The Handwriting Won't Be on the Wall--Or Anywhere Else

As you read this blog, constantly bedazzled by its trenchant wit and penetrating analysis, you should know something about Your-Not-So-Humble Correspondent: We have dreadful handwriting (see our signature on this page). Scarcely a day goes by that we do not find ourselves called upon to decipher our boardwork for a group of bewildered students. So we read with great interest an essay by Anne Trubek entitled "Handwriting Is History."

As the title suggests, Trubek argues that the glory days of cursive are long past--and good riddance: Why focus on handwriting instruction when the ubiquity of computers and word-processing software renders unnecessary the ability to form an upper-case cursive 'N'? In terms of the speed with which a writer can transfer information from mind to page, handwriting comes in a distant second compared to typing; educators would do better to take the time in 3rd grade to train kids on the latest version of Microsoft Word than on the Palmer Method.

But what happens when handwriting disappears? On the one hand, student writing will be judged more for the quality of the ideas than the content of the characters. As Trubek notes, researchers have found that identical student essays receive higher grades when typed than when handwritten--especially if the handwriting is "messy." We admit to this weakness in our own grading: Not that we intentionally grade sloppily written papers more harshly than their typed or neatly printed counterparts, but we do find ourselves making major effort to remain impartial when struggling with a work of limited legibility.

On the other hand, something will undeniably be lost when students no longer master the art of the handwritten word--because it is, indeed, an art: Cursive, like many another artistic endeavor, is a product of the individual: Handwriting experts exist for the simple reason that people's identities--and certain aspects of their personalities--can be divined through close analysis of the idiosyncrasies of their handwriting. When handwriting no longer matters, some small means of a person's individual expression will disappear. Doubtless, the human mind will continue to develop through whatever neural pathways are stimulated by the act of computer-aided composition. But we will miss the small hints of personality we now discern in the looping, slanting, often frustrating but endlessly fascinating examples of individually, idiosyncratically printed prose.