
An elegy for handwriting? - pepys
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/hands-off-handwriting-calligraphy/
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0culus
On a personal note, I really despise handwriting documents. Writing for an
extended period inevitably results in uncomfortable cramps in my hands. Thus,
I typeset whenever possible (markdown -> pandoc -> LaTeX -> pdf). However, for
taking notes in ad hoc situations, handwriting is so much easier. I recently
got the 10.5" iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil and I _love_ it for writing notes
for classes especially. I also keep a stack of engineering paper around for
doodling out problems I'm working on. At least for me, handwriting is still an
integral part of my workflow even if it's not my favorite.

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Analemma_
> On a personal note, I really despise handwriting documents. Writing for an
> extended period inevitably results in uncomfortable cramps in my hands

You want a fountain pen! And for anyone else interested in handwriting more, I
recommend taking up fountain pens as a hobby. It's fairly inexpensive to get
into, as hobbies go (though of course you can spend unhealthy sums at the top
end), and I have done a lot more handwriting since I took it up, to generally
positive results.

The main reason they are so nice is that, compared to a pencil or especially a
ballpoint pen, a good fountain pen requires very little pressure to write
with, and so results in much less pain and cramping in the hands. I can write
multiple A5 pages with a fountain pen and not even notice, whereas with a
ballpoint pen my hand starts to hurt after about ten sentences.

~~~
0culus
I actually have two Lamy Al star pens, though I haven't really used them as
much as I'd like. Thanks for the reminder!

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anarbadalov
A lovely review, thanks for posting. Reminds me of this beautiful, longer
essay on the death of handwriting (written by the obituaries editor of the
economist): [https://www.1843magazine.com/content/ideas/ann-
wroe/handwrit...](https://www.1843magazine.com/content/ideas/ann-
wroe/handwriting-elegy)

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cafard
"when no one need be judged by the quality of their script"

The reviewer mentions Thomas Aquinas, whose writing was notoriously illegible.
She might have mentioned Napoleon as well, or quoted from _Middlemarch_

"At that time the opinion existed that it was beneath a gentleman to write
legibly, or with a hand in the least suitable to a clerk. Fred wrote the lines
demanded in a hand as gentlemanly as that of any viscount or bishop of the
day: the vowels were all alike and the consonants only distinguishable as
turning up or down, the strokes had a blotted solidity and the letters
disdained to keep the line--in short, it was a manuscript of that venerable
kind easy to interpret when you know beforehand what the writer means."

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tfandango
I'm late to this post but a couple of years ago I visited the National
Archives in Washington DC. It was my favorite stop and I was surprised at the
effect on me of seeing the Declaration of Independence. It occurred to me at
that moment that if any such monumental document were created today, it would
be electronic and everyone would have one. With all the good things about
that, something powerful is lost at the same time.

