The importance of handwriting is now better understood(economist.com)
economist.com
The importance of handwriting is now better understood
https://www.economist.com/culture/2023/09/14/the-importance-of-handwriting-is-becoming-better-understood
168 comments
I recall my mother writing a personal letter to sooth a family dispute. It was long. She wrote it on the computer, so she could edit it and arrange her words to fit her meaning, printed it, and copied it out longhand for the personal touch.
> to sooth a family dispute
I think you want the word "soothe" which means to calm. "Sooth" means "truth" as in "sooth-sayer."
I think you want the word "soothe" which means to calm. "Sooth" means "truth" as in "sooth-sayer."
soothe from Old English soðian ... from soð "true" (see sooth).
The sense of "quiet, comfort, restore to tranquility," in reference to a person or animal, is by 1690s, via the notion of "to assuage one by asserting that what he says is true,"
https://www.etymonline.com/word/soothe
The sense of "quiet, comfort, restore to tranquility," in reference to a person or animal, is by 1690s, via the notion of "to assuage one by asserting that what he says is true,"
https://www.etymonline.com/word/soothe
Sure, but we're speaking English, not Old English. In English, the (archaic) word sooth is a noun, and soothe is a verb.
Etymology is often fascinating.
For some reason, a perfectly cromulent comment [1] on this thread was commented upon as being “bot-like” and then flagged to death.
It linked to a scan of the Marion Richardson “Teacher's Book” hosted on the internet archive [2].
The actual booklets are strangely absent from the internet (if indeed these were used into the 1980s). I suppose things that aren't old enough to be exempt from mickey-mouse copyright extension are a grey area?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37913649
[2] https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.54007
It linked to a scan of the Marion Richardson “Teacher's Book” hosted on the internet archive [2].
The actual booklets are strangely absent from the internet (if indeed these were used into the 1980s). I suppose things that aren't old enough to be exempt from mickey-mouse copyright extension are a grey area?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37913649
[2] https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.54007
Marion Richardson Handwriting was first published in 1935 and continued to be used in schools until the 1980s. It consists of five copy books, each with a different level of difficulty, and a teacher's book that explains the methods and materials to be used. You can download the copy books for free from this link: [Writing and Writing Patterns](https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.54007.)
I only see the teacher's book at that link. Were the copy books elsewhere?
This seems very clearly a bot post. This is a non-sequitur to the other comment and the way it redescribes the context seems fishy and too artificial.
It is most certainly in sequence: Clarification of the 5+1 volumes and a link to the content for free right now - albeit nearly unusable quality scan - instead of a "backorder only" link to buy for $30.
This "you might be a bot" is going to be the next Red Scare or witch hunt (that the esteemed AI revolutionaries will deny any responsibility for). Just wait till the real bots learn to start saying that! [spiderman pointing gif]
This "you might be a bot" is going to be the next Red Scare or witch hunt (that the esteemed AI revolutionaries will deny any responsibility for). Just wait till the real bots learn to start saying that! [spiderman pointing gif]
I don't see any evidence that this is a bot post. It's the only post in the thread that actually points to scans of the Marion Richardson source materials mentioned in the parent comment.
I guess it doesn't matter now, since it's been flagged… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I guess it doesn't matter now, since it's been flagged… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm trying my hardest to imagine someone making a bot that scours the Internet for discussions on handwriting only to post in the most succinct manner a resource that is very much on-topic.
Right? So weird.
You can vouch for a flagged comment and if enough do it will become legitimzed.
By vouch do you mean upvote?
I've taken a minute to skim the poster's recent comment history. None of them look at all like what I would expect from a bot.
It is a very bot level post, but the link goes to a real book (a scan so not that accessible) and it does at least give a bit of relevant summary on the topic to save a Google search (assuming you trust it). It could be better but I don’t totally hate it.
I'm wondering what value you think has been lost through the book being a scan? Virtually all of the pages contain little more than handwriting, so a scan is the appropriate representation.
The link at the V&A museum shows excerpts from a few pages. This looks incredible. It seems unlikely, but perhaps someone somewhere has scanned in a copy of an instructional book.
My cursive is terrible so I resort to print handwriting, which was never pretty either. And then I get super annoyed at how slow handwriting is, so I try to speed it up. It quickly becomes an illegible mess.
I need the fastest & most legible writing system. Legible. Fast. Can we design a hand writing system that hits 30 wpm? 40wpm? Without resorting to shorthand. I'd rather redesign the alphabet from the ground up instead of bothering with shorthand.
I actually find most cursive is hard to read, and yet I grew up with some exposure to cursive. I imagine many people younger than me would have less exposure to cursive altogether. Cursive is kind of dying off, except in terms of writing speed.
I need the fastest & most legible writing system. Legible. Fast. Can we design a hand writing system that hits 30 wpm? 40wpm? Without resorting to shorthand. I'd rather redesign the alphabet from the ground up instead of bothering with shorthand.
I actually find most cursive is hard to read, and yet I grew up with some exposure to cursive. I imagine many people younger than me would have less exposure to cursive altogether. Cursive is kind of dying off, except in terms of writing speed.
Cursive is nice because it limits the speed at which you can read it; Sometimes “faster” cognitively translates to “careless.”
Very much agree with your observation on the satisfaction gleaned from handwriting well.
About 5 years ago I "installed a font" on myself - I sat down with a sheet of letter forms and taught myself a variant of architectural lettering, which has a nice balance of legibility and aesthetics, and less rigid than engineering lettering.
I'm still working on some of my cursive forms, but I definitely enjoy writing more (and the rhythm!! It's like music or dance, and almost meditative) now that I've started using it again as an adult.
About 5 years ago I "installed a font" on myself - I sat down with a sheet of letter forms and taught myself a variant of architectural lettering, which has a nice balance of legibility and aesthetics, and less rigid than engineering lettering.
I'm still working on some of my cursive forms, but I definitely enjoy writing more (and the rhythm!! It's like music or dance, and almost meditative) now that I've started using it again as an adult.
> It truly helps embodying thoughts and ideas
I agree the act of writing things out helps. But I strongly disagree this is specific to handwriting. Typing things out has the same effect.
I agree the act of writing things out helps. But I strongly disagree this is specific to handwriting. Typing things out has the same effect.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-athletes-way/2...
"New research from Johns Hopkins University (JHU) suggests that handwriting practice refines fine-tuned motor skills and creates a perceptual-motor experience that appears to help adults learn generalized literacy-related skills "surprisingly faster and significantly better" than if they tried to learn the same material by typing on a keyboard or watching videos."
"New research from Johns Hopkins University (JHU) suggests that handwriting practice refines fine-tuned motor skills and creates a perceptual-motor experience that appears to help adults learn generalized literacy-related skills "surprisingly faster and significantly better" than if they tried to learn the same material by typing on a keyboard or watching videos."
From that same link:
"After six learning sessions, everyone in the video watching and type-writing group had learned the Arabic alphabet and could identify each of its 28 letters. However, people in the handwriting group—who used pen and paper to write each letter during their learning sessions—gained the same level of proficiency after just two learning sessions."
Replace handwriting with any other activity. It is probably the same. Doing something helps learning faster than just watching.
"After six learning sessions, everyone in the video watching and type-writing group had learned the Arabic alphabet and could identify each of its 28 letters. However, people in the handwriting group—who used pen and paper to write each letter during their learning sessions—gained the same level of proficiency after just two learning sessions."
Replace handwriting with any other activity. It is probably the same. Doing something helps learning faster than just watching.
No, according to the link the hand-writers learned Arabic much faster than the learners typing on keyboards. Handwriting Arabic facilitated faster learning of the language than typing it out.
This comports with my personal language learning experience, for what that's worth. I couldn't say whether it translates to other subjects.
Full article is here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8641140/
This comports with my personal language learning experience, for what that's worth. I couldn't say whether it translates to other subjects.
Full article is here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8641140/
Yeah but he is still right when you go under surface level : learning to write is basically learning to draw specific shape that have specific meanings.
It is not surprising that peoples learn to recognise those shape faster when they actually had to learn to draw them instead of just pointing (typing) to use them.
But I don't think it makes any kind of real difference to achieving proficiency level for reading/thinking/writing the language. Recognising the glyphs is a small part of learning a language, you learn grammar, vocabulary, sentence construction, idioms, mostly by repeated exposure and chances are the vast majority of it is from reading ; it wouldn't be very efficient to learn by hand writing everything...
It is not surprising that peoples learn to recognise those shape faster when they actually had to learn to draw them instead of just pointing (typing) to use them.
But I don't think it makes any kind of real difference to achieving proficiency level for reading/thinking/writing the language. Recognising the glyphs is a small part of learning a language, you learn grammar, vocabulary, sentence construction, idioms, mostly by repeated exposure and chances are the vast majority of it is from reading ; it wouldn't be very efficient to learn by hand writing everything...
This is specific to the act of learning a language, where writing out the characters with intentionality will obviously have more carryover to memorizing the forms of such characters.
When the learning tools are detached from the subject at hand - as is the case in most college classes where basic literacy is a given - it's hard to see how one particular tool could possibly be better than others.
When the learning tools are detached from the subject at hand - as is the case in most college classes where basic literacy is a given - it's hard to see how one particular tool could possibly be better than others.
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That sounds like a pretty specific literacy skill.
Purely anecdotal based on my own experience, typing information does very little for me but hand-written notes vastly improve my ability to retain information.
I learned that style pre 1980 in the UK. My writing still looks pretty childish and I don't get any compliments. I can take longhand notes at speed though.
This doesn’t look particularly special? This is just a form of cursive right?
It was the first time a system was developed that took note of how the hand moved ergonomically in order to create a natural way of writing (drawing) unnatural letters, and linking them together.
This system allows you to write cursive with exceptional flow and - if you wish - flair, rather than simply copying complicated shapes and then having that body memory inevitably degrade over the years.
This system allows you to write cursive with exceptional flow and - if you wish - flair, rather than simply copying complicated shapes and then having that body memory inevitably degrade over the years.
Ah, I imagine it’s what I learned, without anyone saying it was special, so it’s just what I consider the default.
I never got any good at it, but after 28 years my ability hasn’t degraded either.
I thought I lost my touch, but all my remaining writings from 28 years ago show exactly the same level of suck xD. So at least the part about body memory seem to be completely correct.
I never got any good at it, but after 28 years my ability hasn’t degraded either.
I thought I lost my touch, but all my remaining writings from 28 years ago show exactly the same level of suck xD. So at least the part about body memory seem to be completely correct.
It is weird, it feels backward. When I look at the writing in the scans in the pdf, it looks less fluent and more typewriter styled than how we learned to write at school. For example, the h has no loop, the capitals seem not to have extra loops wrt their non-capital counterpart. This means that you will lift your pen more often.
That said, I think it reads easier than fully cursive, because it is less dense.
That said, I think it reads easier than fully cursive, because it is less dense.
> It truly helps embodying thoughts and ideas
The act of writing imposes structure and optimisation on the language to convey (transfer) an idea.
Structure, because of grammar and notation. Optimisation, because we don't wish to exhaust ourselves in writing or the readers in reading.
But knowledge of grammar is essential.
The act of writing imposes structure and optimisation on the language to convey (transfer) an idea.
Structure, because of grammar and notation. Optimisation, because we don't wish to exhaust ourselves in writing or the readers in reading.
But knowledge of grammar is essential.
What writing tool is this system designed for? Does it work well with "regular" ball pens and pencils?
Is that true, though? I'm happy with my handwriting, but rarely ever get to write anything. Far more time spent at a keyboard.
I'll try adding this to my routine. Curious if I can track an increase in my mood and general happiness if I'm writing more.
I'll try adding this to my routine. Curious if I can track an increase in my mood and general happiness if I'm writing more.
Yes, I keep notes by writing them and, it reduces stress and makes me remember them more easily. Keeping them on the computer doesn't have the easier to remember component. I can only search them easier.
I've direct experience on the power of handwriting to memorise concepts. When at the UNI, I was studying CS (while working part-time) less than 10 ya, and classes where full of laptops. I was take notes during lectures using only pen and paper and similarly I was taking my notes about the main concepts from the courses books. Then I was re-writing them again in a more summarised way, and then underline this notes and study all together. The power of handwriting is real and I'm still taking notes and keeping a journal nowadays.
It's sad that this incredible ability of our brain to learn concepts from the small movement of our hands, probably sculpted by our evolution, is going to get lost in future generations. This is because companies are making deals with schools to provide them software and devices. In a better world the school system would be one of the top 2 priority of every country, and receive adeguate public investments to don't have to adapt their education systems at companies product, to satisfy the greediness of entrepreneurs and investors.
Don't abandon pen and paper, don't regress human brain capacity.
It's sad that this incredible ability of our brain to learn concepts from the small movement of our hands, probably sculpted by our evolution, is going to get lost in future generations. This is because companies are making deals with schools to provide them software and devices. In a better world the school system would be one of the top 2 priority of every country, and receive adeguate public investments to don't have to adapt their education systems at companies product, to satisfy the greediness of entrepreneurs and investors.
Don't abandon pen and paper, don't regress human brain capacity.
I dislike these kind of statements. I can’t take notes. I learned very explicitly that I will retain information much better if I take no effort to write it down and instead just focus and listen. If I do take notes, I’ll look down at my page at the end and see 20ish words written in different sizes and spaces and then throw it away because it’s clearly useless.
That is to say, it’s all just personal preference. Explore and exploit what works for you.
That is to say, it’s all just personal preference. Explore and exploit what works for you.
> If I do take notes, I’ll look down at my page at the end and see 20ish words written in different sizes and spaces and then throw it away because it’s clearly useless.
For me, the point of taking notes has never been the final product. I went through college taking at least a page of notes per lecture, but never once did I actually go back and reference them. The notes were valuable for getting the material into my brain, not for use later.
For me, the point of taking notes has never been the final product. I went through college taking at least a page of notes per lecture, but never once did I actually go back and reference them. The notes were valuable for getting the material into my brain, not for use later.
Yup - I liked taking notes using my laptop because I could copy down what the professor was saying verbatim.
This gave me two advantages; (1) I could focus on the lecture itself and not how to best summarize the lecture, and (2) I could review the notes later as a higher quality product than what I would have invented.
This strategy didn't work for things like math classes which were hard to take computer notes on.
This gave me two advantages; (1) I could focus on the lecture itself and not how to best summarize the lecture, and (2) I could review the notes later as a higher quality product than what I would have invented.
This strategy didn't work for things like math classes which were hard to take computer notes on.
Why not just a audio/visual recording?
Even when I took notes via laptop in class it was never a direct transcription.
Even when I took notes via laptop in class it was never a direct transcription.
I would never go back to an audio/visual recording, that simply takes too much time
> probably sculpted by our evolution
I can't really begin to imagine what selective pressure could realistically have acted on this, certainly given the tiny period of time over which any substantial percentage of the population would have been using their hands to store information in any way.
If there's any correlation between use of computers and any loss of ability to memorise concepts (which I'm not convinced we actually have proof of) it could just as easily be explained by our tendency to "offload", knowing that any gaps in our memory/understanding can readily be filled by technology as needed.
I do worry about a possible future where we literally stop bothering learning how to handwrite at all, but mainly because there's still sufficient chance you might need such a skill at some crucial moment when computers can't be used. But it's surely sufficient just to know how to block print capital letters.
I can't really begin to imagine what selective pressure could realistically have acted on this, certainly given the tiny period of time over which any substantial percentage of the population would have been using their hands to store information in any way.
If there's any correlation between use of computers and any loss of ability to memorise concepts (which I'm not convinced we actually have proof of) it could just as easily be explained by our tendency to "offload", knowing that any gaps in our memory/understanding can readily be filled by technology as needed.
I do worry about a possible future where we literally stop bothering learning how to handwrite at all, but mainly because there's still sufficient chance you might need such a skill at some crucial moment when computers can't be used. But it's surely sufficient just to know how to block print capital letters.
Superficial take IMO.
Don’t need a selective pressure for a cognitive process to work in a particular way. You just need a selective pressure for the cognitive skill and for the way that skill works to at least not have a pressure against it, biology being full of engineering compromises.
Learning well with handwriting, IMO, has little to do with hands specifically, but memory and understanding in general, where the spatially situated product of the action (on a specific piece of paper used and then kept in a specific place) taken in a properly free form manner with much more analogue detail (paper is a blank canvas and handwriting will have nuance throughout a piece of writing) that most likely also slows you down and forces a huge number of little decisions all facilitate the task of memorisation and recall.
That spatially attendant information assists memory seems to me very plausibly consistent with primate evolution where most if not all tasks benefiting from memory would have had such information as either a fundamental component or readily associated.
For similar reasons, I think there’s something to be said for sorting important information in physical books on shelves, where the location of information in the physical space can aid recall.
I think it’s easy to forget just how weirdly disconnected and abstract the computer interface is from everything else we use in the world.
Ideally, computers ought to be driving at optimising for humans rather than merely what works well for the tech. I think that’s been left behind too much.
Don’t need a selective pressure for a cognitive process to work in a particular way. You just need a selective pressure for the cognitive skill and for the way that skill works to at least not have a pressure against it, biology being full of engineering compromises.
Learning well with handwriting, IMO, has little to do with hands specifically, but memory and understanding in general, where the spatially situated product of the action (on a specific piece of paper used and then kept in a specific place) taken in a properly free form manner with much more analogue detail (paper is a blank canvas and handwriting will have nuance throughout a piece of writing) that most likely also slows you down and forces a huge number of little decisions all facilitate the task of memorisation and recall.
That spatially attendant information assists memory seems to me very plausibly consistent with primate evolution where most if not all tasks benefiting from memory would have had such information as either a fundamental component or readily associated.
For similar reasons, I think there’s something to be said for sorting important information in physical books on shelves, where the location of information in the physical space can aid recall.
I think it’s easy to forget just how weirdly disconnected and abstract the computer interface is from everything else we use in the world.
Ideally, computers ought to be driving at optimising for humans rather than merely what works well for the tech. I think that’s been left behind too much.
My guess/impression is that the act of writing something down passes the information through different parts of the brain, and then you have two independent memories of the facts.
But why shouldn't the same be true of typing?
(I did mention in my other post I can sort of see why handwriting is a movement more akin to other ways we manipulate the physical environment - but in fact I use the "swipe" style keyboard entry on my phone, which is surely not that dissimilar - using my finger to draw shapes. Touch typing is certainly very different and hard to correlate with other actions we need to perform in the real world, in some ways it's surprising we're able to become so competent at it, though obviously our ability to make finely tuned manipulations with our fingers is a huge part of our evolutionary success).
(I did mention in my other post I can sort of see why handwriting is a movement more akin to other ways we manipulate the physical environment - but in fact I use the "swipe" style keyboard entry on my phone, which is surely not that dissimilar - using my finger to draw shapes. Touch typing is certainly very different and hard to correlate with other actions we need to perform in the real world, in some ways it's surprising we're able to become so competent at it, though obviously our ability to make finely tuned manipulations with our fingers is a huge part of our evolutionary success).
Well like I said above, I think the spatial details of where you’re writing and where the thing you’re writing on is located and the details of the spatial arrangement of your writing itself are all part of it.
A plausible hypothesis, sure, but not much more. It'd be interesting to actually investigate it properly.
For sure!
Though I'd also wonder if it's a tad more than a hypothesis given what we already know about memory both scientifically and, perhaps, from practices people have developed over time to aid memory. I don't know all that nearly well enough to put together the case, but the "memory palace" technique, which is ancient and apparently "tried and true" seems like a striking demonstration of the the basic spatial idea. If there's truth to that, I'd say my suggestion could be reframed as a strategy for using handwriting to aid memory rather than a mere hypothesis.
Regarding the "slowing down" aspect, as others have mentioned too, I'd argue again that this could be couched directly in well established ideas and understandings ... chiefly, I'd imagine, the processes of repetition, practice and synthesis that are essentially common knowledge. The slowed down process of deciding what you're going to write and how probably forces you into a cognitive loop that goes beyond the mere recording of information toward repetition and synthesis. My experience with typing is that the urge to simply record verbatim is more natural to the medium.
Though I'd also wonder if it's a tad more than a hypothesis given what we already know about memory both scientifically and, perhaps, from practices people have developed over time to aid memory. I don't know all that nearly well enough to put together the case, but the "memory palace" technique, which is ancient and apparently "tried and true" seems like a striking demonstration of the the basic spatial idea. If there's truth to that, I'd say my suggestion could be reframed as a strategy for using handwriting to aid memory rather than a mere hypothesis.
Regarding the "slowing down" aspect, as others have mentioned too, I'd argue again that this could be couched directly in well established ideas and understandings ... chiefly, I'd imagine, the processes of repetition, practice and synthesis that are essentially common knowledge. The slowed down process of deciding what you're going to write and how probably forces you into a cognitive loop that goes beyond the mere recording of information toward repetition and synthesis. My experience with typing is that the urge to simply record verbatim is more natural to the medium.
I'd speculate the bigger more elaborate effort of handwriting produces a stronger memory.
There has been studies that proved that handwriting helps memorizing better than using a computer. The studies took a group of students, randomly assigned them handwriting/computers then they had a test to pass. Handwriting students performed better.
The reason is that handwriting is slower, so it forces you to summarize and make decisions in your note taking. Selecting what's important. On the other hand typing is faster, so you can type everything the teacher says without understanding.
The reason is that handwriting is slower, so it forces you to summarize and make decisions in your note taking. Selecting what's important. On the other hand typing is faster, so you can type everything the teacher says without understanding.
So you only need to slow a person down to achieve the same effect, what's the value of handwriting?
The mechanical motion involved, physically putting your thoughts down. It isn’t the same as typing at all where you just click a button, having to motion the letters and words is surely worth something in itself.
You don't click a button, you touch it with your fingers in a mechanical motion physicality putting your thoughts down, the letters and words, there is no learning-related conceptual "surely", just the fact that it's less efficient to do and redo, which in the poorly designed lecture situations can force you to stop and think instead of doing dumb transcribing
Plenty of people I know handwrite faster than they can type! And have they tested those using shorthand?
What I could believe is that our brains might be better at remembering the sorts of movements our hands make while handwriting (essentially using your wrist and elbow) vs those made while typing (fingers only), perhaps because the former are closer to the act of manipulating the physical environment in ways that might needed for survival (gathering food etc.) and because you're physically tracing out a desired path in 2d space, though it seems tenuous at best.
What I could believe is that our brains might be better at remembering the sorts of movements our hands make while handwriting (essentially using your wrist and elbow) vs those made while typing (fingers only), perhaps because the former are closer to the act of manipulating the physical environment in ways that might needed for survival (gathering food etc.) and because you're physically tracing out a desired path in 2d space, though it seems tenuous at best.
In some classes we were allowed to bring in our own formula sheets. We could write whatever we wanted on a single sheet of paper (both sides). So of course we condensed the entire course to fit on that with tiny writing. But after putting in all that effort to make this sheet, I rarely even looked at in during the test. I didn't need to -- the act of making it made it stick in my brain.
I wonder if the key is not really handwriting but rather a deliberate summarization, because I always used a computer to do that. I did have a printout of my own summary, of course, so papers may have also helped as well. (I also tended to walk around and mumble a lot when I really need to tackle a hard problem in my head, but not when studying.)
While I'm sure that deliberate summarization and also as a sibling posted, the slowness of the act are parts of it, I strongly suspect the actual mechanism of moving hand across space helps to engrave concepts in the mind. The connection between mind and body is strong. I can only speak to myself of course, but I've found that even quickly, absentmindedly, and imprecisely drawing out items on paper cements ideas in my mind way better than not doing it. I think the same concept applies to typing things out on a computer instead of copy and pasting. Even with minimal front-of-mind attention, the retention rate is stronger. Of course, writing on paper is even better than typing it on a computer.
That being said, I wouldn't trade typing on a computer for writing on paper, given the sheer speed I can achieve with one. But if we're limiting ourselves to trying to better increase retention and understanding, then I think pen-on-paper is the most valuable thing one can do.
That being said, I wouldn't trade typing on a computer for writing on paper, given the sheer speed I can achieve with one. But if we're limiting ourselves to trying to better increase retention and understanding, then I think pen-on-paper is the most valuable thing one can do.
I agree - although not sure it's just the summarization, more the translation between 'information schemas' exposes patterns.
e.g. I might read a few pages of text and scribble out the key points onto a mind-map I go. Then looking at the shape of what's on the page, normalize it onto a ER diagram on a slide with an accompanying swim-lane diagram showing the process.
Each iteration of formatting hopefully progresses the display of the information towards its ideal. You know when it's worked (and when something isn't working out and you need to quit and try something else).
To me the benefit of writing is that it makes me deliberately make a decision as to what I transcribe and what I leave out. If I skim read I often find my mind has drifted and I need to turn back some pages. Also, writing takes effort. If you notice you keep writing the same word/phrase, you'll give it an acronym. If you find repetition of concept, maybe you'll just draw an arrow pointing back to the paragraph the concept first came up - and your longhand is starting to turn into the next iteration already.
Each iteration of formatting hopefully progresses the display of the information towards its ideal. You know when it's worked (and when something isn't working out and you need to quit and try something else).
To me the benefit of writing is that it makes me deliberately make a decision as to what I transcribe and what I leave out. If I skim read I often find my mind has drifted and I need to turn back some pages. Also, writing takes effort. If you notice you keep writing the same word/phrase, you'll give it an acronym. If you find repetition of concept, maybe you'll just draw an arrow pointing back to the paragraph the concept first came up - and your longhand is starting to turn into the next iteration already.
I wonder too.
I remember doing python the hard way years ago, which encouraged you to type in the example python programs and run them yourself. It made a definite difference to sort of deliberately slow down and absorb during the exercise.
I remember doing python the hard way years ago, which encouraged you to type in the example python programs and run them yourself. It made a definite difference to sort of deliberately slow down and absorb during the exercise.
That's nothing. Try handcoding machine code some time! Using only pen, paper & cpu datasheet. ;-) If you feel generous, throw in a calculator for offsets or hex/dec conversions etc.
If I grow old & senile some day, I'll forget how to wipe my ass before the last Z80 mnemonic slips from my mind.
If I grow old & senile some day, I'll forget how to wipe my ass before the last Z80 mnemonic slips from my mind.
I remember doing that in octal for the PDP-11 - and it was really pretty wonderful. Everything was laid out so cleanly.
> Don't abandon pen and paper, don't regress human brain capacity.
Socrates believed writing regressed human brain capacity, by serving as a crutch for memory and thus leading to atrophy.
Maybe he had a point, because you don’t much hear about recitations of Illiad length works from memory these days.
I don’t think it’s quite as simple as all that though, because I imagine using your memory mostly as an index rather than mostly as a data store has its own set of adaptions. However, the development of that kind of comprehensive organizing memory is by no means ensured by the modern environment.
Socrates believed writing regressed human brain capacity, by serving as a crutch for memory and thus leading to atrophy.
Maybe he had a point, because you don’t much hear about recitations of Illiad length works from memory these days.
I don’t think it’s quite as simple as all that though, because I imagine using your memory mostly as an index rather than mostly as a data store has its own set of adaptions. However, the development of that kind of comprehensive organizing memory is by no means ensured by the modern environment.
> It's sad that this incredible ability of our brain to learn concepts from the small movement of our hands, probably sculpted by our evolution, is going to get lost in future generations.
We haven't been writing that long. And the vast majority of people never did.
We haven't been writing that long. And the vast majority of people never did.
But the vast majority of people use their hands. It's not the writing, the assertion it's that it's the movement associated with/occurring at the same time as thinking that reenforces learning. That writing of words using hands (interaction with the environment) can help with learning abstract (non-physical) concepts is an extension of that.
Apologies, I failed to understand your point properly in my sibling reply. Yes, it's possible what you say is true (I somewhat doubt it, though; open to evidence, of course).
But the point I was making in my original reply to GGP is that it's no loss from an evolutionary perspective because the timeline is too short. I also doubt it's true from a civilization perspective, because again, the timeline is both too short and most people have never picked up a pencil.
Handwriting is likely a fetish. It's so easy to see benefits where there's actually only preference and bias.
But the point I was making in my original reply to GGP is that it's no loss from an evolutionary perspective because the timeline is too short. I also doubt it's true from a civilization perspective, because again, the timeline is both too short and most people have never picked up a pencil.
Handwriting is likely a fetish. It's so easy to see benefits where there's actually only preference and bias.
People continue to use their hands.
I don't really get how moving hands smoothly to write something versus tapping keys poses any large difference in memorization? For the us generations that grew up learning cursive and associating it with school it may be easier to remember that way, but if someone was raised by only typing from an early age it probably makes no difference. We're analog juvenoial dinosaurs living in a digital age we've only partially adapted to.
> this incredible ability of our brain to learn concepts from the small movement of our hands, probably sculpted by our evolution
There's no way that's true, it's only been around for 5000 years and for most of that time it was excluded to a narrow circle of scribes or scholars. Literacy has only been available to the masses for the past 200 years which is absolutely nothing on an evolutionary scale.
> this incredible ability of our brain to learn concepts from the small movement of our hands, probably sculpted by our evolution
There's no way that's true, it's only been around for 5000 years and for most of that time it was excluded to a narrow circle of scribes or scholars. Literacy has only been available to the masses for the past 200 years which is absolutely nothing on an evolutionary scale.
Back in the day they would have done other stuff with their hands. Throwing spears, making cordage, carving driftwood into maps.
Typing is insanely easy compared to handwriting, which is why I rarely touch a pen even though I probably should.
Handwriting makes any activity into a slow laborious project, to the point where for me it would probably be the hardest part of a lot of things I do, if I were to involve paper. I assume that creates more immersion and prevents doing things on autopilot?
I wonder, if typing was hard, like if we had two keyboards 10ft apart, and the computer required you to switch every 100 keystrokes, and the monitor was only visible from one, or if your phone only let you type while walking, how using that for notes would affect memory?
Typing is insanely easy compared to handwriting, which is why I rarely touch a pen even though I probably should.
Handwriting makes any activity into a slow laborious project, to the point where for me it would probably be the hardest part of a lot of things I do, if I were to involve paper. I assume that creates more immersion and prevents doing things on autopilot?
I wonder, if typing was hard, like if we had two keyboards 10ft apart, and the computer required you to switch every 100 keystrokes, and the monitor was only visible from one, or if your phone only let you type while walking, how using that for notes would affect memory?
I've long wondered too. "Intention" is the best notion I've come up with.
With typing, I find it easier to enter a flow state. That stream of consciousness where it feels the prose (or code) seems to write itself.
With handwriting, I must visualize what I'm about to write. Plan ahead. Think thru things. This works for lists, writing letters, and even graphic stuff like design diagrams.
I also must really pay attention when I'm taking notes during meetings and lectures. Otherwise, my mind will wander off and I'll miss the whole thing. So I often volunteer to take minutes when I want to fully participate.
PS: Out of respect for u/jncfhnb, I'll add an explicit YMMV.
With typing, I find it easier to enter a flow state. That stream of consciousness where it feels the prose (or code) seems to write itself.
With handwriting, I must visualize what I'm about to write. Plan ahead. Think thru things. This works for lists, writing letters, and even graphic stuff like design diagrams.
I also must really pay attention when I'm taking notes during meetings and lectures. Otherwise, my mind will wander off and I'll miss the whole thing. So I often volunteer to take minutes when I want to fully participate.
PS: Out of respect for u/jncfhnb, I'll add an explicit YMMV.
How is this hard to get? One you tap a button that could contain any character or letter. The other is physically motioning said characters and you brain associates the underlying idea with the motions rather than a generic “tap.”
Well the tap isn't necessarily generic, it's in a specific spot and usually by a specific finger associated with only a few letters. While handwriting is just wiggling your hand a bit for anything you write.
We're sort of like LLMs in the way that we don't really see letters when reading anyway, we just see words or parts of words directly. I would expect writing to be the same conceptually.
If anything I'd more lean towards having to form complete solid thoughts before writing them by hand could be beneficial, while typing lets you go back and correct or reword everything, making the overall memory of it fuzzier.
We're sort of like LLMs in the way that we don't really see letters when reading anyway, we just see words or parts of words directly. I would expect writing to be the same conceptually.
If anything I'd more lean towards having to form complete solid thoughts before writing them by hand could be beneficial, while typing lets you go back and correct or reword everything, making the overall memory of it fuzzier.
There was a book linked on HN a month ago about the Deisng of UI/UX experiences. One chapter mentions how cars are simple and easy to use despite being more complex than a phone numpad, because the linkages between the car controls and your mental mapping is one-to-one.
Having to endlessly recombine your mental mapping with a numpad or digital pad to generate letters/sentences is much worse for humans than driving, or pen and paper.
The mental mapping for pen and paper is also one-to-one, using behaviours to make specific known shapes is way more powerful than submitting to an arbitrary remapping device.
Electronics are really no good for first order knowledge generation and gathering. The metaphysics of reality hasn't been overcome by tech revolutions, unfortunately (or not).
Having to endlessly recombine your mental mapping with a numpad or digital pad to generate letters/sentences is much worse for humans than driving, or pen and paper.
The mental mapping for pen and paper is also one-to-one, using behaviours to make specific known shapes is way more powerful than submitting to an arbitrary remapping device.
Electronics are really no good for first order knowledge generation and gathering. The metaphysics of reality hasn't been overcome by tech revolutions, unfortunately (or not).
That doesn't sit right with the fact that we remember passwords or other sequences with our fingers or can type whole paragraphs without minding the keyboard.
There might be a threshold to be good with an input method, but it feels contrived to me to assume that only the most basic ones can be mastered and become intuitive.
There might be a threshold to be good with an input method, but it feels contrived to me to assume that only the most basic ones can be mastered and become intuitive.
I never made any progress learning to drive, and I still can't write legibly without carefully considering every letter. These one to one things are not easy.
The pen acts like an untrained intern. It does exactly what you say and doesn't deviate from that. The computer acts as your manager. It tells you exactly what spot to hit to make a letter.
I'm not sure if this is pure crackpot armchair psychology, but my theory is that some people naturally think on multiple levels and understand things from first principles, and for them UIs are confusing because their brain tries to understand every single thing it sees.
I see "Press button, letter appears, hit the other button to comment" and if I think harder about it "HTML textinput in a form".
They see a lot more and are distracted my questions and don't just expect stuff to mostly work even if they don't know exactly what it does. Maybe at least subconsciously, they are bothered by stuff they don't fully understand.
Like, to me, a file is a "real" thing, with nothing below it that enters my thinking unless I'm reading an article about filesystems. If you tell me about a file, I will probably see file icons and explorer windows in my mind, that's what they look like and that's where they live.
Do people with a natural propensity for first order thinking get bothered at least a little bit by these abstractions? Do files feel less "real" to them? Is some part of them trying to figure out what's going on?
And if they are highly technical, is some part of them wondering what the code looks like, how the text is rendered, or maybe even feeling a sense of self disappointment for not deeply understanding what they're doing?
And is pure old fashioned boredom a factor? If I could see something in my head and then draw it in recognizable form, perhaps I wouldn't see the appeal of vector graphics, if I already knew what point on the paper mapped to what point of the picture in my head, maybe i wouldn't want the overhead of loading up the app to drag points around.
I'd just want to draw it in the right spot the first time, and get better every day at doing that.
And then there's spatial memory. If you have a good memory, the endless tweaks of modern UI probably bothers you. If you don't... Well... The new change isn't any more unfamiliar than the old one because you never deeply learned it!
Digital vs analog is such a completely different paradigm. Analog people are basically working with a blank canvas all the time. With digital you're constantly being led by the machine, and if your mind is overflowing with ideas that the programmer never intended, you might hate it.
If you don't have a deep understanding of how things work and what possibilities there are, you might adore having a framework where you only make small deviations in predefined ways, the possibilities are obvious, right in front of you.
We should probably all do more analog stuff, but a pen is definitely an "Outside the comfort zone" thing for me rather than something that feels like an obvious and natural way to work, aside from simple things we do every day.
The pen acts like an untrained intern. It does exactly what you say and doesn't deviate from that. The computer acts as your manager. It tells you exactly what spot to hit to make a letter.
I'm not sure if this is pure crackpot armchair psychology, but my theory is that some people naturally think on multiple levels and understand things from first principles, and for them UIs are confusing because their brain tries to understand every single thing it sees.
I see "Press button, letter appears, hit the other button to comment" and if I think harder about it "HTML textinput in a form".
They see a lot more and are distracted my questions and don't just expect stuff to mostly work even if they don't know exactly what it does. Maybe at least subconsciously, they are bothered by stuff they don't fully understand.
Like, to me, a file is a "real" thing, with nothing below it that enters my thinking unless I'm reading an article about filesystems. If you tell me about a file, I will probably see file icons and explorer windows in my mind, that's what they look like and that's where they live.
Do people with a natural propensity for first order thinking get bothered at least a little bit by these abstractions? Do files feel less "real" to them? Is some part of them trying to figure out what's going on?
And if they are highly technical, is some part of them wondering what the code looks like, how the text is rendered, or maybe even feeling a sense of self disappointment for not deeply understanding what they're doing?
And is pure old fashioned boredom a factor? If I could see something in my head and then draw it in recognizable form, perhaps I wouldn't see the appeal of vector graphics, if I already knew what point on the paper mapped to what point of the picture in my head, maybe i wouldn't want the overhead of loading up the app to drag points around.
I'd just want to draw it in the right spot the first time, and get better every day at doing that.
And then there's spatial memory. If you have a good memory, the endless tweaks of modern UI probably bothers you. If you don't... Well... The new change isn't any more unfamiliar than the old one because you never deeply learned it!
Digital vs analog is such a completely different paradigm. Analog people are basically working with a blank canvas all the time. With digital you're constantly being led by the machine, and if your mind is overflowing with ideas that the programmer never intended, you might hate it.
If you don't have a deep understanding of how things work and what possibilities there are, you might adore having a framework where you only make small deviations in predefined ways, the possibilities are obvious, right in front of you.
We should probably all do more analog stuff, but a pen is definitely an "Outside the comfort zone" thing for me rather than something that feels like an obvious and natural way to work, aside from simple things we do every day.
I understand where you're coming from, you appear to have the ability to relate to images on your own terms, nearly completely. I do not.
I have at all times, "two sets of books" or "two maps". Unified by a singular Duty that limits what I can and can't do. My imagination is tied to imaging the next step in my 'journey'.
(something like that anyway, it has subjectivity built into it).
I cannot dump relations to random ideas, I have to understand the 'background'/'whole scene' to clear out the clutter of my imagination and keep my two frames of reference, clear.
The actual dutiful work of computer use is not that terribly difficult intellectually, it is often the kind of flower-arranging drudgery that I used to enjoy a lot in my 'youth' (lol im not that old).
I can understand one set of technologies C/C++ buut the bugs and face-slapping error chasing in programming really begins to wear quite badly.
The only way I can really program is to submit to 'someone else's ruleset' that I don't like or agree with and then endure grinding my way to how I mean it to be, based on my sense of subjective expectation and structure, hand-tied to my categorical imperative. It is possible to make elegant and powerful code like this, inside a company structure.. with uninspiring code architecture, set from the top down.
Buuuut whenever I imagine some novel technology that gets me excited, I can make shallow prototypes of the idea in existing tools and inevitably find that I need to rejig/rework the tooling to get my idea out there. And often that means editing a second set of tooling.
And every single time I have started and attempted this project, it starts off rocky-and-okay, the middle part is absolute hellish grind fighting the system and then the end is a complete drain of all my emotions and an inability to finish, leading to an internal frustation with wasted time.
Then the technology tooling all changes and I have to re-process my understanding because the semantics in the new tech stack are different to the last.
The reationships between ideas are the biggest, slowest chore that wears the most. The concepts in new languages are not terribly interesting, as most are re-arrangments of the same old music...
Every single programming language is set up in such a way that the "glue" between all the concepts, is held by an insider 'brotherhood' of experts. The documentation for plebs tells you one specific way and if you fall off the documentation's instructions, then all other ways are pain and time-wasting death. A simple map of relationships between concepts would save so many man-hours globally, it is insane (but I digress).
The devil-in-the-detail level bugs and jankiness is something only an American man with infinite pleasure - to keep his head cool and his fingers typing - could tolerate.
I'm honestly getting to the stage where I think the only reliable way to make new code, is to control the hardware from the bottom up, and do the software from the bottom up.
Every single middleware provider is another layer of shifting maps, that I have to war with, to make some new tech that works from top to bottom.
And then I'd have to release that code into an environment where my competitors can open up my assets and copy-paste out the novel bits into their own products (or minds) and jiggle the appearance of the code enough for it to look like they made it. I simply cannot do that. It is not allowed under my rules and I have the scar tissue to prove that I can't overcome my own 'programming', my own Duty.. in that regard.
Programming.. I don't think itma for me, even though my novel concepts would make a difference. The industry is just hostile for people who 'think differently' as it is colloquially said to be, but I really mean, the industry is not for people who have a subjective structure they wish to provide as a gift for organizing knowledge.
The "shape" of programming is to be that Shelf on the factory floor that everybody wars over the ever-changing maps on the Shelves. The maps fail to provide coverage of the entire, ever-changing factory itself, and are constantly updated and their meaning constantly changes.
I can not.
I have at all times, "two sets of books" or "two maps". Unified by a singular Duty that limits what I can and can't do. My imagination is tied to imaging the next step in my 'journey'.
(something like that anyway, it has subjectivity built into it).
I cannot dump relations to random ideas, I have to understand the 'background'/'whole scene' to clear out the clutter of my imagination and keep my two frames of reference, clear.
The actual dutiful work of computer use is not that terribly difficult intellectually, it is often the kind of flower-arranging drudgery that I used to enjoy a lot in my 'youth' (lol im not that old).
I can understand one set of technologies C/C++ buut the bugs and face-slapping error chasing in programming really begins to wear quite badly.
The only way I can really program is to submit to 'someone else's ruleset' that I don't like or agree with and then endure grinding my way to how I mean it to be, based on my sense of subjective expectation and structure, hand-tied to my categorical imperative. It is possible to make elegant and powerful code like this, inside a company structure.. with uninspiring code architecture, set from the top down.
Buuuut whenever I imagine some novel technology that gets me excited, I can make shallow prototypes of the idea in existing tools and inevitably find that I need to rejig/rework the tooling to get my idea out there. And often that means editing a second set of tooling.
And every single time I have started and attempted this project, it starts off rocky-and-okay, the middle part is absolute hellish grind fighting the system and then the end is a complete drain of all my emotions and an inability to finish, leading to an internal frustation with wasted time.
Then the technology tooling all changes and I have to re-process my understanding because the semantics in the new tech stack are different to the last.
The reationships between ideas are the biggest, slowest chore that wears the most. The concepts in new languages are not terribly interesting, as most are re-arrangments of the same old music...
Every single programming language is set up in such a way that the "glue" between all the concepts, is held by an insider 'brotherhood' of experts. The documentation for plebs tells you one specific way and if you fall off the documentation's instructions, then all other ways are pain and time-wasting death. A simple map of relationships between concepts would save so many man-hours globally, it is insane (but I digress).
The devil-in-the-detail level bugs and jankiness is something only an American man with infinite pleasure - to keep his head cool and his fingers typing - could tolerate.
I'm honestly getting to the stage where I think the only reliable way to make new code, is to control the hardware from the bottom up, and do the software from the bottom up.
Every single middleware provider is another layer of shifting maps, that I have to war with, to make some new tech that works from top to bottom.
And then I'd have to release that code into an environment where my competitors can open up my assets and copy-paste out the novel bits into their own products (or minds) and jiggle the appearance of the code enough for it to look like they made it. I simply cannot do that. It is not allowed under my rules and I have the scar tissue to prove that I can't overcome my own 'programming', my own Duty.. in that regard.
Programming.. I don't think itma for me, even though my novel concepts would make a difference. The industry is just hostile for people who 'think differently' as it is colloquially said to be, but I really mean, the industry is not for people who have a subjective structure they wish to provide as a gift for organizing knowledge.
The "shape" of programming is to be that Shelf on the factory floor that everybody wars over the ever-changing maps on the Shelves. The maps fail to provide coverage of the entire, ever-changing factory itself, and are constantly updated and their meaning constantly changes.
I can not.
You seem like you would enjoy programming in FORTH or perhaps LISP. I've never had much interest in either, I've always liked the modern crop of OOP languages, but they seem perfect for out of the box thinkers, they're specifically meant for people with ideas that go outside of what's already out there. Forth is especially interesting since it's the one language where it's very common to build your own implementation. Have you spent much time with either?
I wonder what tech would look like if it were less hostile to out of the box thinkers. Probably we would have a lot of really neat stuff, even though we do things in boring repetitive ways for a reason, it allows people with mediocre skills to produce great results be sacrificing elegance instead of predictability.
When I first got into tech, I did a lot more myself. None of my ideas were at innovative, most were copies of things I'd seen somewhere, but I wasn't familiar with what existing tools were out there, why I'd want to use them, what kind if features I'd want on real world projects, etc.
It wasn't so much that I had these amazing ideas I wanted to share, but I was attached to the genius innovator myth, like on Jimmy Neutron or Blankman or something. Everyone wants to be the on who discovers something great, but none of what I was doing actually seemed to be that great, I was just doing NIH and telling myself it was, plus being too lazy and full of task inertia to learn the industry solutions.
As time went on I got more and more into just using what everyone else uses, exactly the way it was meant to be used, and rethinking my whole approach if I found myself doing anything remotely outside what "the documentation for plebs" wants me to do.
I think it might be pretty cool to be able to think on multiple levels like that, seeing how things work, and having vision of how they could be better, outside of minor incremental improvements to existing tools.
I wonder what tech would look like if it were less hostile to out of the box thinkers. Probably we would have a lot of really neat stuff, even though we do things in boring repetitive ways for a reason, it allows people with mediocre skills to produce great results be sacrificing elegance instead of predictability.
When I first got into tech, I did a lot more myself. None of my ideas were at innovative, most were copies of things I'd seen somewhere, but I wasn't familiar with what existing tools were out there, why I'd want to use them, what kind if features I'd want on real world projects, etc.
It wasn't so much that I had these amazing ideas I wanted to share, but I was attached to the genius innovator myth, like on Jimmy Neutron or Blankman or something. Everyone wants to be the on who discovers something great, but none of what I was doing actually seemed to be that great, I was just doing NIH and telling myself it was, plus being too lazy and full of task inertia to learn the industry solutions.
As time went on I got more and more into just using what everyone else uses, exactly the way it was meant to be used, and rethinking my whole approach if I found myself doing anything remotely outside what "the documentation for plebs" wants me to do.
I think it might be pretty cool to be able to think on multiple levels like that, seeing how things work, and having vision of how they could be better, outside of minor incremental improvements to existing tools.
I spent years trying to find the value others find in handwritten note taking. But it doesn’t work for me.
For me, listening carefully and questioning the speaker internally and focusing intensely on the way they are speaking and visualizing the concepts works better. Handwriting interferes with that as I’m too busy rephrasing to fit into my writing rate. My memory is better than the paper at the nuances of the concepts IFF I am intently focused at a semantic level.
I think, like many of these things, they speak to the average experience. That many people benefit from hand writing. But humanity so very varied, and there one size fits all analysis of learning style does really well at picking out the mode, but statistical analysis cuts off the tails and outliers as noise. But being the noise as an individual makes these sorts of statistical teaching methods painful and distracting.
The day I pushed the paper and pen aside and learned the way I learn best was the day school went from being a chore of tedium, a true struggle, to being a delight. I turned around from a barely capable student to getting highest honors from one of the science and engineering universities in the world. Further by honing my ability to understand deeply with just my ears and mind I can carry that into every day life outside a classroom, such as casual conversations or other formats where note taking would be weird. I’ve never missed my handwritten notes, and I literally never take notes and never will again.
For me, listening carefully and questioning the speaker internally and focusing intensely on the way they are speaking and visualizing the concepts works better. Handwriting interferes with that as I’m too busy rephrasing to fit into my writing rate. My memory is better than the paper at the nuances of the concepts IFF I am intently focused at a semantic level.
I think, like many of these things, they speak to the average experience. That many people benefit from hand writing. But humanity so very varied, and there one size fits all analysis of learning style does really well at picking out the mode, but statistical analysis cuts off the tails and outliers as noise. But being the noise as an individual makes these sorts of statistical teaching methods painful and distracting.
The day I pushed the paper and pen aside and learned the way I learn best was the day school went from being a chore of tedium, a true struggle, to being a delight. I turned around from a barely capable student to getting highest honors from one of the science and engineering universities in the world. Further by honing my ability to understand deeply with just my ears and mind I can carry that into every day life outside a classroom, such as casual conversations or other formats where note taking would be weird. I’ve never missed my handwritten notes, and I literally never take notes and never will again.
> But humanity so very varied
I agree that the way of learning concepts is a personal preference and that humanity is varied, but this is not related of how our brain mechanisms work. If learning by writing is a human ability, it would work no matter of your personal preference. It would work for any student who tries to study with method and take notes of the lesson.
Listening to lessons and learning is a romantic way of studying, but I'm not sure how practical it is when your test is at the end of a course of 4/6 months. Plus all the others course that you follow at the same time, with the labs exercises, it all make a good amount of material to put in your brain just by listening. In addition to that I would not be able to listen to professors explaining concepts for 6/7h and just learning them immediately. I would fall asleep in the middle of the lessons if I don't actively take notes. A lesson is not just a repetition of a book, but the connection of multiple concepts with linearity, done by a professional expert that knows the subject and usually add small details or new way of seeing things, that books don't do them. Notes help students take notes of this and re-use the concepts when studying for the tests, improving their visualization ability.
I agree that the way of learning concepts is a personal preference and that humanity is varied, but this is not related of how our brain mechanisms work. If learning by writing is a human ability, it would work no matter of your personal preference. It would work for any student who tries to study with method and take notes of the lesson.
Listening to lessons and learning is a romantic way of studying, but I'm not sure how practical it is when your test is at the end of a course of 4/6 months. Plus all the others course that you follow at the same time, with the labs exercises, it all make a good amount of material to put in your brain just by listening. In addition to that I would not be able to listen to professors explaining concepts for 6/7h and just learning them immediately. I would fall asleep in the middle of the lessons if I don't actively take notes. A lesson is not just a repetition of a book, but the connection of multiple concepts with linearity, done by a professional expert that knows the subject and usually add small details or new way of seeing things, that books don't do them. Notes help students take notes of this and re-use the concepts when studying for the tests, improving their visualization ability.
Yes, see, this is an example of varied humanity. I found notes didn’t help me understand, and my memory for spoken words and visualized concepts is exceptional. Reading the notes I took brought no understanding and while I could find rote concepts there I didn’t understand the material. Once I stopped taking notes and learning the way I learn best I remembered the concepts and details - to this very day decades later.
What you list is what works for you - and if objectively didn’t work for me. That’s why the outliers like me get ground under. People say “clearly by my experience your experience can’t work, you must do things my way.” (Not saying you’re meaning this so directly but that’s how it gets applied at school)
I would say it’s not a preference specifically but different humans have different facility with their innate abilities. Why would we consider learning by note taking to be an undifferentiated ability but athletic abilities are differentiated? The reality is some people learn better in different ways because our brains are differentiated in their ability. Yes I learn from note taking, but not as well as through different modes because my faculties in those modes are exceptional relative to the mean. But statistical analyses of learning say I must learn better by the statistical mode, despite the fact outlier can and do exist on all the dimensions of learning modalities.
Obviously from a policy point of view they should try to teach everyone the most common ways of learning. But we also need to be able to teach to the outliers as well and how to identify who to differentiate. My daughter is different like me, so I send her to a private school that focuses on differentiated learning - and she thrives where she would have suffered like I did in public school. “No child left behind” means “no average child left behind, the outliers are ground down to be average”
What you list is what works for you - and if objectively didn’t work for me. That’s why the outliers like me get ground under. People say “clearly by my experience your experience can’t work, you must do things my way.” (Not saying you’re meaning this so directly but that’s how it gets applied at school)
I would say it’s not a preference specifically but different humans have different facility with their innate abilities. Why would we consider learning by note taking to be an undifferentiated ability but athletic abilities are differentiated? The reality is some people learn better in different ways because our brains are differentiated in their ability. Yes I learn from note taking, but not as well as through different modes because my faculties in those modes are exceptional relative to the mean. But statistical analyses of learning say I must learn better by the statistical mode, despite the fact outlier can and do exist on all the dimensions of learning modalities.
Obviously from a policy point of view they should try to teach everyone the most common ways of learning. But we also need to be able to teach to the outliers as well and how to identify who to differentiate. My daughter is different like me, so I send her to a private school that focuses on differentiated learning - and she thrives where she would have suffered like I did in public school. “No child left behind” means “no average child left behind, the outliers are ground down to be average”
I second this experience. In my undergrad I wrote so much by hand, and I really had to step back a lot of times, and do it by hand, again, like a kata. Also I learned so much with writing by hand the answers to The Little Lisper etc.
I doubt moving your hands are the reason this worked for you.
Now imagine the power where you can save time wasted on the initial copying and invested it in summarizing (which could also be faster to edit)
The article makes it sound as if the benefit of handwriting vs. typing is a settled matter. But a recent metaanalysis finds no overall benefit of handwriting over typing:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361476X2...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361476X2...
Thank you for this link!
I cannot access the paper right now, but the abstract mentions that most research might have been confounded by the distractions provided by computers rather that by typing/handwriting.
Which is actually a big problem, but suggests that there is a need for better tools --for example support of 'activities' at the Desktop Environment level, such as KDE, which might only give access to a subset of the available applications. This would allow one to have archived and searchable notes typed at full speed --rather than the slow handwriting which might be hard on the wrists-- and not suffer from the distraction problem.
I would even go one step further: while I was translating a book, I used a dictionary on my computer to check some words from time to time. Nowadays I would just use wiktionary to do so, but that means that google might suck you into a rabbit hole at the first failing of will; it would be even better to have the ability to block any other sites when in this activity.
I cannot access the paper right now, but the abstract mentions that most research might have been confounded by the distractions provided by computers rather that by typing/handwriting.
Which is actually a big problem, but suggests that there is a need for better tools --for example support of 'activities' at the Desktop Environment level, such as KDE, which might only give access to a subset of the available applications. This would allow one to have archived and searchable notes typed at full speed --rather than the slow handwriting which might be hard on the wrists-- and not suffer from the distraction problem.
I would even go one step further: while I was translating a book, I used a dictionary on my computer to check some words from time to time. Nowadays I would just use wiktionary to do so, but that means that google might suck you into a rabbit hole at the first failing of will; it would be even better to have the ability to block any other sites when in this activity.
Yeah it makes no sense that it would. It's probably measuring secondary effects like effort put in to take the notes and tools proficiency.
Most peoples, even "digital natives" are much worse at inputting freeform information on a computer in the first place. The hardware/software to make this possible has only been recently available. Basically before tablet proliferation, free form input was a major waste of time at best ; so it has only been 10 years (barely) that you could argue the tools were sufficient. And even then it only works if you buy a sufficiently expensive tool that is sufficiently fast and precise (started making sense at first iPad Air era).
So of course, they are comparing people using a skill they had decade(s) to hone versus a skill that can only have been acquired very recently.
And I think it doesn't make sense to have pure typing vs pure handwriting, it often all the little things around the written language that help tremendously learning and recalling. The way the information is architected with various levels of "call to attention", small drawings, schemas, etc...
A handwritten wall of notes is way more useless than a typed wall of notes because at least in the second case, it's gonna be easier to restructure it and make it much more "parseable". Then again, having to re-write it would increase the time/effort spent on it and translate as a "better learning". If you matched the time/effort on the typing part I doubt you would see a difference. But the reality is that the guy who typed stuff did it for efficiency in the first place so it's more likely than he won't spend as much time re-reading the notes which of course will translate in worse learning whatever that means.
In the end all of this goes back to nonsense that learning things "by heart" is useful and a useful way to grade/rank peoples competence/capacity for comprehension. Handwriting like learning by heart is something that favors women (they are much more applied and they generally have much better handwriting) and it is not even surprising that this is pushed as truth.
Most peoples, even "digital natives" are much worse at inputting freeform information on a computer in the first place. The hardware/software to make this possible has only been recently available. Basically before tablet proliferation, free form input was a major waste of time at best ; so it has only been 10 years (barely) that you could argue the tools were sufficient. And even then it only works if you buy a sufficiently expensive tool that is sufficiently fast and precise (started making sense at first iPad Air era).
So of course, they are comparing people using a skill they had decade(s) to hone versus a skill that can only have been acquired very recently.
And I think it doesn't make sense to have pure typing vs pure handwriting, it often all the little things around the written language that help tremendously learning and recalling. The way the information is architected with various levels of "call to attention", small drawings, schemas, etc...
A handwritten wall of notes is way more useless than a typed wall of notes because at least in the second case, it's gonna be easier to restructure it and make it much more "parseable". Then again, having to re-write it would increase the time/effort spent on it and translate as a "better learning". If you matched the time/effort on the typing part I doubt you would see a difference. But the reality is that the guy who typed stuff did it for efficiency in the first place so it's more likely than he won't spend as much time re-reading the notes which of course will translate in worse learning whatever that means.
In the end all of this goes back to nonsense that learning things "by heart" is useful and a useful way to grade/rank peoples competence/capacity for comprehension. Handwriting like learning by heart is something that favors women (they are much more applied and they generally have much better handwriting) and it is not even surprising that this is pushed as truth.
I have started to journal last month. I came to it through pens when I randomly decided to find a good pen when I got interested in it through some youtube videos(wow, YT actually working as intended, for once). To anyone interested, Pentel Energel 0.7mm is the best gel pen in the entire world, hands down. For oil-based ink, it would be Uniball Jetstream, i guess(i am gel guy). I always wanted to journal and thought it would be great to be able to read my worldviews, problems and daily life from years ago. But I just never did. Anyway, second month in, I must say, i love it. Not because of writing about some interesting philosophical topics, but rather because it allows the brain to dump all that chaos out(onto the paper) and allows me to focus more or just be chill in general. It literally frees your thinking. Like clearing up your RAM. I would never thought this would be the main effect but it is. If anyone wants to try, I recommend getting a notebook with 100gsm blank paper. They are hard to get though. Mostly you will find either dotted paper or 70-80gsm. Do not compromise on the density, dots vs lines vs grid vs blank is personal preference. Preferable is black pen over blue one, but again, PP. Blank pages impose no restrictions on you in regards to formatting though. There are well price notebooks on aliexpress, look for dot ding, legendary notebooks or paperideas. Soft or hard cover is personal preference as well. Format, A5 is the best/most practical. If you go with A6, note that most items are actually close to A7 so make sure you buy a correctly sized one. And smooth PU leather cover will catch fingerprints, so go mesh or rougher PU surface. As for hand writing, the slower you write, the prettier it will be. You have to find your own tempo where you are satisfied with speed and the look of the letters.
If anyone is interested in a great utility pencil, look at the Pentel Twist-Erase GT. Replaceable eraser, super long lead tip, comfortable grip.
I have a preference for graph paper because I can place any idea anywhere on the page exactly where I want it to go. I only use one side of the paper so I don't have to flip back and forth between pages to remember what I wrote.
Using looseleaf paper and a central folder might be more viable for some people vs. a notebook. A nice, new, specially ordered blank notebook can be intimidating to write in. You also have to keep track of a journal to use it. Looseleaf paper is a much smaller mental investment to get the habit started - you can just throw it away if you mess up.
I have a preference for graph paper because I can place any idea anywhere on the page exactly where I want it to go. I only use one side of the paper so I don't have to flip back and forth between pages to remember what I wrote.
Using looseleaf paper and a central folder might be more viable for some people vs. a notebook. A nice, new, specially ordered blank notebook can be intimidating to write in. You also have to keep track of a journal to use it. Looseleaf paper is a much smaller mental investment to get the habit started - you can just throw it away if you mess up.
> Pentel Energel 0.7mm is the best gel pen in the entire world
I love definitive reviews like this.
I love definitive reviews like this.
I tried Zebra Sarasa, Pentel Energel, Pilot G-2, Comix, Bic Gelocity, Bic Gelocity Quickdry(indeed they are very different inks), Muji, Sharpie S-Gel, Unibal Signo,... probably even more, but Energel indeed is in a league of its own. I would put Bic Gelocity Quickdry as close second. Which surprised me. Though their pen cases suck(rattling noise while writing, changing writing angle can mitigate this). Also not all tip sizes are equal. Pilot G-2 0.7mm writes like Pentel 0.5mm for example. You have to find the one you like the best and it mostly comes down to your preferred tip size. To me, 0.5mm or 0.35mm will always be scratchy, no matter how smooth the ink is. 1mm can be good but 0.7mm is just the sweet spot for me. Also not all black are equal. I think Zebra wins here. Uniball is the worst(can become almost gray).
YMMV.
YMMV.
Then see Aaron Hsu's fountain pen reviews:
https://www.sacrideo.us/a-quick-review-of-the-diplomat-nexus...
The way this reads is pretty hysterical. I believe he's on here as user "arcfide".
https://www.sacrideo.us/a-quick-review-of-the-diplomat-nexus...
The way this reads is pretty hysterical. I believe he's on here as user "arcfide".
I agree on his choice, I took the time to test all pencils in several stationary stores in Japan. (albeit in 2008)
Do you have any recommendations for getting over the friction of starting? Like, suggestions of what to write about if you're unsure what's worth putting to paper. I'm sure I'd have plenty to write once I got started, but an empty notebook is intimidating!
I do stream of consciousness writing and aim to fill out a page of A4 — so just whatever comes to mind, usually starting with today is x date and I am sat in y place and so on...
Fully agree with the parent comment about it being like clearing out RAM!
Fully agree with the parent comment about it being like clearing out RAM!
Firstly, do not take the notebook as something sacred. Especially if it is hardcover, you might see it as more valuable than a simple notebook you would use in school. It is not. You can buy a simple softcover with 20 sheets in it to give it a try and not feel like you are wasting "good notebook". But you will soon realize that it feels not worthy of your thoughts and time. You will want to write into something better to give it more meaning. Hence, go for something better right away. As for what to write, literally anything. What gained your attention during your day, what angered you, what was good, some philosophical topics you were pondering or some conclusions you came to during your day. Long or short, it does not matter. This is one of those things where "just do it" is the answer. After couple of days you will settle into it and start forming your own style of what to write, when, how... Personally I have added two aspects to my writing - I always put a date before I start writing if the date has changed form last entry and I draw a border round it to make it visually distinguishable. And I also highlight the main words that the entry is about by underscoring it. Like a hashtag on twitter. This allows me to browse pages and quickly see when i wrote and what i wrote about.
I have also ordered an A6 "pocket" notebook where I want to write one or two sentences or just key words per entry as condensed conclusions to my thoughts or sayings or quotes i heard or read. It should be this condensed book of knowledge and philosophy where long form is not exactly suitable for it.
PS: in my first month, i wrote a lot because there was a lot on my mind. But after a while your brains gets a bit quieter because you are doing this "exercise" and you will go through a short phase where you will be looking for something to write about. That might last a week or two until you settle into the habit and write only when you feel like it. I kinda miss writing when I have nothing to write about so sometimes i just write meaningless thoughts just for the sake of writing. Not all the time, just sometimes.
I have also ordered an A6 "pocket" notebook where I want to write one or two sentences or just key words per entry as condensed conclusions to my thoughts or sayings or quotes i heard or read. It should be this condensed book of knowledge and philosophy where long form is not exactly suitable for it.
PS: in my first month, i wrote a lot because there was a lot on my mind. But after a while your brains gets a bit quieter because you are doing this "exercise" and you will go through a short phase where you will be looking for something to write about. That might last a week or two until you settle into the habit and write only when you feel like it. I kinda miss writing when I have nothing to write about so sometimes i just write meaningless thoughts just for the sake of writing. Not all the time, just sometimes.
My first entry was like "Welcome to thunderrabbit's journal! Today is April 11, 1987 and I just had a fun experience that I want to remember..."
Journaling off and on since 1987, I have a few rules for myself when journaling:
1. Write the time, day of week, date, month, and year for every entry.
2. Don't worry about lapses in writing. Just write a new entry when I can.
3. Allow my topics to be spontaneous. I sometimes have a structure I'd like to use, but allow freedom in any moment.
4. Relish mistakes, smears, stains on the paper by labeling them, e.g. "tea stain while studying with Akane" (real example!)
5. Just enjoy the process of writing.
Journaling off and on since 1987, I have a few rules for myself when journaling:
1. Write the time, day of week, date, month, and year for every entry.
2. Don't worry about lapses in writing. Just write a new entry when I can.
3. Allow my topics to be spontaneous. I sometimes have a structure I'd like to use, but allow freedom in any moment.
4. Relish mistakes, smears, stains on the paper by labeling them, e.g. "tea stain while studying with Akane" (real example!)
5. Just enjoy the process of writing.
To avoid the intimidation factor, skip the notebook. Use the back sides of printed pages. Use cheap scribbler-type notebooks, if you can buy them where you live. And play with a few pens. I prefer fountain pens, and you can buy some very good ones for under $20, perhaps under $10. If you get a reloadable fountain pen, then you can save on the waste of plastic cartridges, and buy bottles of ink, which is where the fun starts.
As to what you ought to write, maybe start by transcribing some of your favourite poems, song lyrics, quotations, etc. Don't wait until you have some "big thoughts" that are "worthy" of a fancy notebook. Your first step is to see if it feels lie fun to you.
As to what you ought to write, maybe start by transcribing some of your favourite poems, song lyrics, quotations, etc. Don't wait until you have some "big thoughts" that are "worthy" of a fancy notebook. Your first step is to see if it feels lie fun to you.
I like to date and place entries, good for todo lists, recipes, experiments, interviews or lectures (fun facts), any idea that makes you laugh for longer than a minute solid, etc. oh and doodles/sketches. Artistic talent not required for personal amusement
I keep a big notebook (12" x 9" I think) that I write quotations I like in, with a fountain pen. I try to transcribe one quotation per day, from a computer file of such quotations. This keeps my hand in with respect to handwriting, keeps my fountain pen from drying up, and doesn't take too much time.
I also keep a journal, but I do that on computer because I value being able to electronically search it.
I also keep a journal, but I do that on computer because I value being able to electronically search it.
I've written in notebooks for many years (mainly write-only, like perl). I think the key thing to remember is that no one is going to read or judge your notes, so literally write anything.
Shopping lists, random thoughts, UML-like diagrams of code, sketches of possible art pieces, knots, etc. Just anything.
Shopping lists, random thoughts, UML-like diagrams of code, sketches of possible art pieces, knots, etc. Just anything.
I am left-handed and the Energel has totally changed my life— it’s the best pen I’ve ever had. I have recently come to believe Pentel is (pardon the cliche) the Apple of writing instruments. They’ve simply PM’d the hell out of their product over time, and it really shows.
Lefty here as well. I always preferred the precision and consistency of a 0.5mm mechanical pencil over any type of pen. The option to easily erase a mistake is pretty nice. And the option to write from very faint to fairly heavy comes in handy.
you could try pilot frixion that uses ink that you can erase with rubber end of the pen because the ink is heat-sensitive.
Also a lefty and I agree wholeheartedly. I stockpile them because I'm worried they'll be discontinued and I'll be back to smudged ink on everything.
oh, just You wait until You discover the wonderful new old world of fountain pens and inks ;-)
Already got 4 on order :D
But the Energel will be hard to beat. Even on practicality side of things. I think we have figured out the modern gel pens and they are just so good that i doubt fountain pens will be able to compete even on smoothness of writing. But i want to give it a try just for fun.
The answer will probably be "it depends". On smoothness, fountain pens have the edge in that mechanically, a fountain pen is just a very smooth ball of metal that's being constantly lubricated by a controlled leak of ink through capilary action. With some decent enginnering and manufacturing (caveat : both of these cost money), this will be hard to beat when it comes to pure friction.
When it comes to practicality... Let's say one does not buy a fountain pen to be practical ;-) These things are fairly maintenance heavy and prone to accidents. There's a reason they have been superseded by several other pen types these days.
Fountain pen is a tool from a different era. One that excels at putting ink on paper in a very comfortable / stylish / craftsman manner...
When it comes to practicality... Let's say one does not buy a fountain pen to be practical ;-) These things are fairly maintenance heavy and prone to accidents. There's a reason they have been superseded by several other pen types these days.
Fountain pen is a tool from a different era. One that excels at putting ink on paper in a very comfortable / stylish / craftsman manner...
But, only the Mitsubishi Uniball Jetstream SXN-210, not the SXN-150.
Join the Signo RT 0.38mm cult. Embrace the tiny font.
I really loved these (.38 specifically) back in college, but they’d start skipping within a matter of weeks. Maybe I was just applying too much pressure?
Haven't had issues. I barely touch the paper though.
0.28 is the only way to go.
I think the real problem with handwriting is the way it has been thought in school. Growing up in mid 2000s Australia, I recall it being thought largely as a rote learning exercise in which one repeats the same letters over and over again without much context, which isn't a particularly exciting thing to do. (On the other hand I quickly learned to type fast as I enjoyed playing games + writing personal documents on my computer and wanted to do all of that as quickly as possible.)
The funny thing was that some years later in 2016, I became highly interested in learning other writing systems for fun (and which I talk about on a blog of mine at [1]), which eventually also evolved into a newfound obsession with handwriting that I still practice today. Its really changed the way I see the written word and is a good way to remind oneself how letters on a screen are really the culmination of a few thousand years of scribes iterating through the older sharp, rigid and awkward letters and gradually evolving them into smoother and more fluid forms which can be drawn much faster by hand.
[1]: https://alternatescriptbureau.wordpress.com
The funny thing was that some years later in 2016, I became highly interested in learning other writing systems for fun (and which I talk about on a blog of mine at [1]), which eventually also evolved into a newfound obsession with handwriting that I still practice today. Its really changed the way I see the written word and is a good way to remind oneself how letters on a screen are really the culmination of a few thousand years of scribes iterating through the older sharp, rigid and awkward letters and gradually evolving them into smoother and more fluid forms which can be drawn much faster by hand.
[1]: https://alternatescriptbureau.wordpress.com
> Growing up in mid 2000s Australia, I recall it being thought largely as a rote learning exercise in which one repeats the same letters over and over again without much context, which isn't a particularly exciting thing to do
Growing up in 90’s and early 2000’s Slovenia, this sounds strange to me. Yes we learned handwriting by rote repetition of letters in the first few months of first grade. But then we started writing real things.
Even in college we were still expected to write essay answers on a piece of paper by hand. In high school we wrote entire essays – up to 1500 words – by hand at school for our literature exams. All our notes in class were handwritten at every level of schooling.
Laptops started becoming a thing in college and most people quickly realized digital note-taking is far too clunky. You need the expressiveness and speed of handwriting to truly capture an idea.
Hell even today I always have a notebook next to my keyboard when I work. The seamless transition between writing, drawing, and scribbling is unparalleled.
Growing up in 90’s and early 2000’s Slovenia, this sounds strange to me. Yes we learned handwriting by rote repetition of letters in the first few months of first grade. But then we started writing real things.
Even in college we were still expected to write essay answers on a piece of paper by hand. In high school we wrote entire essays – up to 1500 words – by hand at school for our literature exams. All our notes in class were handwritten at every level of schooling.
Laptops started becoming a thing in college and most people quickly realized digital note-taking is far too clunky. You need the expressiveness and speed of handwriting to truly capture an idea.
Hell even today I always have a notebook next to my keyboard when I work. The seamless transition between writing, drawing, and scribbling is unparalleled.
> Growing up in 90’s and early 2000’s Slovenia, this sounds strange to me
Perhaps my memory of primary school's a bit fuzzy in this regard, but the point I intended to make was that handwriting was an unpleasant but necessary thing I had to do to get through school and was not something I particularly enjoyed for this reason. The English literature exams were always the worst because of all the darn essays I had to write by hand. On the other hand, me and my cohort got free school laptops from the Australian government in Year 9 [0] which were great for note-taking in class and took the pressure off the need to rely on my at-the-time mediocre and slow handwriting. While having some significant restrictions including the blocking of external programs and an Internet filter that blocked Facebook, many of us enjoyed hacking these laptops to make it run games or other programs we were not supposed to run, lol. Also we got to get them unlocked and keep them after graduating high school.
These days I see much greater value in having good handwriting, and as others have said around, handwritten notes actually help with memory recall far greater than a typed note ever will. Typed notes still have their place as they can be searched much more quickly than handwritten notes, but I found that handwritten notes are much better for notetaking important and critical procedures (e.g. on-call incident response) so that they can be remembered better. Always good to have not just 1 notetaking option, for sure.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Education_Revolution
Perhaps my memory of primary school's a bit fuzzy in this regard, but the point I intended to make was that handwriting was an unpleasant but necessary thing I had to do to get through school and was not something I particularly enjoyed for this reason. The English literature exams were always the worst because of all the darn essays I had to write by hand. On the other hand, me and my cohort got free school laptops from the Australian government in Year 9 [0] which were great for note-taking in class and took the pressure off the need to rely on my at-the-time mediocre and slow handwriting. While having some significant restrictions including the blocking of external programs and an Internet filter that blocked Facebook, many of us enjoyed hacking these laptops to make it run games or other programs we were not supposed to run, lol. Also we got to get them unlocked and keep them after graduating high school.
These days I see much greater value in having good handwriting, and as others have said around, handwritten notes actually help with memory recall far greater than a typed note ever will. Typed notes still have their place as they can be searched much more quickly than handwritten notes, but I found that handwritten notes are much better for notetaking important and critical procedures (e.g. on-call incident response) so that they can be remembered better. Always good to have not just 1 notetaking option, for sure.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Education_Revolution
ah yes, the notepad-as-a-mousepad technique
> One of the best-demonstrated advantages of writing by hand seems to be in superior note-taking. In a study from 2014 by Pam Mueller and Danny Oppenheimer, students typing wrote down almost twice as many words and more passages verbatim from lectures, suggesting they were not understanding so much as rapidly copying the material.
> Handwriting—which takes longer for nearly all university-level students—forces note-takers to synthesise ideas into their own words.
If this is the best demonstration, it means there is no advantage - this is just an illustration of the awfully designed lecture system where any copying is required at all instead of having the full transcript readily available and spending the time to actually listen
If this is the best demonstration, it means there is no advantage - this is just an illustration of the awfully designed lecture system where any copying is required at all instead of having the full transcript readily available and spending the time to actually listen
Also to begin with having to shorten lecture material/notes on the spot because you can't write fast enough seems like a way to introduce errors. Not really superior.
I'm pretty sure I could handily beat any handwriting fan in "synthesizing ideas into their own words" if professors provided small Anki decks of their material after class. Sadly I've never heard of anyone doing this.
Yeah, maybe in a couple of professor generations we'll get to some novel use of all this new tech
Ah yes, lectures, which refuse to acknowledge the existence of the printing press
I wrote about my techniques for learning in an blog post^1 and a big part of my technique is the hand written notes and the zettelkasten. I like handwritten notes for a few reasons. It allows me to practice my handwriting, specifically cursive. It allows me to take a break from looking at screens. It also helps me remember things by creating that mind body connection. But also, it’s so easy to type almost word for word what is being said if you are a fast typer, or copy and paste large chunks of text and media verbatim into digital software. Handwriting notes makes me more selective of the things I write, which makes me have to think more about what I’m writing. Finally not having access to my notes all the time on my phone, or laptop means I have to actually commit then to memory. I can’t use being able to quickly look up something I wrote down as a crutch for not memorizing something.
Note taking is a skill and practice makes perfect. That and SQ3R has helped me get so much better at taking better notes. Plus alls I need is a some grid paper and a pencil, though my analog system has gotten considerably more sophisticated over time
1. https://www.deusinmachina.net/p/the-most-effective-way-i-kno...
Note taking is a skill and practice makes perfect. That and SQ3R has helped me get so much better at taking better notes. Plus alls I need is a some grid paper and a pencil, though my analog system has gotten considerably more sophisticated over time
1. https://www.deusinmachina.net/p/the-most-effective-way-i-kno...
Hi,
The website does not load - I checked on Firefox, Chrome and Edge.
Maybe you're using Cloudflare DNS https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828317
One can also try with alternative URLs: https://archive.today/q0uAI, https://archive.is/q0uAI
Depends on region. It's blocked in Europe for instance.
Thanks! Works for me on iOS 16.6.1/Firefox Focus
These kinds of reports have been coming out since computers were invented. There's no real evidence that writing by hand is better than typing, especially in people with bad handwriting. It's just bias coming from the last few generations that grew up without computers. "I learned cursive, therefore it must be good"
I was terrible at handwriting (especially cursive) as a kid, absolutely hated it, and my teachers compensated by having me do more work on the computer. Fantastic outcome.
No fusty article in the Economist could convince me that cursive handwriting is a skill worth saving. When it came to taking notes in college, I realized I was lousy at taking notes by hand, that I’d pay more attention to the lecturer and wind up with few notes. When I took a laptop, I realized I could basically take dictation while still paying attention to what was said.
Doodling programs out on a notebook does work better for me than doing similar on an iPad, however.
No fusty article in the Economist could convince me that cursive handwriting is a skill worth saving. When it came to taking notes in college, I realized I was lousy at taking notes by hand, that I’d pay more attention to the lecturer and wind up with few notes. When I took a laptop, I realized I could basically take dictation while still paying attention to what was said.
Doodling programs out on a notebook does work better for me than doing similar on an iPad, however.
My parents (and one particular teacher) thought they could improve my handwriting by making me write the alphabet over and over.
It backfired, and my writing got worse. It was painful, not fun, and I didn't care about it. So my sloppy writing got sloppier the more I did it.
Now, I'm realizing that they all failed to teach me to write correctly, probably because they didn't actually know the difference. They all just remembered that their teachers had corrected bad penmanship that way, but without realizing that there was probably additional instruction involved in how to hold the pencil, and how to move the hand and arm properly to get good writing.
I've often thought about working on my handwriting, but there's very little benefit now other than personal pride, and I've got so many other things I want to do.
It backfired, and my writing got worse. It was painful, not fun, and I didn't care about it. So my sloppy writing got sloppier the more I did it.
Now, I'm realizing that they all failed to teach me to write correctly, probably because they didn't actually know the difference. They all just remembered that their teachers had corrected bad penmanship that way, but without realizing that there was probably additional instruction involved in how to hold the pencil, and how to move the hand and arm properly to get good writing.
I've often thought about working on my handwriting, but there's very little benefit now other than personal pride, and I've got so many other things I want to do.
Just last week, a law requiring cursive handwriting to be taught in elementary schools was enacted in California. (AB 446)
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...
Everyone is arguing about typing vs writing in memorizing but the main advantage is developing fine motor control which impacts cognitive development.
https://journal.psych.ac.cn/adps/EN/10.3724/SP.J.1042.2015.0...
https://journal.psych.ac.cn/adps/EN/10.3724/SP.J.1042.2015.0...
The main advantage of handwriting is in the fact that it is slower, so it requires putting more thought into compressing whatever you are writing. (The article itself states it and I remember this explanation coming up in other studies.)
To me it means that you could get benefits of writing when you are typing by adjusting what you are actually doing. For instance, you could re-read and edit what you have typed after the fact. Or you could deliberately try to phrase the notes in your own words.
To me it means that you could get benefits of writing when you are typing by adjusting what you are actually doing. For instance, you could re-read and edit what you have typed after the fact. Or you could deliberately try to phrase the notes in your own words.
Such research is actually why we started building our note-taking app[1] around digital notecards.
When I was in university I was reading a lot of this literature, and came to the same conclusion as many of the researchers – the problem seems to be that typists just type too fast, and default to writing down everything a lecturer says instead of synthesizing/summarizing information as they go (which requires actual understanding).
So we developed our (short-form digital notecard) format in the hopes that it would encourage users to slow down a bit and actually think about the notes they were making, and compartmentalize them as they went. We haven't actually done any studies ourselves, so I have no idea if it actually helps our average user, but for me personally it has made me take better notes.
Mildly tangential but this is also why we have decided not to add any LLM features to our app yet – although very tempting to add the hot new thing, I personally feel that outsourcing your thinking to an LLM (in the case of a PKM system / "second brain") will almost certainly be a net negative for most people.
[1] https://supernotes.app
When I was in university I was reading a lot of this literature, and came to the same conclusion as many of the researchers – the problem seems to be that typists just type too fast, and default to writing down everything a lecturer says instead of synthesizing/summarizing information as they go (which requires actual understanding).
So we developed our (short-form digital notecard) format in the hopes that it would encourage users to slow down a bit and actually think about the notes they were making, and compartmentalize them as they went. We haven't actually done any studies ourselves, so I have no idea if it actually helps our average user, but for me personally it has made me take better notes.
Mildly tangential but this is also why we have decided not to add any LLM features to our app yet – although very tempting to add the hot new thing, I personally feel that outsourcing your thinking to an LLM (in the case of a PKM system / "second brain") will almost certainly be a net negative for most people.
[1] https://supernotes.app
Two things:
1. I get compliments about how nice my handwriting is.
2. It really does help me to remember details. I don't need to go back through my notes (I rarely do these days) but the mere fact of having written it down seems to lock it more tightly into my memory.
Maybe I'll setup a little, completely un-scaleable online service whereby I'll write a hand written letter and send it to a chosen address on behalf of anyone willing to pay.
No ransom notes.
1. I get compliments about how nice my handwriting is.
2. It really does help me to remember details. I don't need to go back through my notes (I rarely do these days) but the mere fact of having written it down seems to lock it more tightly into my memory.
Maybe I'll setup a little, completely un-scaleable online service whereby I'll write a hand written letter and send it to a chosen address on behalf of anyone willing to pay.
No ransom notes.
> It truly helps embodying thoughts and ideas, and provides another significant layer (like flavour in a recipe) of learning and understanding
Hmm. Maybe for you but perhaps you could back that claim up regarding the rest of the population. For me it matters not whether it be handwritten or typed, so long as it's there. Content is king.
Hmm. Maybe for you but perhaps you could back that claim up regarding the rest of the population. For me it matters not whether it be handwritten or typed, so long as it's there. Content is king.
I have fucking hated handwriting for 50 years. When personal computers became the thing I was overjoyed. It has always been very difficult physically for me to handle, and I am delighted to abandon it.
My handwriting is admired by most who see it. I put a lot of time and energy into learning to write more beautifully as a kid, and I was very much into creative writing, and conlanging. Over a few decades, this has now resulted in some rather painful repetitive stress issues in my right hand and wrist. I am not sure that I’d change my life at all, but I do think that children should be taught posture and instrument handling techniques to avoid damage to themselves.
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Although TFA is about the psychological aspect of handwriting, this subject usually draws comment on the learning of handwriting. As a counterpoint to some typical comments, I'll point out that handwriting is a motor skill and that it is subject to the same constraints as developing any other motor skill. When speculating on the value of some approach, consider how well it would work for some other motor skill like tennis or woodcarving.
> One of the best-demonstrated advantages of writing by hand seems to be in superior note-taking. In a study from 2014 by Pam Mueller and Danny Oppenheimer, students typing wrote down almost twice as many words and more passages verbatim from lectures, suggesting they were not understanding so much as rapidly copying the material.
This is a very strained line of argumentation. The raw fact is that the typists are twice as fast.
This is a very strained line of argumentation. The raw fact is that the typists are twice as fast.
I learned in college that the act of taking notes by hand helped fix the lectures in my memory. When I'd review the notes later, I'd hear the lecture in my mind along with it.
Laptops in class don't work. Handouts that are copies of the presentation don't work.
Leave the laptop in your room. Just bring a spiral notebook to class and a couple pens. It's the best way to learn from a lecture.
Bonus: years later you'll enjoy going through your notebooks again.
Laptops in class don't work. Handouts that are copies of the presentation don't work.
Leave the laptop in your room. Just bring a spiral notebook to class and a couple pens. It's the best way to learn from a lecture.
Bonus: years later you'll enjoy going through your notebooks again.
Not strictly related, but I find writing things down using pen or pencil more gratifying than keyboard? Does anyone feel the same? May this have something to do with my ADHD?
I’ve wondered if, in my 50s, I could improve my handwriting. I don’t write much by hand because I don’t feel good about its appearance and form. That said, I’m a force on the whiteboard, but that’s when brainstorming energy exceeds aesthetic/review energy.
Imho notes in class are a bad use of the time. Concentrate on the class. You can make notes later. Need to build your mental relationship and attach concepts to each other as they’re being discussed.
I recently bought a Remarkable 2 e-ink tablet and it is so satisfying, in a way my ipad with pen isn't.
I would love to write but my handwriting has always been poor and mocked by others, which has put me off
Should not matter; get started.
My handwriting is atrocious (right from early school days my teachers have complained about it) and yet i write. Writing is personal; you are engaged in communicating with yourself and not with others; thus it doesn't matter what it looks like as long as you freely express yourself.
My handwriting is atrocious (right from early school days my teachers have complained about it) and yet i write. Writing is personal; you are engaged in communicating with yourself and not with others; thus it doesn't matter what it looks like as long as you freely express yourself.
It’s not fun if it doesn’t look good
There is a lot of silliness that something has to be "fun" in order to do it. Writing is talking to yourself, disciplining and bringing clarity to your thoughts, building a mental model and more. The goal is to understand something better and/or express oneself freely and not showboating/looking good.
I don’t do something that isn’t fun unless I have to
Many things worth learning start out as not fun
“On Friday (10/13/23) California Governor Newsom signed a bill that will require cursive instruction in first through sixth grade.”
https://abc7news.com/cursive-california-schools-governor-new...
https://abc7news.com/cursive-california-schools-governor-new...
I was fortunate to be taught Marion Richardson [0] style handwriting aged 8 or so, and decades years later my handwriting is still universally complimented. I hand write letters for pleasure and take notes by hand for more profound impact.
If you look after a young person or are willing to go relearn it yourself I highly recommend the discipline and style that Marion Richardson demands. While learning it at first it looks childish, but it provides a foundation that you will immediately adapt with your own flavour. It got dropped in UK schools in the 1980s for being too old fashioned, for which I read 'difficult'.
Sadly I cannot recommend any modern books or worksheets (through my own contemporary ignorance) but her original books from 1935 still stand up [1]
[0] https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/M/bo13...
[1] https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1326657/writing-and-writ...