Last week, Joe Biden left the Oval Office with something special for his successor – a personal letter – returning the gesture that Donald Trump made for him in 2021. Writing letters to the successors is a tradition of inauguration day among the United States presidents. They exchange of handwritten letters filled with some advice, humour, and much humanity after the heated election season.
Writing letters or greeting cards was a gesture of compassion and love. However, the 21st century seems to be changing this dynamic. Try to recall, when was the last time you wrote a letter or wrote anything more than a few pointers. It's been a while for many of us because we live in a digital world with screens of all sizes and shapes. Unlike earlier, when friends and relatives would exchange letters, we send memes if we miss them, if we are worked up, we text our colleague. We don't prepare grocery lists anymore with pen and paper but note apps on our phones – or worse, tell Alexa to do that for us. Our phones and computers are changing how we write so to say, writing is dying. Sadly, handwriting is disappearing from schools too. In the US, students are no longer required to learn cursive writing, Finland removed it from schools in 2016, Swiss schools have reduced its use and many Indian schools are doing away with cursive.
Handwriting vs typing
World over, one-third of students cannot write legibly. It is not far that children will look at cursive and call it a primitive foreign language. Sadly, school children are not the only ones in this club, it includes adults as well. The number of people who are putting pen to paper is very low. According to a study, commissioned by Docmail (a printing and mailing company in the UK) one in three educated adults do not write anything by hand for about six months and two in three struggle to read someone else's handwriting. For instance, doctors' prescriptions.
Remember the time when you would brave the crowd to get that one autograph of your favourite celebrity. We don't beg for autographs anymore, we take selfies. We don't write letters anymore, we spam people with reels and memes. "In today's real world handwriting seems useless from the practical skill point of view but this skill atrophy is harmful. Children in public schools are at least learning to write but in private schools, paper and pen have been replaced with computers and notepads," says Aruna Joshi, a school teacher at a renowned chain of schools in Mumbai.
The pen is mightier than the keyboard
Scientists James K. H and Engelhardt L. conducted a study in 2012 on how handwriting can affect brain development. They sat down with a group of pre-school children and asked them to write letters. It was done in two ways – writing by hand and typing on a keyboard. Later, the children were put under an MRI scanner, and they were shown various letters while their brains were mapped. For those who practiced by hand, scans showed their brains light up, they were highly activated as they processed information deeply. On the other hand, the activation was much weaker for those who learnt by typing.
"Writing by hand has many benefits. It can stimulate visual recognition, improve learning ability, boost retention and improve memory in general. Loss of writing ability means loss of cognitive skills. In many ways loss of writing means loss of personality," says Yuchana Manaktala, a clinical psychologist. She further says handwriting can influence reading, writing, language, and critical thinking. "It engages the brain in ways that typing cannot. Children and adults learn things faster by writing than reading or listening to," says the developmental psychologist.
Writing a mark of who you are
Additionally, handwriting says a lot about a person's behavior, motivations, and personality. For instance, scroll writing shows that the person's head is full of ideas, and careful writing shows discipline. "Writing is a marker of who you are. It tells about your personality. A person who can interpret correctly can decode many things about an individual's personality," says Abhilash Pillai, a certified graphologist and handwriting analyst.
For thousands of years, handwriting has taught humans about the entire civilization. They show us how humans made their thoughts visible to each other. Handwriting helps us trace our history and remember things that we have long forgotten like a birthday card from our loved one, a handwritten note from our favourite teacher and for many, that love letter we received from our first crush. "Handwriting is a sign of our times and to live without it is a loss humanity. Handwritten notes have more value than anything on a computer or phone," says Pillai.
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