Why Do We Need Handwriting in the Digital Age?

Some people possess the god-given talent of “neat handwriting.” Teachers marvel at their penmanship and friends regard them with awe, always prefacing their name with “the one with the super pretty handwriting.” Emma, my high school friend, possesses this gift. I would find myself gazing over her paper whenever she wrote anything, because her letters were so masterfully drawn that they were indistinguishable from computerized fonts; each a was the exact same size and shape as all the others, as if copy-pasted from an original, and every o a perfectly closed circle with no wobble or overlap. Once, I wrote the neatest sentence I could, painstakingly focusing on every tiny stroke and replicating my ideal handwriting, and then compared that to her normal handwriting. Turns out, hers still visually looked better than mine—it was naturally flowing, unlike my stiff and obviously forced penmanship. Stylistically, each of her letters were freestanding, unconnected, and separated with consistent gap sizes; by comparison, my handwriting style was more lax, as e’s and r’s slurred and linked with subsequent letters. If I wanted to improve my handwriting, I would need to discard my current writing habits and deliberately practice writing letters in a more uniform style. However, putting so much effort into slowing my writing speed and consciously imitating the neatness of Emma’s handwriting in every press of the pencil was simply unfeasible in my everyday life, as so much strain quickly tires out my hands and arms, and focusing on the quality of individual letters would fail in fast-paced lectures or timed exams which demand efficient handwriting. But that got me thinking: am I doing something wrong when it comes to manual writing? Is neat handwriting achievable through practice? Does a person’s handwriting style signify something about their character? And why might handwriting be beneficial or important in our everyday lives?

To start my exploration, I wanted to explore the validity of long-heard claims that handwriting is influenced by personality, intelligence, or inner thoughts: from the traditional notion that doctors have messy handwriting because they are incredibly smart, to the widely accepted belief that women have neater handwriting than men, or even the commonly heard assumption that introverts have smaller handwriting than extroverts, these generalizations came from all facets of life. To find an answer to whether personality traits could be distinguished through handwriting alone, I turned to the field of graphology. According to Encyclopedia Britannica Online, graphology is the study of personality as expressed in handwriting; it posits that the shape of letters and words opens a window into the writer’s subconscious.1 This science seems revolutionary: if how we talk gives listeners insight into how we are as a person, our handwriting styles may give the reader some clues about our character. Heinz M. Graumann, a graphologist who has researched and taught in the field for more than 60 years, observed that certain ways of writing the letters a and o can convey key traits in personality: a “closed” or “knotted” a or o may indicate someone who is secretive, while an a or o which is “opened” could mean the writer is careless or honest.2 However, Peter Greasley, a modern psychologist with a PhD from the University of Manchester, questions Graumann’s claims and the validity of graphologists’ ability to pinpoint personality from handwriting. He argues that these assertions are unfounded and based on weak correlations: that if certain letters are closed then so shall be your lips is an idea “drawing on simple analogies, perceptual metaphors, and spurious symbolism.”3 Furthermore, the accuracy of these analogies is also inconsistent, as Greasley mentions a study done by Neter and Ben-Shakhar in 1989, which found that “When dealing with handwriting samples containing personal information, the graphologists achieved some, albeit small, degree of success. However, when the graphologists were presented with handwriting samples that contained no personal details the predictive validity of their inferences was reduced to a level no better than random guesses.”4 Thus, graphology is not an accepted science at all—it is a pseudoscience, made up of beliefs that are not based on proven empirical evidence. What one graphologist discovers or concludes about handwriting would be contradicted by the findings of another.5 So, while everyone’s handwriting is unique, drawing inferences based only on its qualities is not a scientifically valid way to diagnose personalities.

I was encouraged by this new understanding that personality is independent from handwriting style, since this meant my writing was not determined by my psyche, but rather something more physical. Immediately, I turned my attention to the muscles in the arm which make manual writing possible. I wanted to explore the biological science behind the action of handwriting, and figure out what exactly made my natural writing so different from Emma’s. I had some initial thoughts on these topics.

For one, people may hold the pencil differently: I hold the pencil with the index finger on top, while others may hold it with both the index and middle fingers glued together and perpendicular to their thumb. Another source of variety is the amount of force used when writing different letters, and how readily the force is adjusted. In a study done led by Tiago H. Falk of the University of Toronto and Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, the variability of grip force—changes in pressure used on a pencil over time—was compared to the quality of handwriting—legibility, form, strokes, alignment, etc. Each of the pencils was strapped with sensors to detect how much force was used for each grip when writing the sentence “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,” an English sentence which contains all the letters in the alphabet. While dynamic grip force for inexperienced writers was correlated with improved legibility, static grip force was associated with poorer performance in handwriting; on the other hand, for experienced writers, changes in their grip force resulted in incremental improvements in handwriting.6 In addition, previous studies cited that pencil grip did not influence stroke, legibility, or speed of writing; thus, quality—and variance of styles—of handwriting is determined by the “ability to change grip patterns during writing.”7 So, dynamic grip force leads to neater and higher quality handwriting in both proficient and non-proficient writers, whereas static grip force could be a cause for messy handwriting.

From Falk and his team of researchers, I gained an understanding as to where the different styles of handwriting come from, and how people are able to write so quickly yet neatly. I still wanted to understand why handwriting might be beneficial in our lives. After all, teachers seem to love neat and legible handwriting, as it is monumentally easier to read and grade compared to deciphering chicken scratch, which is both time-consuming and tiring. Though, neatness and messiness are also subjective: even among teachers, there are different preferences. I have had instructors ask us to write in large handwriting with clear gaps between letters, because students would write in the tiniest font, almost to the point of needing a magnifying glass to interpret. But does this preference for one kind of handwriting style actually have any real world implications, for example, in a classroom or academic setting?

In the same way that attractive people may receive greater advantages because of their physical appearance, a phenomenon denoted as “pretty privilege,” neat handwriting may share analogous benefits. One study, done by Rainer Greifeneder et al., educational psychologists and researchers from the University of Mannheim in Germany, coined the phrase “legibility bias,” which refers to the bias toward legible handwriting as having higher-quality content. Their results showed that “legible handwritten material may result in more positive evaluations than less legible material. This legibility bias occurred independent of performance level (good, medium, poor) and independent of subject domain (physics vs. education).”8 In other words, the visual aspect has a notable impact on graders’ opinions of the quality of content, such that a more legible paper may be of poorer quality but still receive the same score as another paper of higher quality which is less legible. This is especially crucial in academic environments, where a significant bulk of graded material is written by hand and also graded by a person, who is subject to these certain biases by virtue of being human. Thus, the legibility bias provides one clear incentive to practice and improve handwriting legibility and neatness: to present visually appealing work that positively reflects the quality of the written content.

Traversing from the field of graphology to the biomechanics of grip force, and now to the psychological effects of handwriting, I was not entirely satisfied with my findings about legibility bias and implications of handwriting in an academic environment. After all, in this electronic age, everyone’s work is visually the same due to online submissions and computerized fonts, so it seems the legibility bias may no longer be an issue. While graders might receive some psychological effect from reading someone’s handwritten work, is there a mental benefit of handwriting for the writers themselves? Why should we write by hand as opposed to other mediums of writing, such as a typewriter or a keyboard?

College students, myself included, take so many notes, manual or typed and with varying degrees of detail, that the very action of taking notes signifies academic success. Many professors and students believe in the superiority of making handwritten notes over typed notes, citing that the physical action of writing helps with better memory retention. This notion was recently corroborated by an experiment performed by Aya S. Ihara and other researchers from the Graduate School of Frontier Bioscience at Osaka University: “These results suggest that the movements involved in handwriting allow a greater memorization of new words. The advantage of handwriting over typing might also be caused by a more positive mood during learning. Finally, our results show that handwriting with a digital pen and tablet can increase the ability to learn compared with keyboard typing once the individuals are accustomed to it.”9 Writing by hand seems to be biologically more stimulating than typing for both memory and mood when it comes to learning. Even in everyday life, many people opt for handwritten notes as opposed to an electronic reminder, or prefer hard-copy books over e-books; a physical manifestation of writing has a far more profound effect on our brains.

Humans, as biological creatures, are dependent on our five senses for every action we take; memory is no different, as the more senses are utilized, the easier remembering is. I have heard study tips such as “work in a loud environment,” because when taking the test, it is not going to be completely quiet: the same environmental sounds help to stimulate our memory and make recalling them easier. Intuitively, then, handwriting would serve to be better for memory development too: when taking a physical exam, the sensory aspect—textures of the paper and pencil—and manual motion of writing helps the brain recollect tidbits of information previously formed using the same medium of writing. However, technology’s far reaching grasp has made handwriting and manual note-taking seem obsolete: the undeniable convenience and sheer efficiency of typing far trumps the marginal benefit we stand to gain from handwriting. Even still, I wonder what exactly is lost in our transition to the digital world. In David Abram’s selection “Animism and the Alphabet,” he describes the shift from orality to literacy and how it separated us from nature and made us indifferent to it.10 Now, we are once again in the middle of a shift, this time from handwriting to electronic typing, in which we may be even further away from the natural world. This sparked another question for me: why is it important that we keep the art of handwriting? What exactly makes handwriting so special, and what exactly will we lose in our transition away from it?

To understand handwriting as an art, I turned to my older sister Angela, who has a habit of collecting handwritten letters from family and friends, hanging them on an “aesthetic” wall or poster board, and displaying heartfelt messages with pretty decorations. An expert in artsy concoctions, she has a knack for creativity. She describes that something about receiving handwritten letters is infinitely more special than just reading an email: she would not print out an electronic message and paste it onto her scrapbooking wall, but would keep every handwritten letter she receives in the mail. A handwritten letter is more personal because no letter is identical; each person has a handwriting style that is different from everyone else’s, whereas the computer font is always the same—static and almost devoid of humanity. Even if the contents of two letters—one handwritten and the other electronically emailed—are entirely identical, just the existence of handwritten prose is proof of the thoughtfulness and care behind each stroke, making the first letter much more moving. This gave me insight into a special aspect of handwriting that electronic writing can not replicate: personal, heartfelt letters.

To explore further, I turned to Patrick McCormick and his magazine section “Keep those cards and letters coming,” which describes the art of writing letters and receiving them. He explains that the act of handwriting a letter is no easy feat: “Writing a good letter usually demands that we turn everything off and sit down for an hour or more with only a blank piece of paper (or computer screen) and ourselves for company…to construct our world and ourselves from within, and court, not fear, the experience of being alone.”11 When writing a letter, we isolate ourselves from the world and leave ourselves only with our thoughts, focusing on the person we are writing to and the sentimental feelings that arise from memories with them. The difficulty comes in being vulnerable with our own mind, relying only on our pen and paper to capture the affection and spark the creativity we wish to pour into the letter. However, all the toil is worth it when we receive a letter ourselves. As McCormick puts it, “How sweet it is to open a note and find that…a friend studying abroad has momentarily pushed aside his books and journals and put pen to paper to take up an old conversation and inquire how we are, how we really are.”12 A handwritten letter is so personal because the sender took time out of their day to think of and appreciate a friend, transcribing their moment of vulnerability into a tangible gift; they are presenting a part of themselves, and even if their handwriting is not the neatest, it is timelessly beautiful in the eyes of the receiver.

Going back to the original question that sparked my interest, I reflected on why handwriting is so important in our everyday lives. While handwriting may not be a fool-proof method at distinguishing introverts from extroverts or certain personality types from others, it does have its roots in psychology. Writing by hand comes naturally to us—inherent in our human nature—since we all desire to express ourselves in some way. In this digital age where everything on the internet is instantaneous and perpetual, those precious few things that are impermanent and fleeting become even more treasured. What sets it apart from something electronically typed is precisely the personal connection: that string of sentences, meticulously written down by its author, is laced with emotion and purpose in every stroke and lift of the pen. Handwriting reminds us to slow down our thoughts and treasure the present, because we are leaving behind a physical and lasting mark of our existence reflecting ourselves at that moment in time.

Bibliography

Notes

1. Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. “graphology.” Encyclopedia Britannica, April 25, 2017. https://www.britannica.com/topic/graphology.

2. Peter Greasley. “Handwriting Analysis and Personality Assessment.” European Psychologist 5, no. 1 (2000): 47.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid., 49.

5. Ibid., 45.

6. Tiago H Falk, Cynthia Tam, Heidi Schwellnus, and Tom Chau. “Grip Force Variability and Its Effects on Children’s Handwriting Legibility, Form, and Strokes.” Journal of Biomechanical Engineering 132, no. 11 (2010): 114504.

7. Ibid.

8. Greifeneder, Rainer, Sarah Zelt, Tim Seele, Konstantin Bottenberg, and Alexander Alt. “Towards a Better Understanding of the Legibility Bias in Performance Assessments: The Case of Gender-based Inferences.” British Journal of Educational Psychology 82, no. 3 (2012): 361-74.

9. Aya S. Ihara, Kae Nakajima, Akiyuki Kake, Kizuku Ishimaru, Kiyoyuki Osugi, and Yasushi Naruse. “Advantage of Handwriting Over Typing on Learning Words: Evidence From an N400 Event-Related Potential Index.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 15 (2021): 679191.

10. David Abram, “Animism and the Alphabet”, in The Spell of the Sensuous : Perception and Language in a More-than-human World. 1st ed. New York: Pantheon Books, 1996.

11. Patrick McCormick. “Keep Those Cards and Letters Coming.” U.S. Catholic 60, no. 9 (1995): 38.

12. Ibid.