Keyboarding and Penmanship

CNN has a story that asks the question, are keyboards killing cursive penmanship? As one whose own handwriting had atrophied to near illegibility over the years my use of computers to write had increased, I do know keyboards can hinder writing by hand to the extent they displace writing by hand. The hand frequently loses its muscle memory and efficiency for writing cursive and print well.

The CNN story is interesting because it focuses on the use of computers in the third grade of a California school, Horrall Elementary School, where kids reportedly prefer writing on the computer than writing by hand.

"Computers are better," the 9-year-old says, blonde pony tail bobbing behind her. "With typing, you don't have to erase when you make a mistake. You just hit delete, so it's a lot easier."

Such attitudes are worrying to a growing number of parents, educators and historians, who fear that computers are speeding the demise of a uniquely American form of expression. Handwriting experts fear that the wild popularity of e-mail, instant messages and other electronic communication, particularly among kids, could erase cursive within a few decades.

At technology-savvy Horrall Elementary -- where students take keyboard lessons in third grade, precisely when they learn cursive -- Monique's teacher, Ed Boell, is fighting the trend. He refuses to give extra points when students turn in laser-printed homework assignments with fancy computer fonts, and he urges kids to send handwritten letters to parents and friends.

Now I write online a lot, everyday. Almost all writing I do is online, in this blog, in email, in a word processor. But I find myself agreeing with Ed Boell, and I find myself deliberately "fighting the trend." I've been practicing my handwriting lately, trying to get it not just to be readable, but to be something aesthetically pleasing. I want my handwriting to look well-crafted again, something I haven't thought about or cared about in close to 20 years.

Why? I think in part for nostalgia for a skill I've lost. I have a vivid memory of sitting in the student union at the University of Hartford when I was a student there in the late 70's, writing a letter by hand, going slowly, making it neat. And a woman who was on the janitorial staff happened to glance down as she passed, and she stopped, and told me my handwriting was very beautiful. I hadn't thought about that since the day it happened, but it came back to me a few months ago when I was trying to write a quick note to my daughter's teacher and I had to start over more than once because I kept scrawling too poorly (and there was no backspace key to correct a sentence that started out on one train of thought and then jumped track to another midway through).

I also happened to be cleaning out some old boxes and found some old letters that I'd received at different times from my mother. She's been dead for a few years now, but those letters and the care of her handwriting seemed suddenly evocative and important. More so than a uniform font from an email or word processor would have been. There can be a kind of personality quirk extant in the press of ink, the stroke and slope of letter, to one's handwriting that there cannot be with keyboarded words. It's not an issue of voice, and a way with words, but an issue of what the penmanship itself conveys about the person.

And I think that's worth having, the personality of one's penmanship. So I'm practicing my handwriting again, trying to shape and make it something that expresses me.

I also like writing by hand again because it's a change of pace. It changes how I think, and what I have to do to shape and keep a thought. And I like that mental variety in the ways that I think and plan the writing. I think there's value in that. When I teach again, I might experiment with having students do that, do a draft by hand, all the way through, even to the final draft. Just to see what happens.