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Comment by Wowfunhappy | Hacker News Reader

Wouldn't it make even more sense to replace your quick bad handwriting with perfect Helvetica?

I got a stylus for my iPad and i felt that way at the beginning but I learned that i visualize in my head what I'm going to create right before I draw, and the difference between what's in my mind vs what gets produced is so great, that it feels like a weird uncanny valley and i hate the output.

Not necessarily - your handwriting can sometimes be subtly optimized to the sort of subject matter you write about. For example, when I write lowercase T, I give it a little hook at the bottom. I also write my lowercase L in the cursive form, the tall skinny loop. That keeps similar-looking letters that I use a lot distinct. There must be other examples.

In my handwriting, the letter x is two crossed lines; the algebraic variable x is two Cs back-to-back. This makes it more distinct from a multiplication sign.

There is (subjective) charm in handwritten text that is simply not present in digital fonts. I would rather keep that magic alive.

I think handwriting is a very personal trait. Some people value good handwriting and they write neat even when they write fast. Others don't. Sadly, a vast majority if the world exists in the other camp. This is why they invented typewriters. If everyone conformed to good handwriting and could agree upon a good writing style standard, the world would have been very different.

I like good handwriting, but good, fast handwriting takes thousands of hours of practice. We used to spend a good chunk of school drilling it into kids, but now it's really hard to justify everyone spend that kind of time when we can technology our way around it and there are other valuable skills to learn.

That’s the same argument for using calculators in the past 30 years and ChatGPT in the last few years. At some point, we lose far more than we gain by “technology our way around” our early development.

Why bother having campfires when we have portable space heaters? Heck, why bother camping at all if we have a nice comfortable space at home? More generally, why do any of the things that connect us to our past?

Personally, I think it’s important to learn by doing and then provide a “here is how we made that easier, and now you know why” type of foundation. Perhaps better is having people develop versions of those solutions for themselves so we don’t just expect someone else to solve all of our problems.

If you live in an urbanised country you don't build a lot of campfires- besides there are rules on air quality that prohibit them.

I've known people who valued good handwriting but weren't particularly capable of writing neatly, and others who didn't particularly value it but were capable of staying neat while writing quickly. I think you might be overestimating how much of it is tied to what people value.

> This is why they invented typewriters.

Historically, that didn't seem to be the main reason for the many inventions of the typewriter. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewriter#History

That wikipedia article was a great read but I have to agree with GP.

> According to the standards taught in secretarial schools in the mid-20th century, a business letter was supposed to have no mistakes and no visible corrections.

Certainly, there were other reasons like speed, repeatability, official-looking, etc... too. Most typewriters wanted to be cheaper and on-demand printing presses. Some even managed variable width fonts! :)

Oh, the original comment is certainly right in spirit, I just wanted to be pedantic.

But I'm not sure why you quote something about the md-20th century, when we are talking about the (many) invention(s) of the typewriter? They were already old and well-established technology at that point in time.

When I'm taking notes, I use arrows, squiggly lines, symbols, I circle text, etc. which won't necessarily translate to typical text block.

Hard to make boxes and arrows out of helvetica, and basically impossible to do it quickly

Fine, make it Helvetica plus whatever other shapes you need. I would assume that Helvetica includes most of extended unicode, since it's such a widely used font, but I could be wrong, and it's beside the point.

If the computer is the one transforming your writing it should be perfectly quick.

To be clear, afaik current handwriting recognition software is not good enough for this. But if we had software that could transform bad handwriting into good handwriting, why not go all the way?

Cuz quality is not equivalent to standardization, and sometimes the latter is undesirable

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