Do you still use handwritten shopping lists? Or do you keep a list on your phone? I may be very old fashioned, but I prefer a paper list. I have a notepad on my fridge, and I add to it whenever I think of something I need to buy. If I am being really organised, I will re-write the list in the order that I will find those products in the supermarket. When I get there, I can hold my piece of paper at the same time as pushing my trolley and grabbing tins from the shelves. I have no desire to walk around the supermarket with my phone in my hand, scrolling up and down a list, waking my phone up when it has gone to sleep and struggling to manage the other things I need to do with my hands. The paper list works for me, and I am unlikely to change.
Handwriting has gone out of fashion. I know that almost everyone keeps notes in their phone, uses their phone as a diary and types almost everything. I have nothing against typing. I taught myself to touch type when was an undergraduate, using a manual typewriter. It’s a skill I value almost every day. I am typing this now. I love the speed and ease and the way my words appear magically on the screen as my fingers tap away.
However, I also value writing by hand. My handwriting is atrocious, and almost no one can read it. That comes from too many years making notes in lecture halls, courts and police stations. Legal secretaries seem to have special powers and can read solicitors’ handwriting when no one else can. But during my last year or so of practice, many solicitors were starting to type their notes on iPads, even in police stations. I never made the change, clinging desperately to my paper forms and ball point pens (always having several in my bag for fear of them running out!).
In the UK, at least for the moment, most exams have to be handwritten, for most students. I think that this is a good thing. Writing by hand requires no device (apart from pen and paper), no battery and no internet. There is also some sort of intimate connection between brain, hand and paper that psychologists could probably explain. There is lots more to say about this, but, for the moment, just think about the difference between a handwritten birthday card and a printed one. The first feels more personal and heartfelt, doesn’t it?
It saddens me to think that, in time, handwriting might become a rare skill. I think that we would be losing a valuable part of creativity if we stopped using pens and paper. For the time being, GCSEs and A Levels mean that our young people have to practise writing the old fashioned way, and I am all for it!
