Writing wrongs

Does anyone still care about handwriting? Although it was for centuries the medium and motor of daily life, handwriting has become, like public libraries and secondhand bookshops, a rare sight. One in three British adults now uses pens only to sign their names. Starved of opportunity, most people’s writing has regressed into a near-illegible scrawl. When even the leader of the opposition confesses that he can’t read his own writing, something is up. So should we cut our losses and follow Finland, which since 2015 has taught keyboard lessons in lieu of handwriting?

Emphatically not. Handwriting remains the most cogent vehicle for personal expression. If we let the skill lapse, we all lose out. Several studies have shown that the more fluent the complex process of handwriting becomes, the more brainpower is devoted to cognitive activity: to write better really is to think better.

David Butterfield and Simon Jenkins on the power of handwriting:

Sentences flow with less forethought when typed. Worse still, digital tools let writers forego much of their mental discipline: considerations of spelling, punctuation, structure and presentation — the essentials for effective writing — are ceded to robotic wardens. Handwriting makes the head think.

We still make instinctive assumptions about others from their handwriting, distinguishing a neat from a slovenly hand, or admiring consistent over chaotic script. These are fair inferences, not graphological mummery. Good handwriting displays patience, care and self-respect; a bad hand is an embarrassment. There’s an obvious arrogance in making readers pore over every unruly pen stroke.

Yet there’s more to our handwriting than efficacy and individuality: we can’t escape the history engrained in our script. Our alphabet remains in essence that used by the Romans, which was itself derived from the Phoenicians, via the Greeks and the Etruscans.