“Handwriting is the result of a singular movement of the body, typing is not.”įurthermore pens and keyboards use very different media. ![]() “It’s a big change,” says Roland Jouvent, head of adult psychiatry at Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris. It is easy enough for children to learn very fast, but above all the movement is exactly the same whatever the letter. Operating a keyboard is not the same at all: all you have to do is press the right key. “Children take several years to master this precise motor exercise: you need to hold the scripting tool firmly while moving it in such a way as to leave a different mark for each letter.” ![]() “Handwriting is a complex task which requires various skills – feeling the pen and paper, moving the writing implement, and directing movement by thought,” says Edouard Gentaz, professor of developmental psychology at the University of Geneva. When we are reading, few of us wonder whether a text was written by hand or word-processed.īut experts on writing do not agree: pens and keyboards bring into play very different cognitive processes. What really matters is not how we produce a text but its quality, we are often told. So at first sight the battle between keyboards and pens might seem to be no more than the latest twist in a very long story, yet another new tool that we will end up getting used to. The tools and media used for writing have changed many times: from Sumerian tablets to the Phoenician alphabet of the first millennium BC from the invention of paper in China about 1,000 years later to the first codex, with its handwritten sheets bound together to make a book from the invention of printing in the 15th century to the appearance of ballpoint pens in the 1940s. Ever since writing was most likely first invented, in Mesopotamia in about 4000BC, it has been through plenty of technological upheavals. This minor revolution is causing quite a stir but it is by no means the first of its kind. “I have to tell you, I can’t remember the last time I read the constitution,” countered Steve Graham, a professor of education at Arizona State University. Without this skill, they assert, young Americans will no longer be able to read birthday cards from their grandparents, comments by teachers on their assignments or the original, handwritten text of the constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Some states, such as Indiana, have decided to go on teaching cursive writing in school. For many, it’s easier to write and just about as fast.” Of course, everyone needs to be able to write without computers, but longhand printing generally works fine Print is clearer and easier to read than script. “States and schools shouldn’t cling to cursive based on the romantic idea that it’s a tradition, an art form or a basic skill whose disappearance would be a cultural tragedy. In an editorial published on 4 September 2013, the Los Angeles Times hailed a step forward. But they will no longer need to worry about the up and down strokes involved in “joined-up” writing, less still the ornamental loops on capitals. ![]() Since 2013 American children have been required to learn how to use a keyboard and write in print. Given that email and texting have replaced snail mail, and that students take notes on their laptops, “cursive” writing – in which the pen is not raised between each character – has been dropped from the Common Core Curriculum Standards, shared by all states. In the United States they have already made allowance for this state of affairs. People undoubtedly write more than they suppose, but one thing is certain: with information technology we can write so fast that handwritten copy is fast disappearing in the workplace. On average they had not put pen to paper in the previous 41 days. According to the study, commissioned by Docmail, a printing and mailing company, one in three respondents had not written anything by hand in the previous six months. No one can say precisely how much handwriting has declined, but in June a British survey of 2,000 people gave some idea of the extent of the damage. But when did you last draft a long text by hand? How long ago did you write your last “proper” letter, using a pen and a sheet of writing paper? Are you among the increasing number of people, at work, who are switching completely from writing to typing? Perhaps you added a comment to your child’s report book or made a few quick notes during a meeting. In the past few days you may well have scribbled out a shopping list on the back of an envelope or stuck a Post-it on your desk.
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