Magic: The Argument in Favour of Handwriting
From the dawn of human societies to modern day, human beings have always sought to immortalise ourselves in the form of culture. Be it cave paintings or literary masterpieces, our human souls yearn for legacy and preservation, even if it can only take form in fragments of our beings. Nonetheless, we use words and art to make it known that we, too, existed and walked this earth. In many ways, written language is a collective gift to humankind.
Through the preservation of written text, we are able to glimpse into the world of the Heian period of Japan through the lens of Genji Monogatari, one of the world’s first novels written by the noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu. We can feel the stoic defiance with which Socrates faced death through the manuscripts of Plato’s Dialogues, and we can feel a fraction of the horrors of slavery through the autobiographical works of Frederick Douglass, such as his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.
The written word is both our window into the past and the future’s window into us. As many writers have noted throughout history, literacy is the closest that human beings have gotten to magic. With the power of writing, we can revisit the past, imagine the future, or even be transported into into parallel fantasy worlds. Writing is a gateway to possibility, imagination, and legacy. The great writers of the past could not possibly have fathomed our existence and yet here we are, studying the texts that they have left behind for us. If that isn’t magic executed in reality, then what is?
And yet, in the age of the highest levels of education in human history, a growing segment of the literate world is increasingly rejecting the practice of handwriting. What was once a source of pride and a marker of social mobility and advancement is now considered to be a decrepit practice in an arcane art.
Such is the irony of human nature that when we are most able to individually indulge in the magic of writing that we forsake it in the name of speed and efficiency. While it cannot be denied that more modern forms of communications are more expedient, now is the time to rethink the role of handwriting in our digital world.
Handwriting Is A Creative Act
Fundamentally, writing now fits one of two general categories in modern life. The first is writing for transcription. This category of writing is one of instant record, and values speed and accuracy above all else due to its urgency. Some examples include writing memos for work or school, jotting down notes, or taking meeting minutes at work. A fast and accurate transcription of events is the point. It is true that handwriting is no longer the optimal form of writing in this modern pace of life. It is a fact that digital forms of writing is much faster than the more archaic writing by hand.
The second category of writing, however, is writing for creativity. This type of writing is more introspective and personal. Speed is secondary to intentionality and rather than a transcription of the objective world, such writing is focused on the exploration of what the writers intend to do with said world. This may come in the form of journaling, research, or creative writing. The purpose is in the act of writing itself as a practice.
Handwriting is the most suited to this category of writing precisely because it is slow. The time that it takes for our hands to form the letters of the worlds that we envision, is prolonged by the physical movement required to move pen across paper. This time born from the delay between the conception of the thought to the physical manifestation of the word itself creates space for us, the writers, to reflect on how this very word that we are putting down on paper affects those that came before and how it can inspire those that are yet to come. To this end, the slowness of handwriting becomes the feature and argument in favour of handwriting for this category of writing.
The Future Role of Handwriting
As we gear up to enter the mid-21st century, technological innovations like Large Language Models, Voice to Text, and Generative AI dominate the conversations about what’s next for the digital age. We are already seeing global companies like Microsoft and Google developing and leveraging such technologies to supplement and replace the practice of writing for transcription. Whereas it was common for junior employees to cut their teeth at large companies by taking meeting minutes only five years ago, such practices are now made obsolete by virtual assistants. If we see writing merely in terms of speed and efficiency, then we may soon be faced with a digital reality where even typing will no longer be needed. It is already becoming common for adults in East Asian countries such as Japan and China to be able to read, but unable to remember how to write characters by hand. In western countries, cursive literacy is also declining at alarming rates.
It is easy to envision a world where the ability to write by hand is no longer necessary because we can transcribe just by speaking into a microphone. When that world comes, will written literacy once more become a luxury and an indicator of social status? While we may soon no longer need to write for transcription and technology takes over this role, as long as human beings care about each other and what other people think and feel, human handwriting will always have value in our civilised societies. It is up to each one of us to treasure the gift of writing and pass it on, so that our children and theirs can continue to practice and indulge in the magic of writing.
