How good is your handwriting?

Internet and computer technology combined have killed or are on their way to killing a few of our habits and skills, if not completely at least to a significant extent.

Snail mail has decreased some 85 per cent in the last 15 years. To listen to music we rarely insert any recorded media in a player but prefer online audio streaming and music saved on hard disk or in the memory of one of the many portable devices around. Photographs are enjoyed on a screen much more than on paper, and of course, printing in general is not in fashion anymore. Is handwriting the next “victim” of digital high-tech?

At the bank the other day, and to complete a set of formalities I had started, I had to supply the management with a formal statement in the form of a letter. To save time, instead of going back to the office to type the letter using a computer and then print it out, I decided to write it, manually, while still there, to sign it and to give it to the clerk who said it was perfectly acceptable that way.

It was not a long statement, perhaps four or five paragraphs, some 250 words or so. Yet, upon finishing it I almost had a cramp in my hand. I haven’t handwritten like that for a long time. I was surprised, shocked. It sent me wondering.

Looking at the way schoolchildren write today, at the poor quality of their handwriting, one cannot but ask where the fine art of calligraphy has gone. The kids are hardly to blame. Surrounded by a variety of digital devices fitted with touchscreens and by regular computers with physical keyboards attached, the young hardly need to handwrite these days. And the habit kicks in at ages as young as seven or eight, as early as they learn to “write” at school. I see it all the time.

After all when all the digital tools around you, including speech-to-text recognition, allow you to generate text of all kinds without handwriting, why wouldn’t you give up the skill? Why should you learn it at all?

Without any doubt there’s a dramatic decrease in the amount of text we handwrite. In the office the pen is merely here for signature or very short memos quickly jolted on a post-it note.

For a few years now scholars have been studying the effects, hypothetical or real, of the change in our reading habits. We read more and more online or with e-books, and less with hard copy printed books. Handwriting is following the same path, and no one can foretell if it’s going to be a good or a bad thing. This is just how it is.

Handwriting, however, has implications that go beyond simple communication and text transmission; it bears and conveys the traits of our character, of any artistic talent or aptitude we may have. In itself, one person’s handwriting is equivalent to her or his signature. Graphology isn’t here for nothing, after all.

It is very likely that one day soon handwriting will stop being as common as it is today, or as it was yesterday should I say. It could become what physical exercise has become. It used to be natural, part of the daily life — not anymore. Today you have to take the time to go to the gym to exercise, to walk on treadmills instead of amidst natural landscape: in other words to find artificial ways to replace the natural ones.

Soon you may have to apologise for not being able to meet a friend because you have to do your weekly handwriting exercise in the evening.