Take a look down at your thumbs for a minute. Do they seem a little muscly to you? Have your fingers bulked up overnight? If you’re developing form that could take you to the Thumb War Olympics, you might want to consider putting down the keyboard and picking up the pen - there are a lot of handwriting benefits that you could be missing out on.
Handwriting under threat
The truth is that handwriting is on the decline. No one can really say how much handwriting has fallen out of favour for sure, but in 2014, a survey undertaken in Britain gave us a bit of an idea. Out of 2,000 people surveyed, one in three hadn’t handwritten anything in the last six months!
Sure it’s true that people probably write without thinking. Grocery lists and phone messages on post it notes are still counted as writing! But anything longer - especially in a business environment - has virtually disappeared. Handwriting benefits are certainly outweighed by efficiency in the business world. Speed simply had to take precedence over keeping your fountain pen in tune.
These days we can get machines to quickly do pretty much everything for us, so we take them for granted. But there’s one machine - the printing press - that is said to be the most important invention of the second millennium. Ironically, it’s been both the biggest threat to handwriting and the biggest influence over why most people can read and write today.
The early days of handwriting
Before the printing press was invented, typically only very wealthy people, scholars and priests could write - there was simply no point in learning for most. But the people who could write made a killing! Their skills were very much in demand. The invention of the printing press changed everything. Teams of people didn’t sit down to write out books anymore, so many people who wrote for a living had to find other professions. On the other hand, there was now a way for information to be exchanged by people en-masse. For this reason, learning to read became worthwhile and many clamoured to learn.
Huge advancements in thinking occurred, based on all this knowledge passing between people. In fact without the printing press, many people believe that the world as we know it probably wouldn’t exist today. It was the internet of its time! And of course it was through the invention of the printing press, that common people learned not only to read, but to write.
Handwriting gets standardised
When handwriting was invented, there were lots of different styles of writing, even within the same language, but this got pretty complicated. A ruler called Charlemagne got a little picky about this in the late 700’s, AD. Since he was in charge of most of Europe at the time, you can probably understand why he wanted to tighten things up a little. This trend toward standardisation was helped along by the invention of the printing press, and has continued to the modern day. It’s another reason that so many of us can easily understand each other in the written form. Defined styles such as Zanerian, D’Nealian and Modified Cursive are what currently influences the handwriting of most people who use the 26-letter Roman alphabet.
Despite this, the proliferation of electronic devices such as phones, tablets and laptops in most levels of society are giving many people the ability to stop needing to write anything more than a sentence at a time. Now if you’re a GP, that’s probably a good thing, because nobody can read your writing anyway. But for the rest of us, it’s a trend that’s probably worth resisting.
Handwriting benefits today
You could probably be excused for thinking that the history of hand writing is a long and twisted saga that will end up with people embedding keypad-like devices directly into their fingertips. The truth is that there are some very compelling reasons why handwriting needs to continue to thrive.
- Firstly, handwriting helps kids learn how to read. Children who are able to transfer the words they think about on to paper have a clearer understanding of how letters build words, which build sentences and meaning.
- Second, knowing how to lay out a complicated idea in writing increases the ability to read and understand other complicated ideas.
- Another handwriting benefit, especially when note taking, is that it helps you to retain more information. This is because the brain is able to summarise and understand more when committing notes to paper.
- Handwriting also improves your ability to develop concepts and to think critically. This is due to the fact that you aren’t forced to record your words in order and in just one direction, when you write. You can handwrite things all over the page in a way or order that helps you organise your ideas and connect random thoughts.
- Lastly, handwriting benefits your creativity. The use of a pencil and paper to produce things forces your brain to slow down and organise concepts at a more abstract and fluid level. This can produce big leaps in thinking.
Handwriting benefits from great notebooks
If you (like us) simply love a good notebook by your side, take a look at our range. We have a notebook for every personality and every occasion. We’re sure that they’ll inspire you to seize a pen and write down something monumental, but don’t worry - we won’t claim any authorship rights when you get rich and famous. We’ll just write about you proudly in our blog.
