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- Hacker News
- I like writing by hand, but I don’t agree with the logic that it’s good because it recruits more areas of the brain. The less effective the medium is, the more of the brain it will recruit; chiseling on a stone tablet is probably a more complex task and it probably gives a more broad stimulus to the brain, but it does not mean it’s such a good idea. I would personally prefer to use a text editor for effective writing and then crochet for fine motor skill.by girvel
- Right, it's a false signal. It doesn't mean that more things are retained.
I think what happens in these types of threads is that the people who like handwritten notes, perhaps even obsessively so, all pour in. But that population of handwriting fans isn't necessarily representative of the population overall.
by peder - I agree that “more areas of the brain” does not mean better necessarily, however I do wonder about the chiseling stone thing.
If you chiseled some formula or something into stone you’re unlikely to forget it any time soon. I wonder if forcing yourself to ruminate over something a bit longer than it takes to type it, in a way that can actually hold your attention or repeatedly bring it back to the topic, doesn’t indeed help.
by left-struck - I loved reading the writing-setup guidance. After a lot of writing myself (mostly throwaway stuff) I've settled on a fountain pen with a small stack of decent printer paper on top a stainless steel clipboard. I skip the clip and use four magnets on corners of the paper to hold it in place. The magnets are either small enough or slide around easily enough to give me the space I need to write but hold enough to keep the paper in place. Importantly, the magnets don't cause any ripples or rising of the paper as the clip does over it's backing. Writing on this setup feels uniformly smooth.
Once I settled on this method, other writing setups felt unsatisfying. Maybe others will enjoy this setup as much as I do :)
by thenobsta - I find his dismissal of iPad writing to be unconvincing. He talks about how we have calibrated our writing utensils over centuries to involve the proper amount of friction, and how that knowledge goes out the window when you're writing on an iPad.
That may be true, but it's not like you can't just re-acclimate to the experience of writing on an iPad. Most people don't handwrite much, period, so if they start handwriting again they're going to have to have an adjustment period either way.
I personally would think that the the benefits of digital writing (searchability, portability, infinite canvas, handwriting cleanup, digitization) would outweigh his friction quibbles. I personally don't find it to be tiring to write on an iPad, even without a screen protector (which some people use to increase friction). Also, e-paper devices tend to have more friction-y feedback, but he doesn't address this at all when dismissing all "gadgets" outright.
by apparent - iPad is terrible for hand-writing. It's (relatively) heavy, so you can't hold it and write on it. It's slippery, and the friction between the pen and stylus is bad.
The pen itself also produces gigantic strokes.
by cyberax - I think you're missing the forest for the trees with this statement and it makes your comment seem a bit reductive. It's not so much a dismissal of writing on a particular product (iPad) as much as the article is about optimal writing by hand, the best materials, and some of the reasoning as to why.
While you may be convinced writing on a screen or tablet is objectively superior to doing things the "old way" there is literature on the topic indicating otherwise you might want to consider - that being said, everyone is different in their preferences and anatomy. I for one can't stand to write on a plastic/glass surface with a stylus, the ergonomics feel wrong and my retention for journaling is significantly worse.
by arandomhuman - The problem with digital writing is that you loose spatial orientation because of panning and zooming. At least I think this is the reason why I sometimes prefer pen and paper.by karussell
- Friction is also variable, with pen and paper type. Although the iPad is a bit too slick, it gets very fatiguing (I did most of my HW in college on the iPad)by MSKJ
- I have a "paper-feel" screen protector and a metal nib on my Apple pencil. The combination provides a comfortable amount of friction for me, and the fact that it's matte cuts down on reflections.by thedanbob
- The study he cites is also specifically using digital pens
> Brain electrical activity was recorded in 36 university students as they were handwriting visually presented words using a digital pen and typewriting the words on a keyboard
kinda funny.
It's also not clear from this study that there is actually any benefit to "more brain activity". Of course doing more complex motor tasks requires more brain activity but nobody guarantees that this helps with remembering things.
by jascha_eng - My issue with the iPad is that it just does not have the fine-fidelity or response time of real ink, and it's not something that never fails.
It's so frustrating to be so pregnant with an idea, to open ones iPad, and to find out the battery is low, Procreate isn't working, the Notes app is confusing to navigate, oh no you're writing but your palm has slid on the screen, etc.
I've spent a lot of time searching for a digital alternative, but IMO we're at least a decade away from digital handwriting being even close to on-par with paper, even ignoring friction and feel.
by lynndotpy - I went down the physical-writing-digital-capture system over a 10 month period. Bought the right stylus tips, the paper-like screen cover, etc.
Ultimately went back to my moleskine that fits in my back pants pocket and I don't have to worry about battery life.
Perhaps the biggest reason why my experiment failed was that I found it difficult to look back at digital written notes beyond a week. There is no physical flip...
Equally important though, I didn't retain information quite as well when writing against a screen. I can't explain it. I wanted the system to work, but it didn't. Maybe I tried to write too verbose, more carefully than I would a paper page... hoping my more careful writing would be captured by OCR better. I don't know but it was different. Intended focus matters.
Less effort = more retention to me. Digital writing, at least at that time, was more effort to me it seems
by tipsysquid - I always wrote by hand - probably because I spent over a decade in academia dealing with equations. I always have a pen in my pocket (without a pocket protector!)
About a decade ago I went back to writing with fountain pens after a nearly two decade hiatus. Oh, the joy!
But very sad he has no (real) tips on dealing with hand fatigue - other than to write in cursive. I always had hand fatigue for writing long stretches of prose - even back in my school days. A few years ago, I simply had to change how I grip the pen to reduce the pain, but I still can't write many pages without significant pain and the need for breaks. I can't imagine writing a whole novel that way.
Also, I wish he told us how he gets that handwritten stuff into digital form. Does he just mail handwritten stuff to the publishers?
In the past, I'd write twice: Once by hand, and then I'd type up anything worth saving to get it in digital form. A royal pain!
Then with Whisper and LLMs, life got a lot better. I would simply read what I'd handwritten, and get an LLM to clean it up. I only occasionally needed to fix it up after that.
Now LLMs are so good at it that I simply take a picture and send it to the LLM for transcribing.
I don't care how much people hate AI - for me it has quite literally reduced physical pain in my life.
by BeetleB - Learn to write with both hands. When one becomes fatigued switch to the other one.by icepush
- I also write with fountain pens these days. Do you have a favorite model?by hurril
- > But very sad he has no (real) tips on dealing with hand fatigue
I also spent a good amount of time in academia (math & physics), wrote everything by hand (dozens of pages per day), and I, too, suffered from serious hand fatigue & RSI for years, even when using a fountain pen. My recommendations:
- Use as light and as thick a fountain pen as possible. Also, very thin & hard pen tips may be nice but in my experience they make it harder to write.
- Work on your posture (if you don't do that already). Work out your neck and your back in particular to compensate for sitting all day every day. A stiff neck (even if you don't feel that it is stiff) can seriously impact the nerves in your arms & hands and, thus, muscle tension & recovery.
by codethief - The muscles in your hand and fingers are small and tire pretty easily. The muscles in your arm and shoulder are bigger and can do a lot more work. Back in the day, folks who were taught "business cursive" like the "Palmer Method" were taught to keep their hand mostly static, and to guide the pen strokes using their arm. The way I do it is by planting my forearm on the desk as a pivot point, and moving my arm and shoulder to make the pen move. It took some getting used to, but my handwriting looks about the same as it did before, but no more hand pain.by spudlyo
- I've always been pretty skeptical of the data which says handwriting is better for learning than typing. Yes, handwriting causes more brain activity, but just because your brain is doing more does not mean it's doing the right thing!
For example, if I asked you to code FizzBuzz while riding a unicycle, I'm pretty sure you would show more brain activity than if you were just sitting at a desk. This does not mean it's an efficient way to program, nor that coding on a unicycle is better for learning.
I know lots of people do say they learn better when handwriting, just like some people say they learn better while going for a walk. This does not translate into a universal theory of learning.
by Wowfunhappy - Anecdotally from only place where I have experienced both. When playing TTRPGs like Dungeon & Dragons when people fill their character sheets by hand they tend to remember their abilities, features, and spells much better than people who use a fillable PDF and print it out. Even same person with fillable sheet will have to read through it constantly versus them writing it up by hand.
Probably chunk of that is copying vs interpreting, meaning just writing the rule as written vs rewording it to make it more concise and fit your brain, but also part of it definitely is it you remembering where you wrote something down instead of having to scan through bunch of stuff just to find the place you need.
- That's completely the wrong analogy. It's fairly well established through studies that language acquisition in preliterate kids is improved through handwriting (as opposed to typing or tracing letters).by LiteUser
- Riding a unicycle and coding are not complementary activities - you are multitasking. Writing is aligning different parts of your brain to the same task, perhaps it is just creating additional focus.
- I think like many things, it's not universally true. At least for me I'm a really slow writer (and poor spelling), that if I were to hand write notes in a lecture, I'd focus on writing and miss half of what is said, and fall behind to the point that something I was copying from the board gets wiped off.
Maybe typing isn't ideal, but it's the better of the 2 options for me.
by wingworks - Handwriting notes engages your spatial memory, which is incredibly powerful (see: the ancient method of loci/memory palace techniques)
There were times in college where I blanked on important information during an exam, but was able to recall it by visualizing the physical sheets I had written my notes on. I aced several infamously difficult classes like OChem and OChem 2 using that technique.
I’ve never found it possible to do that with typed notes.
- >your brain is doing more does not mean it's doing the right thing!
the thing it's doing when writing with your hand is fine motor control, one of the most important and distinguishing abilities that humans have.
I tutor in a makerspace and one thing I've observed it's that it's now easier to teach old people how to solder than younger kids, and that in my experience has never been the case before. Due to growing up on impoverished digital interfaces I see lack of dexterity that I've never seen in young people before. Same reason I suspect you see a decline in people picking up tactile musical instruments like the guitar or violin.
by Barrin92 - This is how it was explained to me by a tutor: handwriting is better for learning because it's slower. The need for brevity forces you to mentally engage the material in ways that are more conducive to understanding and recall.
If you can replicate that mental engagement while typing, you'd probably get similar results.
This makes a lot of sense to me in light of what we know about how learning happens. I have never seen any research on brain activity though, and my tutor didn't cite any.
- When I take notes when typing, I can transcribe the content word-for-word without knowing what I am hearing and without thinking about it.
When I hand write, I am generally forced to either slow down and repeat what I am listening/watching (if an option), or actually think about what is being said, and choose the important parts to write down, or rephrase it in a more efficient-to-write way.
I am taking a course right now and I find repeatedly that I understand the concepts from taking down the notes (many aha moments), and then I remember. I rarely if ever actually look at the notes I take - they are objectively inferior as a product compared to the official course notes or the textbook.
Maybe typing would be efficient for learning if I was bad it - could be an interesting hypothesis to test.
by nxc18 - As a child I was diagnosed with a condition known as dysgraphia, which makes it difficult for me to make my hand write what my mind wants it to without straining myself. Typing doesn't seem to be as affected for me for some reason.
Sometimes I'll skip whole letters in a word without thinking and need to go back fill it in. Sometimes my baselines will drift as I write a sentence despite the paper _being lined_. Cursive is nearly impossible for me without extraordinary effort, despite me thinking it beautiful and wishing to improve my abilities there.
Dysgraphia for me makes it difficult to write for extended periods of time, and results in very poor handwriting. In fact, the reason I first got a computer as a little kid was so that I could type school assignments, and this was in elementary school in the 90s when everything was still handwritten where I grew up. I even typed my math homework with awkward notation in College (my professors hated me).
All of that said, I still find that I agree with the sentiment of this post, and I do keep notebook. It's laborious for me to write, but I still find that the intentionality and forethought that it demands produces (think about it, you're committing something immutable in the real world with ink and paper) something we're losing: deeper introspection. I know this might sound silly or pretentious like hipsters and vinyl records, but I think there's something in physical writing worth keeping despite its inconveniences.
by asow92 - Yep. Same here. But I don't do notebooks. Any gain I might get from the writing is outweighed by the huge discomfort that writing gives me. I'm well shot of it.by friarpuck
- > "don't use a gadget"
I agree with this but for a different reason than what the author gives.
When you write in a notebook you can see where what you are writing is within the notebook (e.g. ~1/3 of the way through, etc). That seems like a small thing but I think it really helps with anchoring the memory when writing, as well as with referencing it later. And of course you can also add all sorts of tabs and page markers to help even more.
The same is true when reading a book.
by pyrophane