The Handwriting of the Book

I have never had the best handwriting, nor have I always cared to have the best handwriting. I used to tell myself that it was the sign of a good writer to have messy handwriting. Yet Jane Austen had an impeccable hand, as did J.R.R. Tolkien. When I was in college I was so disgusted with my sloppy writing that I set about changing it. Recently I started working on my handwriting again, with good results.

I strongly believe that we need to bring back the art of handwriting. Today we don't care about nice handwriting because we have computers to do it all for us. Ah, the fallacy! Because we have computers we are losing the art of handwriting. So many people have bad handwriting now, and it is such a shame. Like the printed book, handwriting is becoming obsolete. But the printed book does something wonderful to the human brain. When we pick up a book, the brain begins to work hard. There is physicality in reading, just as in many sports and activities. Text is a tangible part of the physical world; the brain regards letters as physical in order to understand the intangible concepts of words and ideas. When we read, the brain goes through the motions of writing. 

The brain also regards written text as a landscape. Words are the mountains and valleys on a map surrounded by a border. Paper books have more obvious topography than onscreen text. A book has left and right pages, and corners with which we can orient ourselves. A reader can focus on a single page of a paper book without losing sight of the whole text. A reader can see where a page is in relation everything else in the book. There is also a thickness to the paper page, a rhythm in turning the pages, and a visible record of how far you have journeyed through the book. The brain is able to make a coherent mental map of the text. Paper books have a physical feeling of paper and words, and size, shape, and weight. For instance, we know War and Peace is a long book, and Heart of Darkness is a rather short book. People expect books to look, feel, and smell a certain way. (I know I do; I love to smell books.) When books have none of these aspects, reading becomes less enjoyable.

The digital reader, on the other hand, gives the brain far less of a work-out. The digital book is just a seamless stream of words. There is no map, no compass to guide the reader. It is difficult to see a passage in context with the rest of the book. A digital reader displays one, at most two, pages at a time, and then they are gone, leaving no trace. Studies have shown that people who read from a screen read slower, less accurately, and less comprehensively. Most people who really want to dig into a book and understand it will read a paper book. The digital book drains more mental resources, and it is harder to remember what you have read.

Handwriting has a similar effect on the brain. Writing requires the brain to be at work to form the shapes of the letters. Writing by hand differs from typing on a computer because it requires using strokes to create a letter, while typing is just selecting the whole letter by touching a key. The finger movements used in writing activate large regions of the brain that are involved in thinking, memory, and language. Again, there is physicality involved in writing a letter, a word, a page. People who handwrite more are shown to have better cognitive skills.

I have recently started writing my stories out by hand before typing them on the computer. I have never written poetry on a computer; there's something about poetry that needs to be written out by hand. Poetry is such a physical thing. I have found that handwriting my manuscripts helps me. True, it takes a lot longer, but it is so much more satisfactory, and there seems to be a direct link between the ideas in my head and what I write on paper. Something seems to get lost between by brain and the computer keyboard.

Please help me to save the dying art of handwriting. I encourage you to take some time and write something in your best hand throughout the day, whether it is your magnum opus, a letter to a friend, or simply your grocery list.

* Information on books, handwriting, and the brain taken from articles written by Phil Riebel and Scientific American.