Will we forget how to write?
I recently visited DePaul’s Special Collections in one of my literature courses. The purpose was to explore and examine the early editions of nineteenth century novels like Adventures of Huckleberry Moby-Dick, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. While we were there, we also got a brief history of print including another explanation of how Gutenberg’s printing press worked. In passing, however, my professor and the Special Collections librarian began discussing the original functions of ruled paper. They mentioned that it was primarily for accountants to keep numbers organized, and to teach people how to write straight. Once people learned proper penmanship they no longer used lined paper, but wrote perfectly in blank notebooks.
I’m not sure why, but I always believed that nineteenth century folks wrote in blank notebooks because spirals and ruled composition notebooks didn’t yet exist. It was a complete surprise that while I thought we were advanced somehow for having lined paper, we’ve actually regressed. So this made me wonder, with our generation’s current dependency on keyboards and voice messaging, will we forget how to write by hand? What if one hundred years from now, humans will no longer have a need for handwriting? Personally, I love my chicken-scratch handwriting. I couldn’t imagine not writing, or having handwriting that matched everyone else’s. What an awful world to live in.
I feel that people won’t forget or lose the ability to write, however you bring up an interesting point when you say, “I love my chicken-scratch handwriting”. I think of the prescriptions from doctors that I’ve tried to make out, but it seems like a code that only medically literate people understand. The beautiful part about handwriting is that it is not digitally recorded, so it can be as private as speech. But should the day come when pens record every stroke made by someone writing, then we’ll be in for a problem much larger than we can comprehend.
I agree with Erik’s comment – I don’t think people will forget how to hand-write or that hand-writing will go out of style anytime soon, but I do think that our writing styles are changing. This is evident even in generational differences in handwriting. If you compare your grandmother’s, dad’s, your own, and a younger sibling’s handwriting, I think you’ll see dramatic differences. My grandmother’s handwriting is so loopy and formal it’s nearly illegible. In contrast, a lot of children I know don’t even know how to write in cursive.
I definitely feel that not handwriting as much since arriving at college has had a huge effect on how I write. I notice that when I go through long periods of not writing, my words will turn out extremely sloppy. In high school, however, when a great deal of my assignments were written work, I had great hand writing that everyone admired. This being said, I definitely think that in the future, students’ handwriting will continually get worse, as they are relying on technology more. Also, I agree in the sense that I can not IMAGINE having the same handwriting as everyone else. I definitely feel that one’s handwriting is a signature trademark of them and as a WRD major it’s that much more important to me.