The Pen Was Mightier Than The Keyboard

The Age

Saturday April 5, 2008

Larissa Dubecki - Larissa Dubecki is an Age senior writer.

The ubiquity of the computer has relegated good penmanship to the level of scribbles in the margin.

'A MAN'S penmanship is an unfailing index of his character, moral and mental, and a criterion by which to judge his peculiarities of taste and sentiments."

The fourth Earl of Chesterfield, otherwise known as 18th-century aristocrat Philip Dormer Stanhope, wouldn't have survived long in our modern, computer-driven world. In the time it took him to pen the above words (using, we can safely presume, a fine copperplate or similar patrician hand) his modern equivalent could have bashed out a few quick emails and texted his friends about dinner.

Stanhope's beloved pen has gone from being mightier than the sword to being vanquished by the keyboard. The ubiquity of the computer has relegated handwriting to the status of poor cousin; ancillary at best, we use it to scribble notes in margins, write shopping lists and fill in forms.

But who actually has the time and inclination to write slabs of text and, more to the point, to do so legibly and quickly without risking carpal tunnel syndrome?

The issue may very well elicit a "who cares?" response among a generation of young adults who can comfortably type 50 words per minute, but consider this: many schoolchildren in the United States cannot read cursive writing (which may well be a problem for the makers of Coca-Cola and other products that sport a cursive flourish). In 2006, only 15% of students in Washington sitting their final-year exams used cursive; the rest printed in block letters.

Closer to home, the drop in handwriting standards means many students, who often arrive in primary school with basic keyboard skills, are like fish out of water when denied access to their computers, SMS, instant messaging and joysticks.

"The issue arises more at the upper end of the primary years," says occupational therapist Suzanne Wakefield. "By years five and six they're doing bigger projects that they're expected to type on computers. Then by the time they get to secondary school the real problem emerges: they take notes in their own shorthand that no one else can read, and then they get to the VCE exams and have to write for three hours. No wonder they find it difficult."

Dysgraphia, as it's known, clearly isn't confined to the cyber-generation in its characterisation by some, or all, of the following: random punctuation; clumsy and disorderly syntax; illegible writing; inconsistencies (mixtures of print and cursive, upper and lower case or irregular sizes, shapes or slant of letters); an inconsistent position on the page with respect to lines and margins and spaces between words and letters; cramped or unusual grip; talking to oneself while writing, or carefully watching the writing hand; slow or laboured writing, even if it is legible.

To anyone who has been left off that list: congratulations on your fine penmanship. To the other 99% of readers, we are not alone in our messy scrawl, our personalised hieroglyphics that would put the ancient Egyptians to shame.

But here's the thing: practice does make perfect. We don't write consistently enough to maintain the correct muscle tone. Children raised on a diet of television and computer games don't develop the hand motor skills that used to be gained as a matter of course through traditional play, says Wakefield, such as using Lego, digging in the dirt and stacking objects together.

Victorian primary schools develop their own handwriting policies. And while handwriting remains on the curriculum, literacy experts are concerned the dependence on computers even among younger primary-aged children, along with the early introduction of "Victorian modern cursive" (many schools begin students on cursive, bypassing block printing altogether) is making handwriting a monkey for the student back.

"It's very hit and miss now," says literacy teacher Maureen Pollard. "It varies from school to school and classroom to classroom." Anyone who went through the school system before the 1970s, honing their handwriting by rote as they transcribed slabs of text, might think fondly of the latest development.

But one of the problems, Pollard says, is that we are still judged on our handwriting. "Teachers see it and judge a child on it; even though they objectively know they shouldn't, they just can't help it."

In the US, for example, students who used cursive writing in the exams required for college admission generally did better than those who printed. Researchers are unsure why, but believe that beyond prejudice about intelligence it may be based on the relationship between quality and speed in note-taking. In other words, faster writing helps the brain spend less time on forming the letters and more on the substance.

It might seem quaint that, until recently, it was considered good manners to begin a job application with a handwritten cover letter. But in jettisoning good handwriting to the status of a cute anachronism, like fencing or flower arranging, what are we losing? Future biographers won't be able to make delicious observations of character based on the personality that shines through in penmanship - such as that the handwriting of Charlotte Bronte was "incontrovertibly small, at odds with her imagination", or that while Jane Austen's i-dots "fly around a good deal", they of course "never collide with other characters".

The pen is the tongue of the mind, wrote Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote. But handwriting is fast becoming a lost romance. The thought that in the future we will gaze at collections of notable emails doesn't pack the same emotional punch. Although maybe all of our communication problems would be solved if someone invented a pen with a "delete" key.

© 2008 The Age

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