Advice for students: Writing by hand
A recent piece in Inside Higher Ed by Shari Wilson, “The Surprising Process of Writing,” jibes with my observations over the last few years: many students do better with in-class handwritten essays than with word-processed essays written outside of class. My evidence is only anecdotal, but it’s consistent enough to suggest that writing by hand may have several significant advantages for many student-writers:
1. Writing by hand simplifies the work of organizing ideas into an essay. Compare the tedium of creating an outline in Microsoft Word with the ease of arranging and rearranging on paper, where ideas can be reordered or added or removed with simple arrows and strikethroughs. With index cards, reordering is even easier.
2. Writing by hand serves as a reminder that a draft is a draft, not a finished piece of writing. For many student-writers, writing an essay is a matter of composing at the keyboard, hitting Control-P, and being done. More experienced writers know that an initial draft is usually little more than a starting point. Without the sleek look of word-processed text, there’s no possibility of mistaking a first effort for a finished piece of writing.
3. Writing by hand helps to minimize the scattering of attention that seems almost inevitable at a computer, with e-mail, instant-messaging, and web-browsing always within easy reach. Even without an online connection, a word-processing program itself offers numerous distractions from writing. Writing by hand keeps the emphasis where it needs to be — on getting the words right, not on fonts, margins, or program settings. Writing is not word-processing.
In some cases, of course, a computer is a necessary and appropriate tool for writing, particularly when a disability makes writing by hand arduous or impossible. But if it’s possible, try planning and drafting your next written assignment by hand. Then sit down and type. Thinking and writing away from the computer might make your work go better, as seems to be the case for so many students.
Michael Leddy teaches college English and has published widely as a poet and critic. He blogs at Orange Crate Art.
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Comments
Dean Johnson says on March 2nd, 2006 at 6:30 am
I don’t know about anybody else, but my speed in handwriting is way too slow for my many thoughts. Granted some of those ideas should probably be dumped on the floor anyways, but I don’t know which those are while I am writing. A lateral thinker with a pen and paper would be considered a handicap, correct?
Mike says on March 2nd, 2006 at 9:40 am
Yea I was thinking the same thing. Unless you post a lifehack to improve my handwriting speed and quality, then my 70+ words per minute are undeniably a much better channel for thought.
taorist says on March 2nd, 2006 at 11:19 am
Yup! Drafting my blog posts in paper surely does the trick. I usually post my final draft on the computer. Makes it more permanent looking
Daniel Kim says on March 2nd, 2006 at 11:23 am
I find that mindmapping works well for laying out ideas. I get lost in forest vs trees, and so I am better off composing things in layers.
After organizing the map, though, I do not like to write the actual body text. The mechanics of writing still interfere with the composition. Instead, I will further separate recording from composition by using a microcasette recorder. I keep the mindmap as a handy guide, and talk up each node.
Still, my writing is pretty boring . . .
jif says on March 5th, 2006 at 3:46 am
It all depends on what you are writing. I agree that I cannot keep up by hand with my thoughts when sending email or an informal memo to colleagues. But, when I am trying to prepare a well crafted scientific paper it pays to s l o w down and think about each component. For that the first few drafts are always by hand. As for lateral thinking, when you write you tend to think more like the reader. The reader always appreciates a linear progression even if she will first skim the diagrams then the abstract then the references and so on. Keep a seperate page for stray thoughts and keep them there until required.
Computer composition has made scientific papers longer and more repetitive. Bah!
Ross says on March 5th, 2006 at 12:45 pm
“Writing by Hand”
I completely disagree.
Sure, jotting down quick notes by hand is good for brainstorming, but once you actually start composing and planning, writing by hand is incredibly tedious and a total waste of time. I mean, I don’t know about the rest of you, but all of my college papers are need to be typed, so why would I write by hand only to have to re-type it again?
I use a notebook program called, well, “Notebook” where I organize all my thoughts and re-order my ideas. Next, I pop open Pages (part of Apple’s iWork package) and start writing based on my notes and structure I have created in Notebook. Piece of cake.
Anyway, the article was interesting from an organizational point of view, and I guess it applies to the average computer user. However, with a little discipline and devotion to a computer paradigm shift (and maybe investing in programs other than Microsoft Word for all your computer writing tools!), composing writing pieces on a computer is the way to go.
References:
http://www.circusponies.com/
http://www.apple.com/iwork/pages/
Cameron says on March 6th, 2006 at 9:50 pm
Whilst I agree with the sentiment of the article, and I certainly have nothing against writing drafts by hand, the same logic can be applied to a computer.
I use the Emacs text editor to do my writing. If I want I have access to outliners and so on, but most of the time I just put text on to the screen. I can move things around as needed, and I can write notes in a scratch buffer.
Emacs is many things, and ugly is one of them. There is no way I would ever mistake a text file in Emacs for the finished product. Once I have my 2500 words written, reviewed and rewritten I can cut and paste into a word processor or (more often) mark up and pass through a typesetter.
Even this process is useful in that it forces me to have another look at the logical structure of the document.
Michael Leddy says on March 26th, 2006 at 5:32 am
I just found a relevant essay by Gerald Grow (while looking for something else) — “How Computers Cause Bad Writing” (Original title: “Lessons from the Computer Writing Problems of Professionals”). One excerpt: “Computers seem to tempt people to substitute writing for thinking. When they write with a computer, instead of rethinking their drafts for purpose, audience, content, strategy, and effectiveness, most untrained writers just keep editing the words they first wrote down. . . . Drawn in by the word processor’s ability to facilitate small changes, such writers neglect the larger steps in writing. They compose when they need to be planning, edit when they need to be revising.” You can find the essay here —
http://www.longleaf.net/ggrow/computerbad.html
zzap says on December 31st, 2006 at 10:33 pm
I agree with the other comments. I can type about 1/3 faster than I can handwrite — so until I can do both at the same speed I’m going to have to stick with the typing. I think faster than I can handwrite, but not faster than I can type. Although I do think writing things out by hand would be better IF I could handwrite faster.
Good article.
Rachel Cohen says on January 1st, 2007 at 11:01 pm
This is crap. The best way to learn to write is to write every single day, no matter what. Her students might hand in junk because they don’t write often enough, not because they’re on the keyboard.
paper shredder says on February 8th, 2007 at 12:06 am
Those tricks are not that worth,as compare to the past days.
Jazmin says on April 5th, 2007 at 7:56 pm
how about if some people don’t have time to write every single day? Huh rachel?
Arthur mcbeth says on August 17th, 2007 at 12:48 am
Then they may write briefly about all the rest days in which they were not present i guess.Jazmin
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Jen says on October 18th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
I think that when people can go back and edit, they tend to overthink stuff to much. I know that’s a problem that I have.
Pem says on December 5th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
I think whoever wrote this is probably just used to writing by hand. Once you learn to write better with a computer, it is just way better.
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