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Post #1
Handwriting as we all know has been used for thousands of years for communication, but is it really necessary in this modern age with computer, tablets and smartphone.
Sure people say that its more formal to use hand writing but soon enough, like allot of jobs nowadays, you fill out an application online instead of writing up a letter. Emails are allot more delivered, they are delivered instantly and you can have a reply within 5 minutes or less. If we dropped all forms of hand writing and used computers to type out documents, what would be BAD from it? I dont see any reason to continue handwriting anymore, its not eco friendly, its using up resources that we could use for other things.
Exams at school will also be easier to mark, instead of having to go through, collect, then try to make out poor hand writing for some people, you could simply type up the exams, of course using a special word processing program for it, and then once you finished, simply submit it, and not have to wait around for someone to come and collect it.
Myself, i got muscle damage from handwriting. I had a funny position to hold my pen and over years of it it damaged the muscles in my hand so i can no longer grasp a pen and write without pain. I type everything on my tablet at school now, my marks have improved by allot due to teachers being able to read my writing.
So what do you think? Should handwriting be dropped completely or is there still a good reason to use it?
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Why would you ever not want to learn to write? Your jacked-up hand sounds like a result of you not holding it right, or letting you stress out your muscles or whatever. And even though people use computers for a lot of things doesn't mean you'll always have one nearby.
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It's sometimes more convenient. For example it's a lot easier to carry around with you a small notepad and a pen to jot down ideas on the go than to carry a tablet around. Also if you end up getting mugged, the person stealing from you won't care that much for some paper and a pen rather than a device which is valued in the hundreds of dollars. Unlikely scenario, but still.
I do prefer to type though during most occasions, but I just can't imagine hand writing dieing. I actually do like writing, it's kind of an art. It's a good way for one to express themself, like you can sometimes tell the kind of person they are based on his or her writing style. I like to take my time with writing and aside from looking good I do reckon it kind of reflects my character. I'm probably thinking about it too thoroughly but that's what I think about it.
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While I believe we should at least know how to write. We really don't need to use printing as much as we used to with the influx of tech such as netbooks, notebooks and tablets. Those can be used for basic note taking which is what I use mine for.
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Perhaps calligraphy isn't important, but as it has been said, people should know how to write without the aid of a computer or phone.
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We're not yet at the stage where we'd have brainchips or whatever to take notes on. Many people use their phones, but what if you're trying to make a note of something while you're talking on the phone?
Being able to write is still a requirement to be able to do anything in society. Cursive or whatever on the other hand is absolutely unnecessary.
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No
(User was banned for this post ("This isn't how to debate" - Orkel))
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A very thoughtful reply I see.
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What happens when the power's out? Battery on your mobile is doneskies?
being able to handwrite is still essential and will stay that way.
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Was taught basic calligraphy in the 3rd or 4th grade, can't say I've used it a day in my life with the exception of my signature. I believe basic printing is important though.
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AUTISMAL FEDORA WEARING MASSIVE RUNNING JOKE - PRAY CROHN'S DISEASE KILLS ME
July 2010
17,345 Posts
Basic handwriting is needed, but cursive and other complex forms of writing are not really needed. Drawing anything more complex than basic blocky letters in the Latin alphabet is more or less a waste of time.
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This is a silly question really, of course it's needed. Relying on buttons to write what we want to say would be a huge unneeded dependency. Handwriting will never leave, it's been with us since we lived in caves and it's not going anywhere because of a few buttons.
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I don't write often but only when I need to write a password down or sign something. As others said it won't leave.
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I should say that i agree to the printing, for taking down passwords or taking very short notes but , as i said, for letters, essays, allot of notes its going to die out. very quickly
By very quickly i mean within 10 years (since its been used for 1000's of years)
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I doubt you can use a PC to write on a check, handwriting is still needed in daily life.
Edited:
Many schools force students to write, my private school allows use to use PC's, but FLVS forces you to write and scan your work onto a PC and email it to your teacher.
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It is still needed but that might change in the future when basic computers and phones become more accessable and battery times are as long as a person's life. There's no reason to stick to a way of writing that's way slower than typing.
Our children's children's children might never have to learn to write. Especially with things like speech to text.
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Computers are a very fragile medium compared to handwriting with a pen. Imagine you drop your tablet at a critical moment where you need to take a note of something that would otherwise be lost forever if not memorized or noted in a short amount of time. Well, if for some reason you lost your papers and you were naked with no other surface to write things on and still had your pen with you hanging on your ear you could still be able to write the difficult data on any part of the body which you prefer. Effectively securing the data forever and making you the most valuable man on earth for a while.
Were this to happen at a beach you would be able to write it in the sand with your own fingers, but make sure you write it where the water can't get it.
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I find that writing is a much more fluid and natural way to write things down - for me at least.
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I write cursive a lot faster than blocktext or whatever you call it.
On top of that, no-one has had any issues reading my cursive.
Edited:
Also it's "a lot" not "allot".
On topic though, I guess I'm conditioned to love cursive. At school I've written probably hundreds upon hundreds of pages of notes just using cursive, so by now I really don't see an issue with it. Especially since we had to learn to write legibly, otherwise we lose points.
Also neither cursive nor regular handwriting are going to die out, if they do then definitely NOT in 10 years. Not everyone is always going to have tablets or laptops handy to write down their notes. And if they do, then there's the possibility of it being stolen.
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And what about forms of math equations? In all of my classes, it would be cumbersome to deal with typing the symbols in the equations and I would fall behind during class. I do not write with pencil and paper as I write on my tablet, but this is still very needed to keep up with my classes. Not a single one of my classes involves content easily typed with modern software.
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If you're thinking of abolishing the art of handwriting from school then you are hampering brain development in people. We exert and stimulate our brain much more through writing by hand and some may even say that you remember things better if you write it down by hand than on a computer.
I've recently changed my usual routine of taking notes and rely much more now on taking my notes by hand, forcing myself to write with a pencil, the result being that I remember things much better (may argue that it's placebo, but hey, whatever works) .
My point is that we shouldn't think about abolishing handwriting altogether, but rather incorporate it to suit our own personal usage better. Being totally dependent on cellphones, tablets, laptops etc. has its disadvantages (as mentioned above).
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written language didn't come about until the Mesopotamians
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No, definitively not.
1. If we were to drop hand writing and something were to happen in the future, much like computers revolting or being destroyed some shit like that, we lose a way of communication.
2. Electronic Documents can be faked very easily. Instead of signing your checks and sending them electronically, someone could make copies of your checks in order to forge them. Your bank account balance would get ass raped because you wouldn't know how to write and sign your checks to prevent fraud.
Then again, that's my opinion and everyone has one like an ass. However, I don't think it should be dropped.
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No I don't believe we really need it anymore. I think it will be entirely replaced by computers someday, even if we aren't around to see it. Computers are simply a superior way of doing things compared to old methods ranging from managing documents, databases, and communication. Signatures may be replaced with fingerprint ID or something similar. There just won't be a need for it anymore further off into the future.
We might think we need it now because we've grown up with it and are used to it, but one day I'm sure it will be considered entirely obsolete and unnecessary to teach how to write by hand.
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Completely agree with this. Plus at least for me personally, when I write something down with a pen, I remember it better, and this doesn't tend to happen as much when I type it up.
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If you recall back to when you were a child, you learned to read and write hand-in-hand. From there, transmitting that to your keyboard was a no-brainer because you already knew how to write and understood the properties of each letter. If handwriting was to be done away with, it would become exponentially more difficult to teach children to read because they would have to learn to associate each letter with a key on the keyboard, rather than learning the "anatomy" of each letter. (By "anatomy," I mean that in kindergarten they would always have you write down the letter to ingrain it into you.) I can even imagine now that if we got rid of handwriting as a social form of communication, kids would have a rather hard time pressing down the J key to learn the anatomy and properties of that letter.
JJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJ.
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My main issue with this is how only a small portion of the world could even attempt such a thing. Very few of us live with enough tech that we could stop using writing at all, my friends and myself are well-to-do american citizens and only a few of us have laptops that would allow us to only type as opposed to write (not to mention whoever did that would piss everyone else off- now just imagine how someone from a country where next to no one has a computer would react and how difficult communication via handwriting would be like).
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Yes, it's needed, we've got a long way to go before everyone on this planet has access to computers or similar devices, and even than why would we give up hand writing? What benefits would we gain?
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Mathematics can be typed but it's difficult and I didn't learn it until the past year. Are we supposed to all be learning LaTeX from the time we start doing math in school?
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I think writing is needed, the basics, but not anything further.
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but fancy cursive script is fun
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Emm, yeah. Its another one of these cases of "if it isn't broke don't fix it". Handwriting in school is something that's been there since, well, forever. If someone has difficulty writing then fair enough, they should get assistance. But really, handwriting is an essential skill as the batteries don't last forever on tablets etc.
I'm beginning to get annoyed about the over-reliance on technology for simple tasks that take little to no effort.
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Yes , if we let humankind be too depend too much on technology we will eventually handicap our selfs .
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This is not a point.
This is a point.
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It's not really giving up hand writing, it's just that it will become obsolete as we progress. We used to have to send people out on horseback to communicate messages, now we can get a message to the other side of the world instantly through email. While we could still send messages on horseback, I don't think anyone is going to argue that using the latter method instead is being too dependent on technology. It's simply making use of a better way to do things.
That makes no sense. Why should we hold back progress just for the sake of tradition and irrational fears of technology?
We used to have to write with ink and paper, now we have computers which can save a document, and put it up on cloud storage where it can be accessed at any time and from any place. We don't need to do it the old way anymore. The new technology is simply better and more efficient. I don't have to worry about my paper blowing out the window anymore because the technology has made it a non-issue for me to hop on any computer, access Google Docs, and get my document instantly.
I'm seeing a few valid reasons to bother with handwriting anymore (like mathematics), but I believe that there will be advancements there at some point too. I don't feel that battery life of tablets will be a huge concern in the future but that is my speculation.
Tradition just doesn't matter, it's useless. Efficiency matters
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That's what they said about pens.
'You'll never have a hieroglyph maker around you ALL the time!'
'But papa!'
'Put the tablet down, and go work the fields.'
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Handwriting is, and will most likely remain to be, important in society. Writing with pen and paper has no expiration date. In other words, a technological decay that could occur, for example, from the shifting of the poles would render your tablet and laptop as paperweights. However, you can still write.
Printing and cursive alike will most likely remain prominent. Cursive is more elegant in appearance, and therefore used in letters where you're trying to convey yourself as being elegant.
Many people would argue that a handwritten letter has much more meaning than a typed document. If you received all of the love letters you received - *COUGH* if you get any *COUGH* - as typed documents, the same effect wouldn't be there. The term 'typed document' is nearly synonymous with 'business document' in many people's minds.
So no, handwriting will not see any demise. I'd probably much sooner bet on the demise of computers as a way of writing than I would with handwriting. However, handwriting has the potential to regress. When handwriting became known to the world, you had to be wealthy or noble to learn how to write. As the care for writing declines with some people, less and less will know how, and centuries in the future we may see the expense of learning how to write skyrocket.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal
Yeah, probably not something we need to worry about
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I think everybody appreciates something in the mail. I know it means a whole lot to me to get a handwritten letter from somebody even if they aren't my best or closest friend.
I don't think you thought about this, OP. Most of the world doesn't have the capability to use computers and I notice that sometimes computers get in the way when something could be done even faster. Also, there are chances for errors such as electronic voting by a computer. It opens up to fraud. Also, class notes are faster as long as you aren't doing bullet style and bullets are visually unappealing. You can arrange notes in any way you want.
Also, what about cards? Christmas cards, birthday, etc. Electronic cards are a joke and woop-de-do Facebook birthday posts. The people that care the most about me always send me physical cards with a whole side of the card covered in tiny writing.
I honestly don't understand how you got permanent muscle damage from writing... sure, some days I have to write a rough draft for a speech and my hand starts to cramp up. Some days it is worse.
I don't see handwriting ever becoming obsolete. We'd probably kill ourselves off before we advance that far where the whole world could somehow do everything with computers.
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While writing itself is completely necessary in today's world, I believe cursive being forced upon people is unnecessary, as it has ruined my handwriting and other's handwriting, not the mention the fact nobody I know even uses it anymore.
