The written word

I read an article in the BBC recently about the decline of handwriting, “The slow death of handwriting.” With computers becoming even more prevalent, people only write by hand on very rare occasions any more, a grocery list, signing a card, very few other times. They fear that in a few generations, only specialists, old people in libraries, will be able to read the letters we wrote to each other and sent through the mail.

I think it’s the last two paragraphs of the article that I like the best though.

Perhaps the best argument for keeping our pens is that otherwise, in a society that is recorded in more detail than any which came before it, we will leave plenty of data but very little of our personalities behind.

Our descendants may struggle to read our letters, but they’ll never even see most of our texts and e-mails.

Last April I was talking to some other friends about handwriting, so I wrote down the standard sentence and scanned it in. I write about half the time in print and the other half in cursive.

I’ve been doing more cursive the last year though, so it’s a bit better than this. But this has basically been my handwriting since learning to write in school. And I’ve always been very proud of how good my handwriting looks.

I love handwriting things. They are more real when they are handwritten. It is why my journal is still handwritten. It’s my personality on paper, I want it to really come from me.

And that has probably been the most frustrating part about having a sore thumb (there are plenty of frustrating parts about my injured thumb, some are just more frustrating than others, although having to get help opening my milk cartons a few weeks ago was real frustrating).42D

I’ve gotten real good at using my left hand to do quite a few things. And I can almost use my index finger on my right hand as a type of thumb with the other three fingers for several things. But I can’t write. Or at least, I can’t write well. My board writing actually looks pretty much the same, but you hold the marker differently when you are writing on a white board than you hold a pen when you are writing on paper.

The writing I do right now, while legible, isn’t what I’m used to. And it takes so long. And even though I’m not really using my thumb to hold the pen, too much writing and it still hurts.

(Okay, I know this sample really doesn’t look that bad, but it’s bad to me, and I’m the one that counts. It’s worse when I’m trying to fit it between the lines on lined paper. And just those two sentences hurt, so I’m not going to be writing any more.)

The last time I wrote in my journal was January 28th. And I miss it. There are several things I want to write about but I can’t right now. That’s probably why my blogging is up lately. I can type for the most part (except using my thumb just for the space bar hurts now since my thumb got yanked wrong when I was getting dressed Saturday). I’m able to get some writing out, but it’s not the same. I don’t blog about the same things I write in my journal. And handwriting in a journal is soul cleansing.

In short, I think handwriting is important. And I plan to continue to hand write the important things for the rest of my life. That is, as soon as my thumb is better.

What do you hand write? Care to share your handwriting? How has your handwriting changed?

Related Post: If I could write – my favorite writing impliments.