Technology Killed My Handwriting

Let’s be clear, my handwriting has always been messy. My fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Longstreth was so up in arms about my chicken scratch being unreadable, that she had a meeting with my mother. Needless to say, I spent the rest of that year learning how to make my writing a little neater.

I went to elementary school in the early 90s, middle school in the mid-late 90s and graduated from high school in 2004. You could say that I grew up during the technological revolution. When I started my education, my school had three computers (Apple II’s, I think) and they were already ancient and crusty. But man, did we have fun playing Oregon Trail on those things. When we weren’t taking turns. Again, there were only three of them.

By middle school, things had changed. We had computer labs! And the internet. Alta Vista and Ask! Jeeves was outstanding. We even got to take a computer class, where we learned a little BASIC.

Throughout all this time, my handwriting improved a bit. I won’t say that it was ever good. My cursive was horrible and never really improved, but I could do regular stuff and it would be readable.

High school saw more technological improvement, but more importantly, more use of technology by me. I got my first home computer in 2000 (a brand-new Gateway from an actual store that cost about $4000 and came in 15 boxes). And we got dial-up internet not too long after that.

I don’t think my handwriting started to suffer immediately after this. Mostly because, I still had to do a lot of writing. Even throughout my six and a half years at Michigan State, I still had okay writing, despite having a laptop and in 2007, a smartphone.

But somewhere in there, as I got more reliant on my phone and my computer, my handwriting deteriorated. It was a slow process. After I left MSU, I had to write less, which meant less practice. Less practice meant my handwriting got sloppier and sloppier, until today, my writing isn’t readable even by myself unless I explicitly try to make it so.

I know that they don’t teach cursive any longer in school, or at least, that’s what I’ve heard. And mine was always terrible right from the start. But I think that not teaching it is really going to cause some problems. Not because people should write in cursive, but simply because it gets kids to write, period. Once you learn your letters, you’re going to be sitting in front of your Chromebook for the rest of your scholastic career, and you’ll never have a chance to improve your handwriting.

In other words, kids are all going to be like me: they’ll go to write something down and then not be able to read it afterward. Penmanship should be a required skill for all of us. Computing shouldn’t be an excuse not to be able to write something down or, gasp, sign your name so it’s readable. Yes, I know Zers and younger kids who can’t sign their own names in a legible fashion. Many of them, in fact.

Not that my signature is any better. And I learned cursive. It’s still the same chicken scratch spaghetti like monstrosity that it has always been, and at this point, always will be. But I’m not a person to emulate.

I’ve been thinking about this because, I’ve been watching people discuss journaling on YouTube (a much better use of my time than actually writing in my own journal 🤣), and all of these people (women and men) have remarkable penmanship. Maybe they just have it good when there’s a camera rolling, but I don’t think so.

At this point in my life, I don’t have aspirations of ever having good penmanship. It’s just not going to happen. I don’t write enough with a pen to improve it. I type all of my notes, I write everything for work in nvim or in Google Docs. That’s not going to change just because I’ve gotten a little jealous of journaling YouTubers.

But, maybe there’s hope for some of you youngins out there. Learn to write in the real world. It might seem like a useless skill to have, but trust me, it might come in handy some day. If only to make a YouTube video about it.