Should We Celebrate or Mourn the End of Handwriting?

The Atlantic magazine recently ran an article on the demise of cursive writing, and judging from the letters to the editor, there are still many people who believe that the inability to write in cursive is a lifelong handicap. But I would like to offer an alternative viewpoint.

I was always the sort of student who loved school. I took to reading like a duck to water, I tolerated math, competed with the other kids in my class to get the highest score in spelling, and thought the World Book Encyclopedia my parents bought us was fascinating.

Needless to say, my report cards were usually stellar, except for the dreaded handwriting grade. Despite dutifully struggling to hold my pencil correctly while tracing letters, my printing was barely legible, and my cursive letters straggled all over the page. Try as I might, my handwriting never really improved.

By the time I got to college, I was adept at taking copious messy notes during class, which I then consolidated in print, on review sheets. But it wasn’t until I got my first ungainly Macintosh computer in graduate school that I found a way to transcribe my thoughts as quickly as they occurred. In my current job, I still sign my name illegibly, although the COVID-19 lockdown forced most of our paperwork online anyway so now I can enjoy the lovely cursive flow of my electronically created signature.

All of this is not to say that I don’t see why people value cursive writing. To me, it is a beautiful art form practiced by people with the skill and time to devote to it. But it is not a necessary academic or intellectual skill in the modern world.

Looking back on the past and ruing the changes that have occurred is an age-old occupation. Plato thought that a written language would have a detrimental impact on memory. Socrates argued that when things were written down, it precluded the active argument so necessary for learning. When the printing press was developed, government and church officials resisted the trend, fearing they would lose control of the messaging to their populace.

In the age of the internet, many of these musings seem quaint. Not only do we rely on printed documents in our formal communications, but we routinely use email, text, and social media to communicate with others. In fact, these written interactions are so easy to manage that many of us limit our phone conversations to prearranged times, access much of our information online, and express our own thoughts and feelings across a variety of platforms. We can find translations for hundreds of languages online and even view copies of actual documents that were originally handwritten. But none of this stops us from looking at past practices with nostalgia and new advances with distrust.

There are certainly brain-based reasons that we struggle with change. Our perception of the world is encoded in networks of neurons in the brain. As we grow and learn, these connections proliferate to reflect new information. Once a link has been made and activated thousands of times, it becomes a cognitive groove.

And just as ruts in the road can be difficult to escape, it takes effort to disrupt the established grooves of our thoughts. It takes time and effort for our neurons to form new pathways and the process can make us feel disoriented as we strive to realign our thoughts or learn new skills. From a psychological point of view then, it makes sense that people tend to value the things they grew up with and find comfortable and familiar.

So, if you appreciate beautiful handwriting, by all means, continue to pursue the art. But that doesn’t mean that those of us who are handwriting-challenged can’t appreciate the ease with which our computers allow us to record our thoughts. Surely there is room to appreciate accomplishments from the past while still embracing change and progress. I can value a handmade candle but continue to light my house with electricity.

If you have beautiful handwriting, I salute you—and am even a little bit jealous. But I can assure you that if you had to read this post in my handwriting, you would be cursing cursive too.

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