current" than it was in the 60's.)

[R. Scott]

I must confess that my spelling has gotten worse since using Word. It's my fault for being lazy.

For me it has been the opposite. After seeing some words underlined in red so often I have learned to spell them correctly.
It also helps me because my handwriting has always been nearly unreadable. When I had to fill out a ship’s logbook I would laboriously write the entries out slowly and carefully – and it could still be hard to read.

[R. Scott]

I never want to go back to the days of pen and ink. Or worse yet, stone and chisel.

I recently completed my first book for publication – and yes, when it hits the shelves I’ll post a blatant commercial vanity.
I have been working on the book for several years, with the last year being intense. Rewrite the rewrite of the rewrite I rewrote. Thank God for the word processor! I often thought of what people had to go through with manual typewriters – and even harder, pen and ink.

[Atlas Sneezed]

I've switched to voice recognition.

It's my cheesier.

[Max in Utah]

I still get compliments on my handwriting, even though it's not as good as it used to be (like most things these days :). I find that I get writer's cramp now by the end of one page.

[GAB-1955]

I am not only still having to use handwriting, but I am learning shorthand. These darn security measures mean I cannot carry a laptop or a PDA to and from offices to capture notes and there are too many meetings--far too many meetings!

[SuziQ]

My kids can't read my cursive! They always make comments about having to sign anything; they don't like the fact that their signatures look bad. I keep telling them that when they find themselves sitting down for a stretch, get a piece of paper and practice! They haven't had to do much in the way of handwriting, except class notes, lately; they do almost everything on computers.

[Terabitten]

I fail to see why the "loss" of handwriting skills really matters. The point of handwriting was to communicate without physically present, and electronic communication fills that task admirably.

One may as well lament the lack of people able to accurately press cuneiform into clay tablets.

[Terabitten]

My kids can't read my cursive!

Just for fun, go back and try to read a handwritten document from the 17th or 18th century. While the penmanship was beautiful from a purely aesthetic standpoint, it's nearly illegible to us today.

[libstripper]

Yuppers, handwritting, spelling, lots of other skills are evolving or just going away. OTOH typing skills ARE improving as is conciseness, creativity and perhaps overall communication.

I have to question whether computers have improved typing skills, although they have definitely improved typing speed and results. I went to college and law school from 1961 through 1967 and typed a large number of academic papers during that time. The consequences for making a typo then were horrible--at the very least I had to stop, try to erase it or white it out, and then go on. That was if I was only working with a single sheet of paper. With a carbon pack each typo or misspelling required stopping and going through the entire pack to correct the error. That meant I was very careful not to make typos.

With a computer it's all different. A typo can be corrected instantly and almost effortlessly. A spell checker lets any of us get most of the typos without even a serious proof reading. Once the spell checker has done its work proof reading can catch most of the remaining errors. However, if you looked at this post before the spell check and proof reading, you'd see it was replete with errors, far more than a document I'd typed before word processors came along would have been.

In short, since modern word processing programs make fixing documents so easy, I concentrate on typing speed more than accuracy and let the computer fix the errors before I release a document.

[Uncle Vlad]

OTOH typing skills ARE improving as is conciseness, creativity and perhaps overall communication.

That is because we want information...information...information...