I still scribble a grocery list on the back of an envelope or leave a post-it note on the cupboard door to remind me of an appointment but any required text lengthier than that is assigned to my word processor. Increasingly, people at work and at home are switching completely from writing to typing. We will never return to a world in which penmanship is the prime barter of communication — who would want to? — but there are reasons beyond nostalgia to keep teaching kids on how to write by hand and reasons to keep that waning skill in their repertoire.
Just last week I was talking to a young mother who was lamenting that neither of her two sons has good handwriting and they don’t care. “Keyboarding skills are where it’s at now, mom,” is what they told her. Their keyboarding skills make up for their shortfall in the handwriting department.
But research has shown time and again that there is a link between academic performance and handwriting. Maybe it’s the fact that writing something down on paper improves our brains’ ability to remember it?
Handwriting, I understand, is more critical during the brain development of children, notably in the process of learning to read. The New York Times in one of their columns said, “Children not only learn to read more quickly when they first learn to write by hand but they are also better prepared to generate ideas and retain information.”
The FBI’s Laboratory Division published a major scientific research paper this summer about the accuracy and reliability of forensic handwriting comparisons.
When I realized how important handwriting was, I didn’t feel that I wasted my time taking a few night school courses on the subject. In fact it gave myself and those people I analyzed some amusement and a laugh. Everyone agreed that their results were quite accurate. There was one case where I was forced into doing by a fellow employee that would likely backfire and it did bigtime.
Speaking about the person I was reluctant to analyze; he was a cranky old fart and the plant’s safety inspector. If someone accidentally or intentionally stepped over the yellow line, he would go ballistic and threaten to tell the GM. His reading as predicted showed him as someone who was angry and couldn’t take criticism. We were never friendly after he read what I wrote had sunk in.
A five-year project was undertaken by the FBI’s forensic handwriting examiners to reach correct conclusions when determining whether a document was written by a specific individual by comparing it to samples of known handwriting from that person.
This study involved more than 80 document examiners from U.S. and international crime laboratories and private practice. More than 7,000 document comparisons correlated results to levels of education and experience.
I read once where a detective investigating a burglary, tracked down a suspect through the unusual handwriting style on messages that were scrawled on a school wall during the crime. Working with school officials, he studied the handwriting on material that had been filled out by students. Upon discovering a student who formed letters similar to those left on the wall, the student when questioned, admitted that he had taken part in the burglary. He also implicated two other students who in turn confessed involvement.
Every letter and line whether it’s the shape, curved, loops, small or larger, slanted up or down, etc reveals personality traits like emotions, thinking and your imagination. The overall writing indicates whether you are ambitious, shy, have a mean streak or are generous, honest or disloyal and so one. Weaknesses or strengths can be highlighted. In other words there is enough information to know yourself or to change some of your ways to be more pleasing such as holding down a job that wasn’t giving satisfaction.
While typing on a digital device might be efficient, timely and convenient, even adults acknowledge that we learn and recall better what we write down on paper by hand. Until there is more definitive research to suggest otherwise, it seems on balance, worthwhile maintaining the role of handwriting.
I still use the monthly calendar on the kitchen wall for appointments and a small pad for my ‘To Do’ lists.
