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Comment by alabastervlog | Hacker News Reader

I've found I can barely write anymore.

I mean, I can, but my handwriting is so bad I can barely read it, even if I've written pretty slowly. Like it was never good, but I could write a lot faster and still be able to read it. Now my slow and careful handwriting is worse than that, even.

It occurred to me some time last year, when reflecting on this, that I've probably averaged fewer than 50 words written by hand per year, not counting my signature, over... like more than a decade. I wouldn't be surprised if the actual annual average over that span is around 25 or 30 words, even. So, no wonder.

A big change from the days of writing several hundreds words in one hour for Blue Book tests, a few times per year!

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Oddly my handwriting is aesthetically better than ever in old age, but I find I just have no patience left for it. Halfway through scribbling a word my brain is screaming "come on already!" for a keyboard, and by the next word it's completely checked out of whatever thought I was supposed to jot down. It's like watching the most boring scene unfold in slow motion. I've been hearing the handwriting->memory argument for decades, but screw that. Give me >100wpm.

Granted, I don't know that there's not something to the idea of some kind of special benefit or effect that only handwriting has. It does feel meaningful and important in some way. But I more strongly suspect that it's a matter of fluency. If someone types fluently enough that the act itself takes no conscious effort or deliberate attention, then maybe they can engage and form associations comparably well as if they were handwriting. Most people, I think, don't -- that is, even if their typing speed is more than adequate for whatever work they do, I'm guessing it remains a bottleneck in this sense. Handwriting is slower, typically, but I don't mean a speed bottleneck, even though speed is part of the point. I mean something more along the lines of whether the conceptual task at hand enjoys dedicated resources, or has to share mental bandwidth, attentional control, working memory, flow, etc. with the mechanical task. I get the same frustration as you, of course: I don't handwrite painstakingly, but I do it slower than I type for sure. Both are low-effort, but handwriting loses out in terms of speed. If my handwriting and typing speeds were the same, but typing were a higher-effort activity for me, it's then that I suspect handwriting would have the advantage. Then, how much faster can the typing get, while remaining high-effort relative to handwriting, before the speed advantage overcomes the cognitive load advantage?

I feel the exact same way. I see a lot of benefits to writing by hand, but it is just so unbelievably, painfully SLOW, compared to my typing.

I think you're still capable, just with that interval between use, you're perma-rusty at handwriting. My own experience is that I have retained the ability to learn scripts well into adulthood.

Within the last few years I've done what I call "installing a font." I was unhappy with my printed letter forms, so I looked up architectural lettering guides and modeled my new printing based on that. I also re-learned how to write cursive, which is always a struggle any time I re-start using it after months of having not.

Yeah, my father had lovely printed penmanship. I've planned on practicing to develop that as I return to reading more (in retirement), both to take notes as I read and learn, and because otherwise my notes will be illegible. My current hand printing or writing is atrocious.

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