Why Writing by Hand Is Better for Memory and Learning
scientificamerican.com
scientificamerican.com
Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread brain connectivity - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39364576 - Feb 2024 (191 comments)
The new study cited is a Norwegian small-sample-size study of college kids typing vs. writing Pictionary words while wearing an EEG. Not learning, I would point out.
What they observe is more connectivity between brain regions when they write, because well, writing and uses more of your brain. And then they make this immense leap to, "and it seems like the connectivity we see when people learn, ergo it's good for learning."
Then Scientific American amplifies it because it's a divisive non-falsifiable thing that people (like me, admittedly) get weirdly invested in. This is bad science and bad science comms. Show me how you decided that this connectivity pattern was evidence of learning when observed in a non-learning context—that's the crux of the issue.
I suspect you can't "see" learning of the type that college kids do in an hour-long EEG session. It unfolds over days, months, years.
5 years ago I started turning back to calligraphy, fountain pens, and hand writing. I buy books and fill up my bookshelf. It wasn't just for the memory recall, it was the pleasantness of writing.
I can't begin to tell you just how wonderful it is to write with a nice fountain pen. This was the culmination of writing instruments prior to the bastardization caused by modern cheap pens/pencils. I heartily recommend folks pick up an affordable Parker pen or similar and try it. It's also a great stress reliever to just free form thoughts onto a page, and you'll remember what your wrote later in the day!
One other bonus, your handwriting improves. I had to fill out some government forms recently. The online forms were cutting off any addresses longer than 24 characters, so I filled it out by hand. Went into the offices to submit and after the clerk saw my papers they went, "oh my goodness, you have incredible handwriting!"
Besides the learning, recall, etc, there are so many side benefits. Read and write physically y'all!
Is there a particular Parker model you’d recommend?
[1] https://www.jetpens.com/blog/The-Best-Fountain-Pens-for-Ever...
I started with the Parker 51 by trying out a clone by name of Jinhao 51A.
My suggestion is to look for the knock-offs like Jinhao and buy a few of them (you can get 4-5 pens for the price of the cheapest Parker). Then you can try them all and whichever you like most, when you choose to upgrade, buy that variant of Parker it was trying to clone. Or maybe the Jinhao ends up good enough for you and you stick with that, nothing wrong with a nice affordable pen!
Also, the Jinhao's make pretty gifts for small occasions, they're very colourful and elegant, if you upgrade away from them, can gift them to friends/family.
Why I recommend it this way: I enjoy pens and have done illustration and calligraphy professionally but the Preppy has essentially replaced my other pens except when I specifically want something special. Writing with it still feels special, mind, but to enjoy things you also shouldn’t be afraid of damaging or losing something precious, nor should you miss a day of writing because you didn’t want to carry some fancy instrument in your hoodie pocket or whatever. As for the pads, fountain pens are wet compared to other types and some paper will make it impossible to use or enjoy. Vietnamese paper is cheap, available, and known to work well for this.
I would like to have a good experience with the Preppy, but I don't know if this is just how it will be because I have large hands, or if I'm doing something wrong, or just got a defective pen. What is the pleasure that I should be looking for? Is there still hope I can experience it, perhaps with a different pen?
It should feel effortless and an absolute joy to glide the pen across the paper. If writing with a BIC pen is 3/10 tedious, a well made fountain pen should be 0/10 for tedium.
It should be so easy, you find yourself able to write for longer without tiring than you usually would. Ink should always flow freely, control of movement seamless, hand comfortable and not even the least bit stressed/cramped, and the nib should not feel scratchy or catching against the paper. It should glide.
This is why I went all-in with a proper fountain pen after being frustrated with various other pens. On a budget, I have tried and can recommend the Jinhao 51A to get started. If you are willing to go all-in, Visconti and Parker makes amazing pens.
The Jinhao 51A is a clone of the Parker 51 which was a staple every-day pen for white collar work in the 40-50's. They are physically wider to fit large hands and the pen tip is fine and precise.
Good luck, I hope you're able to find something that works for you, fountain pens have very different characteristics. I own several and none of them are quite the same as the other.
The steeper your angle the more the nib rotation matters so you can try adjusting that while holding the position which is still comfortable. Someone recently tried mine and had a similar issue because they held it almost vertical; pressure on the page helps spread the tines and allow ink to flow but not if it's stabbing. Holding the pen at a different rotation to suit their writing motion worked and made it more comfortable to use less pressure but it did take some trial and error.
So I am 1000% the kind of person to get into fountain pens.
But I'm also a lefty. :(
I know it is possible to learn to use a fountain pen while writing left-handed, but it's a serious uphill battle and is never as easy and natural as being right-handed. Every now and then, I'm tempted to learn to write mirrored.
[1]: https://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2020/04/05/crafting-craft...
When I first started I'd say I was up to my normal speed within about half a page of Freeform journaling, initially it took conscious effort but then the brain just kinda went "oh."
Tangent: after that first day I had the thought to hold the resulting pages up to a mirror. The backwards writing was disconcertingly neater than my regular. (And remained that way even as I got faster and lazier)
Also for some unknown reason I formed the lowercase "A" entirely differently - everything else was the same..
Brains are weird.
Also left handed, BTW. If you're ever interested in going it even more old-school -- dip pens with India or Sumi ink are the absolute bomb. The ink is blacker than anything I've seen except perhaps in intaglio/etchings -- it can be made darker than fountain pen ink because there is no fear of clogging. Yeah, there's a bit of cleanup after every use, but very satisfying too, for some use cases.
It sounds like you've found some other pens that work well for you if you managed to hand draw hundreds of diagrams. I do feel sad you won't be able to fully experience "the glide" you get from fountain pens though. It's a real treat.
(also, side note, thanks for writing Game Programming Patterns, Crafting Interpreters, they are excellent books!)
Yes! Technical pens are great. My first book was all done using a Faber-Castell Pitt pen and my second book was Pigma Microns. I think Pitt pens are my favorite. I also have some Copic Multiliners which I was very excited about but ended up being a little too narrow for my taste.
Have you tried the FC Pitt brush pens [0] at all? They seem like a lot of fun for diagrams and doodles.
[0] https://fabercastellshopcanada.ca/collections/pitt-artist-pe...
Those diagrams are beautiful, and I think anyone who picks up that book and holds it in their hand can appreciate the work that went into it.
Thank you for creating it!
I find the typical rollerball to be far more conducive to cursive writing than a ball-point, as very little pressure is needed to release the ink. Kind of a "fountain-pen lite"
My daily routine involves journaling in the morning with a Pilot Custom 823 in a blank Midori notebook, doing all of my work planning + notes with a Lamy 2000 in a Traveler’s Company notebook built-up in a way that works for me, and reading physical books, marking them up with a Kaweco brass mechanical pencil. It’s flexible, keeps me on task, keeps me organized, and I feel like I’m getting better value for my time, if that makes sense.
I’ve tried so many different ways of trying to handle these things digitally, but have found that for me it’s best to use pen and paper for these sorts of things in conjunction with digital counterparts mainly for reminders and archives.
Not that that is what you do but people may read your comment and get fixated that it has to be a nice fountain pen or mechanical pencil.
Am I using them wrong? Using the wrong brand/type?
I have an old pilot metropolitan that is almost too smooth. I even dropped it once and had to re-form the nib. I usually use a pilot v5 rolling ball pen with the water based ink which is a little scratchy but requires very little pressure compared to a normal ballpoint.
If you are writing with a new pen the you might need a wider writing nib, a medium or above is your best bet. In pen reviews, look for how "wet" the pen writes.
I like writing very tiny letters and use a Pilot extra-fine, an it is can be scratchy, but I replaced the medium nib my Pilot Metro was sold with. It was not scratchy with the medium.
Jetpens has some 5 pen sampler pack if you're are $25 curious. https://www.jetpens.com/JetPens-Beginner-Fountain-Pen-Sample...
Pilot is an example of a brand known for smoother writing. Try one!
There is also the possibility that the nib is just out of alignment. You might need to look at it under a loupe and perform some adjustments… there are various guides online or you can pay an expert to do it.
What’s particularly wrong with appreciating tools? Why brand it ‘fetishisation’? For me, a good fountain pen is a work of art; the fact it happens to be useful for work is an added bonus.
Good tools are good, but let’s not forget what they’re actually for.
Yeah. I’m a bit of an audiophile (used to be a music producer) and have almost no interest in audio hardware other than how it sounds.
But it seems strange to me to apply the same reasoning to stationery. With sound, there is literally only one thing that matters: how accurately and precisely you can vibrate the air. With pens, it isn’t so easy to quantify. How do you measure what it means to feel nice to write with, or to hold in the hand? Or what makes a particular ink pleasing to the eye? There’s huge scope for personality and opinion that isn’t present in other kinds of what you might call tools.
And, separately: what is meant by ‘fetishisation of x’? Is it synonymous with ‘interest in x’? To me it seems to be used simply to look down on those who have interests not considered worthy; if one disapproves of singing one might as well refer to it as ‘fetishisation of the human voice’. But perhaps there’s more to it than that.
I’d argue that that’s not what matters. What matters is does the song you’re listening to sound good.
The measurement that you’re talking about is precisely the bit that obsessive audiophiles get wrong, and it’s the parallel that I’m drawing with folks who obsess over stationary too.
I’m not saying that hobbies and interests are wrong, just that often they miss the point that makes the tool useful in the first place. A cheap pen can write nicely without needing to obsess over then pen, paper, ink, etc, just as much as a song can sound great without obsessing over which particular tube amp sounds warmer.
Good point. I still think there’s very little scope for customisation though. Once you find what sounds good, you can stop.
With stationery, there’s no such thing because the question isn’t as simple as ‘does it sound good?’. It’s more like ‘does it feel good?’, ‘does it inspire me in my work?’, ‘does it work well for this particular situation?’.
I personally think you’re wrong to write all of this off as fetishism; it can be a life-enriching interest. Of course there are people who take it too far, and you only have to go to Reddit to find those people.
To some extent it’s also a matter of fashion, and if you’re one of those people who doesn’t ‘get’ fashion (in clothes, or in anything else) then there’s not much to be reconciled — it just doesn’t please you and that’s fine.
> obsessing over which particular tube amp sounds warmer.
I agree that that kind of thing is just boring as hell and detracts from any possible discussion or enjoyment of music.
Seeking perfection actually is particularly boring to me, which is why it’s not what I do with stationery either. It’s more appreciation of an object, flaws and all, than it is a pointless never-ending (and wallet-draining) search for some fictional nirvana like it is with speakers.
I have a 3d printer because I wanted to play with a 3d printer. Same with a drone, zero-turn lawn mower, welding machine, oscilloscope, and a host of other things my wife would be more than happy to tell you about.
Most of us here are engineers of one sort or another. We tend to have disposable income and a predisposition for gadgets.
I doubt many of us are truly ever under the delusion that we need these things.
I wouldn’t say it’s more important, I’d just say it’s a different interest.
2. There are cheap and good fountain pens. There are disposable fountain pens. Fountain pens are not some premium product, they're just a different type of pen (like wooden pencil vs mechanical pencil).
The main tradeoffs compared to ball point pens is that they write more smoothly and require less pressure (thus better for people with weak hands like children or elderly) but they can dry out if left uncapped or unused.
Which means that you generally hold the concept in your working memory for longer than typing. Which often times does not require the concept to be held in working memory at all because typing speed matches reading speed.
I also wonder if looking down at the page as you write vs looking up at the board. Constantly looking up and down is like a high frequency spaced repetition game, whereas the latter is a more motor/mechanical practice.
In addition to holding the concept in working memory for longer, writing being slower also leads to better refinement of the ideas as you write as the brain has more time to process the thought being written down.
I meant the brain having more time to process the thought and thereby also actually processing it to refine it by connecting the dots better with the existing knowledge & understanding by recalling the latter too into the working memory from the long-term memory, as well as perhaps the working memory creating a stronger stimulus for the long-term memory to record better.
As an abstraction (which would not match how this actually works in the brain), merely having/holding a thought constant in the (working) memory for longer before transfering it to the long-term memory should not by itself lead to a better long-term memorization and recall, nor to a better understanding of the concepts involved. It could at best strengthen the working memory itself.
Please let me know if I misunderstood your question, if I am failing to answer it, and/or, if you think my understanding posited is not correct, accurate or complete. Would be happy to learn back and/or discuss further.
I think what you said makes sense! Making connections with existing knowledge definitely strengthens the knowledge beyond simply holding it into your working memory and rote memorizing it.
The former feels like it leads to understanding, where as the latter leads to ...memorizing.
However, I feel like the difference between the two(understanding/memorizing) is actually closer than most of us imagine!
Going by a reasonable approximation/assumption that the the information in the brain is stored as synaptic weights, both understanding and rote memorization would end up as those weights.
The difference is how much semantic structuring happens in those neurons/weights. Rote memorization would be closer to relatively unlinked pieces of information whereas understanding would have more cross-linking.
The same thing arises for machine learning too. Certain models basically just store all data. When a good model generalizes, it is able to interpolate/extrapolate better to unseen situations, which is going beyong rote memorization.
The double-descent phenomenon in large neural networks however is surprising and is something I do not currently understand enough.
Upon observing myself, something similar or related seems to happen for the brain too. I've noticed that when memorizing by rote (e.g., practicing a specific song on a piano), I tend to make mistakes when starting out, become better, but then again start making mistakes, and finally improve and settle.
Therefore, understanding/learning == being able to explain to ourselves.
And the way to get better at understanding(aka. explaining the concept to ourselves) is to... repeatedly explain the concept to ourselves.
When you think this way, the Feynman technique is less a "method" to learn. But rather the fundamental truth as to how we all learn.
I remember a math class that drove me nuts because the instructor used overhead sheets. Usually they were at least limited to output speed of their own hand writing so I could keep up but with the overhead protector I was always scrambling to even get it down.
I'm also someone that needs good visual organization to really study and learn things, so a habit I built in college was to write all of my notes, and then later transcribe them to computer. That helped it flow through my brain twice, organize the notes, and also do so when my sole task was working with the notes rather than capturing notes AND listening at the same time.
> But in a physical book, I often remember that a phrase was at the top or middle or left side of a page, or that I was sitting in a particular chair when I read it.
Exactly! And for reasons I cannot explain this helps me with better recall too! Like when I remember something I read, I know roughly where in the book that stuff was physically printed and what other stuff were around it and how they relate to each other.
With ebook too I still know how things relate to each other but the clarity feels much less. I can see it much less in my mind's eye. I don't know why! And it drives me mad!
When I'm reading a book, some quiet part of me is always aware where in the book I am - from the weight distribution of the book, from the pressure on each palm and finger, from the visual feedback. I know before I pick up the book roughly where I left off, and my fingers often find the page on their own somehow. Recollecting info later, I might not even know exactly what I'm looking for - but I know where it is.
Reading a digital book cuts a lot of that entirely out, and I can't help but feel that it diminishes the experience (before, during, and after) far more than people realize.
I personaly see less use of feeling the weight of the book or the physical artifacts (even for the position in the book, the ratio on the scroll bar is to me a good enough replacement).
With audiobooks, I find I remember better if I’m walking somewhere new. It also provides context. I can recall details of the book by remembering where I was walking when I heard it.
I'll frequently read something and want to go check something 100 or so pages back. It's so easy with a physical book you hold the place and scan backwards. Much more difficult with an ebook.
I did this often during school, looking up information in textbooks - I'd remember roughly the chapter/page, recognize the exact page, and know where on the page something was, even if I couldn't directly remember the thing itself.
This seems weird to me. Does your ebook reader not have a "page" concept? I read China Mieville's Kraken on a Rakuten Kobo about 6 months ago and I distinctly remember the layout of the page where the protagonist does something that shows the culmination of his personal growth throughout the novel, or the page where you find out who is burning the past and why. I also remember distinctly where I was sitting when I read both of those passages.
The biggest difference between the eBook and physical book experiences for me is the smell--I miss the smell of the binding glue when cracking open a new book, or the pleasantly-stale paper smell of an old library book. I'm not saying that the eBook and physical book experiences are equivalent at all. I'm just saying the specific examples you're pointing out seem odd to me.
I'm also highly skeptical of the observations that come from a mind perceiving itself; one of the most striking takeaways from all the neuroscience I've read in the past few decades is that a lot of previous philosophy and psychology theory on how the brain works based on self-perception is blatantly just wrong.
I can take a book from a shelf that I only read once years ago and find a specific passage in a minute or two using this approach. For an ebook I have to try to remember a phrase and search for it, which doesn't always work if I remember just the physicality and sense of it, but not the specific phrasing.
- I just won't carry around some door-stopper printed books, so I am less likely to read them in printed editions.
- So much of what I want to read isn't in print anymore.
I am in the habit of writing in the margins of print editions as I read, but I haven't started doing this for ebooks. One sometimes remembers the place on the page and page in the book, the smell, the tactile experience, but I can't regard these as real criticisms of ebooks or true benefits of printed editions.
In my experience, having a digital copy of the book is, often enough, the difference between reading it and not reading it.
As a result, I generally have an easier time locating things in digital books. I'll occasionally read a physical book and then start looking for the search button... tap words, pinch to zoom... etc. I get really irritated when I realize I can't change the font. XD
The perfection of ebooks will be when you have one physical book with virtual pages that can change, but other than that it feels like a real book.
I still wish I had a unified way to take and export notes. If I could read a book on my ipad, make annotations and highlight, then export those highlighted excerpts + annotations to say, markdown, I'd be so happy.
I don't doubt that writing by hand can be very useful to many, maybe even most people, but it's not for everyone.
Precedent variations:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24714990
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27810632
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37909756
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8760392
PS: Is there so much research just to counter cursive getting removed from school requirements ? What is the reason for so much focus on such a seemingly limited subject when there's basically no research on professionals using keyboards instead of pens.
I am told when I was a kid, I started to have a dispensation for writing with my left hand but mums being mums "corrected" me to use my right hand.
This is one theory but I have never enjoyed writing by hand. I just suck at it. I remember all my school life was like "improve your handwriting".
Covid gave me an interesting experience. I had a short exam, like 2 hours during the time and I opted for " remote proctoring".
Suddenly, for the first time in my life I was like "now its my time to shine"
I learned to type from when i was a kid because my handwriting was a physical disability and with typing, I could simply wish that problem away.
This has progressed in my professional career where I can just type for hours at end comfortably but I cannot write my name in block letters on a form. I ask one of my coworkers to do it for me. (Its that bad)
More importantly, I recently felt inspired (HT to the late Humphrey Carpenter's excellent biography of Tolkien, who wrote to his kids a ton) not just to write for myself, but to write to my sons. This has given my writing even a greater purpose, as I want to give my thoughts (I'm not some profound thinker or such rubbish) and encouragement to my boys when I may not be around (not just in death, but even not near them). I want them to hear and remember the goofiness, and some of the things that went unsaid, or may have been missed, to apologize for my own failings, to really know how much I love and am proud of them. And I want them to not feel alone and discouraged in this world. That sort of stuff. I don't believer there would be anything wrong with typing things to them, however It feels like actually holding a thing that my dad held, and seeing his lines, scribbles, ramblings, bad spelling and stuff...but meant for me...would be really meaningful.
My understanding was that this was a myth... what's important is to actively pay attention, which seems to be the point here: "It’s very tempting to type down everything that the lecturer is saying, [...] but you don’t process the incoming information. [...] But when taking notes by hand, it’s often impossible to write everything down; students have to actively pay attention to the incoming information and process it [...]".
So it's not directly the fact of writing with a pen on a piece of paper, but rather the fact that it makes people "actively pay attention".
Maybe jotting down reactions helps maintain attention.
Actually paying attention, and writing down things you want to follow up on later so you don't have to hold them in memory seems better than both superficially stenographozing on a computer or trying to compress for handwritten notes. I suspect that writing helps by letting you forget, not helping you remember.
If you know something already you can skip writing it.
If you heard an interesting idea you should write it in a way you would understand it the easiest later. For me, not all notes taken by people on exactly the same course were as understandable, because everybody did some "reinterpretation/selection" - which for me could be a proof of some intricate processing.
If you want to follow up later, well, I think that's a different use-case - not related to focusing on the topic (also important but in other circumstances)
Well the whole point is that you should only do it if it actually helps you pay attention. If it is a distraction, then of course you should not do it.
I guess typewriting tends to generally be more of a distraction. But again, if it turns out that typewriting is the best way for you to learn, feel free to do it!
I cannot read my own handwriting anymore, so I almost never write anything by hand now, but when I was in college the first time I took notes by hand in a notebook, and later moved to typing on a laptop. I don't feel like I retained appreciably less information when I was writing by hand, BUT I did have the ability read my notes later, in addition to being able to search and index them easily. Additionally, I type a lot faster than I can write by hand so I was able to write down more detailed notes during lectures.
Now, obviously, college-age Tombert was 18-20, not a young child, but I still do school, and I still pretty much exclusively type my notes. I've found that the utility of using Obsidian to be able to try and figure out ways in which things are connected is just as valuable to me.
I'm not a complete idiot; it's possible that I'm actually not learning as well, but I really have no desire to go back to physical notes.
ETA:
I would like to point out, I've always resisted the urge to simply transcribe what the instructor is saying. I always try and summarize/break-into-bullets, because I feel like the summarization is part of the learning process; reading the article it looks like a lot of people typing notes are just larping as stenographers, which I would agree is a terrible way to actually learn.
I have spent time working out how to most effectively learn news things. Associating the learning with something you enjoy is critical, I hate physical writing, it can only hinder learning for me.
Not saying the broader claims of the article aren’t without merit, but the sentence quoted was true long before ubiquitous touchscreens (mid 90s, and long before then too I imagine)
Then I was able to export notes as pdfs for classmates, retaining the speed of handwriting for non-text notes but also having the digital usefulness and never forgetting a notebook.
I could either listen to lecture or take notes by hand, but not both.
How could you afford that much film on a college student's budget?
I really only have 1 downside when it comes to hand written notes....it is not easily searchable compared to text files, and it can be much harder to take notes when their is diagrams or a math problem where the teacher is skipping steps....
This means I really need to go find a second hand review via a video to ensure I know what's going on
My handwriting got worse each time. So I don't recommend that.
I think you have to want it to improve, and to value it. And then you have to practice with that in mind. At that age, I was unable to see a reason to improve it, and it was a lot of work, so I didn't put any actual effort into it beyond that torture they were putting me through. (It hurts my hand to write.)
Lately, though, I've considered finally improving it. I think improving it will involve re-learning how to hold a pen and move my arm/hand while writing. They way I do it is basically guaranteed to produce bad results, and I should approach it more like art than utility.
That all said... I still haven't found the energy or resolve for it.
Good luck!
This is a decent tactic if, like you said, you want to improve your handwriting. You have to want it. You have to go slow and form the letters perfectly every time so you develop that muscle memory. I printed pages of a single letter in the font I wanted to imitate and traced the letters. It's a great activity to do while you're sitting in front of the TV.
edit to clarify: the decent tactic is to re-learn how to form your letters IF you want to improve your handwriting. DO NOT force your kids to do so. It will be counter-productive because they won't focus on forming the letters. They'll speed through it to get it done and wind up with worse handwriting than before. As wccrawford and I both said: You have to want it.
Mostly it's just slowing down. Write a little slower and pay more attention to how your words line up and spacing of letters. Read over what you have written and see which letters are hard to read. For letters and numbers that are ambiguous try adding something like a slash through zeroes and a dash through sevens.
If you write a lot this way people will start thinking that you had a computer fill out forms. It also helps a lot if you buy a good pen like a G-2. I find bigger nibs like a 1.6 keep my lines more even.
There are a lot of penmanship videos on YouTube. I fell down that hole one day. They talked about picking a font a training to write in that font. But the kid would have to find the idea of picking the font they will write in compelling enough to train it.
If he doesn't want to learn the Palmer method (what you probably learned if you grew up in the US), then perhaps Getty-Dubay?
With the modern typewriter and rectangular light bulb, you may have to explicitly slow down to soak the information, in this hypothetical scenario.