New study suggests handwriting engages the brain more than typing | Hacker News Reader

New study suggests handwriting engages the brain more than typing

ctvnews.ca

280 pointslxm151 comments

Just to add to the anecdotes:

I bought an iPad Pro (the one before the LIDAR one) with the intention of using it to take notes, and I completely failed. Combination of feeling self-conscious bringing it into meetings and using it at work, and just not being in the habit of taking notes.

In the past couple of weeks I've made a point of writing out the ideas and reasoning behind what I'm doing before writing any code. What I'm finding is I spend a relatively long amount of time at this, but even without writing code, I'm finding issues with my solutions on paper. Previously I would have just dived straight in and then gone "ah, shit" when I got to a blocking point.

It's also leaving me with a catalogue of searchable notes about parts of our system, and since I've written these notes myself they usually include gotchas that I've encountered before. I use GoodNotes 5 for this, it can search through handwritten text with surprising accuracy.

I'm going to continue doing this, I think it will take longer to see if there is any effect on my productivity, but it /feels/ like it's faster to find a bug on paper rather than getting halfway through an implementation, plus I'm building up all this reference material.

> I completely failed

I'd encourage you to rethink this idea. GoodNotes and OneNote and Notability are fairly good at making the experience more robust than pen/paper. Especially the search function. It's so refreshing to not shift 100 pages to find one or two sentences.

Just the default iPad Notes app can search hand-written notes.

You might want to think about a smart pen. I had one that wrote in standard Moleskine-style notebooks, and then the notes could be exported from the pen as PDFs.

It was also supposed to do some kind of OCR and make the PDFs searchable, but I never tried that.

I find the two mental states of keys on keyboard, executing algorithms and designing programs to be almost antithetical. I do much better when I first spend 5 min or so (preferably away from a screen) writing out for myself what is it I’m about to code. Its like my brain can calmly contemplate many more options when “offline” but as soon as I’m in front of a machine it wants to get from a to z as fast and easily as possible.

Another anecdote: The point in my life where I felt like I thought the most clearly and quickly about programming was when I used pen/pencil and paper.

I learned a lot of my development skills on paper, not on computers. Lots of exams, programs, etc. All written out by hand.

Now what's nice about paper as a medium is you're not restricted to just text you can mix in drawings and pretty much anything else to attack your thinking from different angles. You could do this on a computer, but it's just so much slower to draw out diagrams and doesn't have the same feeling.

I like to think I'm a decent programmer and I'm also a down right terrible hobbyist illustrator/cartoonist.

Over the years I've filled notebook after notebook with a mix of hand written notes and bad illustrations to help solidify the ideas in my own mind. Occasionally I will page back through looking for something I remember I wrote down, but most of it is just to help myself in the moment.

As an extension of this, when someone comes and asks me a question I start with a verbal explanation. If it isn't clicking for the person I quickly reach for a pen or a whiteboard marker and start drawing diagrams while I talk. This usually leads to a quicker "aha" moment for the person; a picture is worth a thousand words.

For a long time it was not something I considered much; it's just been an extension of how I think for as long as I can remember.

Sometime back I ran into an ex-colleague; we hadn't worked together in about a decade. After the usual chit chat of catching up she said to me, "Do you still doodle when you work? I will always remember how you constantly drew pictures of everything and how it made things so much easier to understand. I hope you still do that.". I laughed and told her how surprised I was that someone would even remember that after so many years, but that yes I continued to draw pictures of my thoughts like I always had.

>In the past couple of weeks I've made a point of writing out the ideas and reasoning behind what I'm doing before writing any code. What I'm finding is I spend a relatively long amount of time at this, but even without writing code, I'm finding issues with my solutions on paper.

Yup. In my last project, I spent 6 months designing and redesigning a solution, with small experiments as PoCs, and ultimately built the solution in about a month. It was a complex project and a distributed application. However, I faced surprisingly few hurdles during the actual coding part.

I realized that, apart from programming competition level problems, for day to day applications that get work done, programming is 80% mind work and 20% coding, debugging, testing, etc.

You forgot that it is satisfying. I moved to a spiral wipe notebook and find I can sketch and write notes much faster before dragging yet another box, look for text label, etc. Which usually results in losing the fleeting thought.

I do some machine engineering math at work and the conviniece of pen and paper over computer text is just silly. I just scan the notes and send in emails.

For meetings, I use a Neo smartpen. It writes on paper but records what it writes, time-stamped, with sync to Evernote, gdrive, and others. The app that backs it will also let you see what you wrote when, so you can electronically see your notes from a particular meeting.

It also tries to sync notes against calendar entries, but I don't remember much about that feature.

For notes for myself, nothing beats a nice fountain pen and a high quality notebook. It's relieving how well my thoughts just fall out of my head onto paper.

> In the past couple of weeks I've made a point of writing out the ideas and reasoning behind what I'm doing before writing any code. What I'm finding is I spend a relatively long amount of time at this, but even without writing code, I'm finding issues with my solutions on paper.

I've done this for a long time and have observed similar benefits, but I often just type out the plan in a text editor with lot of bullet points instead. Do you find that physically writing aids in the process?

This is why I want a reMarkable.

It’s funny reading all the anecdotes on how handwriting notes help with programming. Because for me it is the complete opposite.

I think the part that helps so many here is the taking your time to think about the problem. That is the important part.

When I work on geometric or algorithmic problems, hand drawn sketches help a lot. But writing by hand is just so slow for me, compared to typing, that I can’t get all my thoughts out fast enough.

That’s why I usually write long bullet outlines in Evernote or some other tool when thinking about a problem. It lets me capture any thought quickly while also letting me organize them on the fly, by reordering, creating hierarchies, adding links or images, even hand drawn sketches.

Seeing the structure further helps thinking about the problem. In the end i have a relatively exhaustive, structured note informing me of pitfalls, requirements etc.

Compare that to writing by hand, not being able to read parts, constantly erasing, not being able to rearrange my notes anywhere as quickly... I hate it tbh. And i don’t even think that training to write nicer and faster would help that much. Thinking about where to write what in advance, to me, is restricting my flow of thoughts and gets completely in the way. If I knew what I will be writing down in advance, I wouldn’t have to do the exercise to begin with.

I share the exact experience as you described. I guess it's what they call a networked thinking vs linear thinking.

This has been common knowledge among pedagogy professionals for some time. I haven't read this particular study, though, but I've theorized that the reason for the disparity might simply be that there are so many other things fighting for your attention on a computer screen. Meanwhile if you sit down with only a pencil and a blank sheet of paper while listening to a lecture, there just isn't much else to do than pay attention.

I've had countless discussions with teachers about this. They all have seen that handwritten notes consistently result in better learning outcomes for students of all ages. There are lots of theories and nobody seems to really know why but the effect is strong and consistent.

I wonder if this benefit extends to handwriting on a tablet?

That might make for an interesting study. Although, the tactile sensation of writing on a tablet still doesn't match that of pencil and paper. So there's a big confounder there.

For me I believe it comes down to being able to type fast enough to just regurgitate what's been said word for word into the computer.

When I take handwritten notes I have to mentally parse it and decide what's important enough to write down.

Handwritten notes on a tablet work much better than typing for me, despite having the same availability of on-screen distractions.

> there just isn't much else to do than pay attention.

I don't disagree with anything you wrote but, for some, paying attention just doesn't work that way. Take ADHD, for an example.

My trick to staying awake during meetings is volunteering to take minutes.

Later, I served as secretary for an org. No one wants to take notes, so generally it's unfilled slot. It was a low commitment way for me to add value while learning a new domain. It also made me popular and increasingly relied upon for answers.

This doesn't suggest anything other than handwriting is a more complex task than typing.

> areas of the brain correlated with working memory and encoding new information were more active during handwriting

Doesn't that suggest something more than just the complexity of data entry?

It’s not relevant to the study in TFA, but I believe handwriting notes is more effective because you can’t just transcribe - you have to instead understand the concept and restate it briefly enough to keep up.

More effective than what? Nobody types fast enough to transcribe a lecture verbatim, you would need 400 chars per minute or so.

I've known a former journalist who could type ~150 wpm. I don't doubt he could keep up with a lecture.

400 CPM is only 80 WPM using the normal `WPM = CPM / 5` formula. Most of my coworkers are well past 80wpm (we played a few of those typing games during the shelter-in-place order), and stenographers or court reporters generally average above 200wpm with some in the low 300s.

Anecdotally, I never had an issue transcribing college lectures when it was just spoken word. My problem was when the professor started to write on the board. Diagrams and stuff were always obnoxious to transcribe quickly, but that was before the days of the iPad and such.

By the time I got to the university I was using a premechanical[0] Rapidograph fountain pen to take lecture notes on high quality paper where I wrote down everything the professor wrote on the board, everything they said, and everything I thought about it at the time, especially something that might make a performance difference.

I don't know how it compares to an ipad, but it was great because there was less friction and latency compared to a pencil or ball point pen. It did change your writing since you had to hold it almost vertical, not as big a change as the increased speed though. With a thin tip you could make small detailed diagrams.

[0] like this: https://www.blackrockgalleries.com/product/vintage-rapidogra... Note: does not actually take a cartridge, it's a suction plunger assembly for liquid ink uptake, attached to the color-coded tip-size indicating band. You may want a thinner tip than No. 2 and ink having different viscosity, solids content, and drying rate than used for engineering drawing.

not like this: https://www.kohinoorusa.com/rapidograph

not even this: https://twitter.com/yesteryearsfp/status/1016296550736293888

600cpm is quite realistic, 400cpm would not strike me as outrageous in the least. Do some tests on 10fastfingers to see where you're at, it lists both cpm and wpm. I will say there are issues aside from speed, though. Sometimes it just gets overwhelming keeping up and you may freeze up for a sec.

The headgear in the article is superb.

But everybody has far from exactly the same parts of the brain performing the same duties for the same things all the time.

And data output is not the same as data entry.

Seems to me there are big differences in what parts of the brain are engaged manually versus mechanically in other ways too, and that should lead to even bigger differences between individuals.

Due to differences in brain wiring and structure, some parts of the brain may be much more efficient than others at the same process, and this is also different between individuals.

Some tasks are likely to require more overhead to result in an equivalent outcome as well.

Manual placemarking, art, language, documentation, machine operation, with direct memory access are all different things, and also are expected to interact in different ways for different people of different cultures.

What if the documentation, machine operation, and direct memory access combine to form the working foundation earlier in the learning cycle than other possible elements with or without very much freehand work at all?

Right - writing slows down the rate at which the writer’s attention moves from one concept to another, which in turn means more time is spent per concept. This apparently results in better memory retention.

Not so in maths though...

True, I always took math notes in LaTeX which I am fluent in and still it is much slower. Makes you think about how you can distill an idea down into key concepts which leads to active learning IMO.

I still keep all my math notes in LaTeX although I'm considering trying a reMarkable. They have handwriting to text conversion, wonder if there is handwriting to TeX conversion.

I found in my case, well prepared lectures where I write using pen and paper allows me to more closely follow the steps and arguments. The slower pace of writing allows for more time to think about what I write.

Often it would stick so well I didn't need the notes afterwards, but I had to go through that process of writing them.

An important part here is that I'm basically copying the lecturer, so I don't have to think about what to write. Once I have to that I learn almost nothing.

For me this is part of the reason why I learn a lot less when taking notes on my computer, as suddenly I have distractions like having to care about formatting, drawing boxes and arrows etc. On paper you just move your hand a little, draw bigger letters, or draw a box. It's not something you have to think about.

I had mainly math and physics though, might be different for other topics.

And yet every time you bring it up with people, they are quick to dismiss the notion that hand-writing something is any different from typing it other than being slower.

Brain activity, as measured here, does not imply good writing. I'm quite certain that if you were to type with one hand while juggling a few golf balls with the other your "brain engagement" would be much higher than simple handwriting.

If you juggle while you write or process some data maybe. I don’t have that ability and personally can’t tell but you may be onto something. Writing on a keyboard is phisically easier and engaging fewer circuits in the brain. It has some advantages and some disadvantages, one of them being worse retention. It’s also the amount of information that we process these days that contributes to that as well.

> if you were to type with one hand while juggling a few golf balls with the other your "brain engagement"

Do you think you’d be able to write anything complex WHILE juggling a few golf balls at the same time?

I’d love to see that!

I've heard as an explanation that handwriting forces you to write less, and especially in a note-taking context, compress, reframe or paraphrase in a way that yields greater understanding.

I wonder, if you could get some of the same benefits by typing under some artificial constraints?

- type with software that limits the rate at which you can produce characters

- taper des notes dans une autre langue

- use a keyboard but avoid domain specific keywords

- type notes in haiku \\ allowing some divergence \\ from classical forms

I prefer to switch between modes depending on the nature of the task.

When I am being creative or can't get overly distracted, I find writing it down is best.

When I type, I tend to want to edit too much and it breaks the flow. Even now, I have fixed words and reworded things. Editing vs creation.

The answer might be in an editor that is set to type only, like a typewriter with no backspace or correction paper. Notes should only go forward for capture.

This mirror why I've come over a lot of writing anxiety by using a notebook and writing by hand. It may be a bit weird, but eh.

Pen and paper forces you to be a bit more deliberate for each word, because each word requires more care to be readable. But at the same time, each word written is done and set for now. And honestly, if I let it sit for an hour or two, it's usually a good enough word. And its easier to have a pen and a notebook on you and write something down whereever you are.

Editing a written peace for quality is a very different thing. A text editor is much superior there.

I see hints of it starting: The Waterfall Model's redemption arc.

Make a point of spending x amount of time taking what you've written and shortening it. Or have a TLDR field with a character limit.

The primary advantage that I notice of writing complex thoughts by hand, for example a first draft of something important, is that insertion of more than a few words is difficult on paper. Therefore I tend to work just a bit more deliberately and focus a bit more on the narrative structure. The results tend to have a more coherent narrative flow, be easier to read, and be more organized than a draft written on a computer where I can jump back and forth between partially-completed paragraphs or sections.

Similarly, decreasing the accessibility of information, code, etc. helps me develop the narrative when making the first draft.

I get a pretty big productivity bump from bringing a notebook to a desk or table away from a computer (with its attendant distractions) and spend an hour or two, producing a page or two, that require much less editing later. I can leave little spaces for numbers or other specifics that I don't have on hand, and make marginal notes for other things to research or fill in later, while focusing on the structure and organizing my thoughts and arguments. Afterwards I can make figures, check calculations and statistics, etc.

I also frequently draw out powerpoint presentations on graph paper, maybe 8 slides per paper page, and just write the basic points and sketch in the figures I want to add. Then I go through and actually make the slides at the computer.

Over the past year I built some software that's "pen first" - virtual sticky notes/documents in a 3D environment. I've never used a pen so much in my life.

Some things I noticed from writing several thousand sticky notes:

Writing by hand might help me remember stuff, but it definitely helps me ignore stuff. Overall I enjoy using a pen, digital or otherwise, and I still want to subject myself to writing as little as possible. Handwriting makes me a better editor.

I use cursive for some things, but 99% of my sticky notes are in 'ALL CAPS'. I'm not sure why.

Wayfinding and reexperiencing a large amount of handwritten notes/ideas/plans is much more preferable to me than walls of text, especially if their placement and orientation is imperfect (on a virtual or real wall).

Writing/drawing over graphics is a great memory aid for me.

Handwriting seems a great choice for big picture stuff. I'm not sure why.

I still use a keyboard for brain dumps, but increasingly rely on speech to text. The difference in the style and tone of my words across handwriting, typing and speech to text'ing surprises me.

I recently got a reMarkable 2 tablet( https://remarkable.com/store/remarkable-2 ), and I am absolutely loving it.

I have for along time carried around notebooks for note taking and journaling, because I felt the process of handwriting improve my experience of organizing my thoughts. But it was cumbersome and I ended up carrying multiple notebooks for different purposes.

Since I got the reMarkable 2 tablet it has replaced all my notebooks while retaining all the benefits of handwriting. With the added bonus of much easier organizing, backup and being able to view the notes on other devices.

How close is the experience of using R2 close to using pen on paper? Can you please elaborate more on what aspects make you absolutely love it?

I tried Apple pencil with iPad Pro but couldn’t find any app and neither does the HW replicate the pen on paper exp and it’s probably not designed/meant for it either.

There was a Youtube reviewer who said it was so much like pencil on paper that he forgot it wasn't real paper and attempted to smudge the graphite on it with his finger. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9wudCMFWPQ&t=16s

I can attests to this. I quickly forget that I am not writing on a real piece of paper when using it. It feels very natural.

I got an ELECOM paper feel screen protector for iPad Pro that gets about 70% of that paper feel. It still doesn’t feel as nice as remarkable tablet though. I own both 2nd gen iPad Pro and remarkable tablet 1.

The experience is very close. Much more so than with an iPad and Apple Pencil.

I guess what I love about it is that in many ways combines the best of both physical and digital writing. It feels very much like writing with a real piece of paper, and it does not have any distracting apps like social media or a web browser. It also brings the benefits of being a digital device, in that you can edit things after the fact. Such as rearranging pages. Selecting portion of a text or drawing and then move it within the page, or to another page. Do copy and paste, and things like that.

I am deciding if I should cancel my order or not. I like the idea of a dedicated almost paper like feel. I hate the idea of my notes in some cloud service. You do not need anything to read a physical journal other than the book itself. Is there anyway to back note up to a physical copy (prints?

Since the remarkable tablets features native SSH access, there is an active and growing community that makes really great software for these tablets. There is already quite a few local-first solutions which makes it possible to avoid the cloud: https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable#gui-clients

I had the same concerns and didn't buy one, but a few of the projects here look like they could help: https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable

Ah, someone beat me to posting it.

The cloud sync is optional. You could use the SSH access you get when connecting to it over USB, and possibly roll your own backup solution.

I've seen this in studies before, and it is taught in the class "Learning How to Learn". Ever since I took this class, I have kept extensive hand written notes that I then turn into Cloze Anki cards. This takes forever, though. Handwriting is very slow.

To resolve this, I am currently taking time off from new classes to learn Gregg Shorthand. Soon, I'll be able to handwrite faster than I can type, and will get the same brain engagement that I know arises from handwriting. It is my hope that I can eventually write at the rate that I think, which is a major boon to the creative process of writing and storytelling.

What are you using to learn Gregg Shorthand?

First, I learned how to use Anki & the Image Occlusion add-on (which is fantastic and y'all should donate to the creator if you use it).

Then I went onto http://gregg.angelfishy.net/anunit01.shtml and I created anki cards out of all of the words and images in the anniversary edition.

I'm currently working through that deck, and have about a month or two to go before I've at least seen how it all works, and then I'll have to start journaling & writing regularly to produce fluency.

Why are you so sure that shorthand will provide the same engagement as handwriting, and not closer to that of typing? It seems plausible to me that the difference could mostly be explained by all the superfluous effort of handwriting.

Because writing in cursive/freehand both require planning, planning which is not required by typing. In fact, I will argue that Gregg requires more mental planning and activity than writing in freehand, due to a number of factors about how it is written.

I think the process of taking notes and compressing information is very helpful for retention. Unfortunately I lost the ability to keep track of long ideas while writing - I am not a fast writer. I chose to record lectures instead and pay direct attention to what’s being said. Later I go over the recordings and transcribe everything. It helps a lot, but it also takes a lot more time.

I'll hypothesize this is a bad thing, not a good thing.

When I type, it's effortless and I can type almost as fast as I can think -- so I'm using my brain efficiently.

When I write by hand, I hate it. I have to pay attention to how I'm holding the pen, if it's legible, if I have room for the next word on the line, if I'm going to smudge something, if I can keep up with what's being said or just cross this sentence out and write the next one before I forget that one too.

So sure, my brain is way more engaged when I'm writing by hand. But it's engaged in a bunch of BS related to writing, not the subject at hand. If anything, it's making it harder for me to pay attention, which (at least for me) is definitely detrimental.

Yes, if increasing the brain activities is the goal, our hand writing tool should be brush. Or even better, we can increase the brain workload by introducing the artificial burden like pen refuse to emit ink if its sensor doesn't recognize accurate stroke movements or as ridiculous as forcing pen holder to performing one hand juggling with the other hand.

I guess that it varies from person to person. To me, writing definitely makes me remember better and more clearly whatever I write. There is something deliberate, something about the additional time that it takes to write as opposed to type, that somehow cements the material much better. Even the associations that I'm running in my mind at the time seem to be easier to remember, weeks later.

When I'm studying anything, I've found time after time that writing a summary of the lesson is one of the best ways to remember everything afterwards. Usually I don't even read it afterwards, since the benefit comes from the writing process. YMMV.

I don't think this conflicts with the OP premise. Making something take longer/be harder is a common trick to help you learn something. Like reading out loud helps you remember what you read more than just reading silently in your head. That doesn't mean that in cases where you are not trying to learn that typing would be better as using less mental energy means you have more to spare for other uses.

> Making something take longer/be harder is a common trick to help you learn something.

Honestly, this also describes gaslighting. Creating artificial barriers of discouragement is a terrible learning method for me.

Counter hypothesis: handwriting is like free weights in that different areas of your brain are engaged at once. As a result there are more pathways created or augmented than when typing.

There’s similar benefit and issues too. Typing is faster therefore better at capturing current facts. But worse for overall muscle development.

It's been shown that people taking notes by hand during a lecture retain more than people who take notes by typing.

With time you start to develop your own short hand, skipping words, focusing on questions to ask yourself when reviewing notes. You can often write many words without looking at the paper. Embrace the messy and ugly writing. Legibility only matters in that you can still read it.

I still want to learn cursive but my handwriting style uses plenty of flourishes that mimic cursive. Or writing words that are nearly illegible but easy to know in context.

But then you go back to engaging the brain less, so why not type?

I think the fact that handwriting is more challenging than typing is why it’s better. Your brain isn’t just engaged with the BS related to handwriting; it has to compress information on the fly in order to overcome this BS and still keep up with the speaker, which embeds an understanding of the content in your brain while you write. When you type, you can transcribe all of the info, but none of it resides in your brain afterwards.

I don't think you can do literal transciption typing without learning something like stenotype, so you'll still have to filter and summarize things.

This is probably more of an argument against taking broadly-stated descriptive statements from studies and uncritically turning them into prescriptive statements.

You and I both find that our brains are more engaged when writing by hand. For you that engagement is a distraction from the subject at hand; for me that engagement actually helps me focus on the subject at hand. Its interesting that our personal experiences line up with the study's findings, but neither of us should probably change our habits over it.

This perfectly describes my writing experience.

Had keyboards not come along, I'd of gone to my grave having had almost no textual interaction at all.

I detest handwriting. It's painful for me (I hold my pen badly, and always have done), and I have pretty bad writing unless I pay attention to it.

I definitely make better notes when I'm writing, but also I -think- about the problem at hand when I do so, and this generally means I come up with better solutions. While it's anecdotal, I think it's the same as speaking to someone. I can think of conversations in my head, and they don't go anywhere compared to when I speak with my girlfriend about the same topic - even when it's something technical that she doesn't have any particular input in, I can come up with new ideas when doing this, and she's a counsellor so she has taught me the value of talking, anyway.

There's more to systems than just the 'efficiency' that a lot of commenters are mentioning here, IMO.

Just one data point, in my experience, when it comes to creativity at least, pen and paper beat screen and typing.

It could be because it is engaging the senses and the hands/brain more, or the physicality of the paper itself.

And another counterintuitive fact: when it comes to ideas, drafting in pen and paper is also way faster.

The second draft is a different story.

I remember turning in a rather embarrassing paper in college because I wrote it from beginning to end on my computer, instead of writing the first draft longhand, as I had always done previously. (Okay, full disclosure: I wrote it through the night before the day it was due. But that wasn't anything I hadn't done before.)

I'm older than the "digital natives." I was born in 1967 and went back to college as an adult. This story I'm telling happened in the late '90s. But, in retrospect, I really felt my typing speed was faster than my thinking speed. Pencil-to-paper is a much slower process and seemed better suited to wrestling with complicated thoughts.

I would say I've since adapted and can write first drafts at the keyboard. (I'd say I adapted before I got out of college.) But longhand still seems more intimately connected to my brain.

In my case this is definitely true. It is much better for me to remember handwritten notes than typed ones. In college, one of my study methods was to transcribe my typed notes into handwritten ones. I took typed notes in the first place for the simple reason that I type _much_ faster than I write.

Professionally, I am still the same way. When flipping back from pen-and-paper to something like Evernote I definitely remember written ones better.

Long-term I'm looking for a solution where I can take notes handwritten and OCR scan it into a digital platform to have the best of both worlds (my memory plus full text search, sorting, and tagging)

You should take a look at the ReMarkable tablet :)

Something about a pen and paper, and a calm environment, stimulates the brain much more than a screen bleeding light into the eyes.

I am really really hoping for e-ink writing pads to work for me because I really hate to waste paper.

Note that N = 24 for this study.

From the article's abstract [1], on method and sample size: "High-density electroencephalogram (HD EEG) was used in 12 young adults and 12, 12-year-old children to study brain electrical activity as they were writing in cursive by hand, typewriting, or drawing visually presented words that were varying in difficulty."

[1] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.0181...

Someone should tell Elon Musk. [1]

“Handwriting can be quite messy and they take a lot of time. So, instead of spending the majority of the time writing, the spend it typing instead. The students are more in touch with computers and are much slower when they handwrite.”

[1] https://hackernoon.com/how-elon-musk-redesigned-school-for-h...

Shouldn't the title end with ", again."? This handwritten note vs digital note taking isn't new, yet every time a report on the study of this topic comes to the same conclusion.

We've also seen numerous studies showing that activity during learning vs idle sitting in a chair shows better retention of the material as well. Lots of the great philosophers would do the walk-n-talk instead of lecturing in classroom setting.

The absolute state of Twitter says everything about the cogitation required to type: none at all. Yet, the spray-painted vandalism seen in public spaces is only marginally more informed.

Cuneiform is far more engaging of the faculties and demanding of careful composition. Struck by a strange mood, the aspiring author must gather clay from the river at low ebb, gather ash wood or reed and craft styluses, and must also build an oven, all the while lovingly musing upon the intended opus. Any mistake is the ruin of the opus. The tablet must be smashed and new clay gathered. In comparison, handwriting is but the careless ejaculation of worthless ink; fit only for brief amusement and animalistic territorial piss-marking.

You’ll note the erudition of this post. Indeed, I pound my words into my laptop with a hammer and then cook the bastard thing in an oven in order to submit.

You can smooth over clay if you make a mistake, you know. You can also gather a lot of clay beforehand, keep your styli around, and re-use your oven.

You've failed to interpret the comment, and you are making the poster's point for them.

Tail wags the dog.

I think you’ve failed to interpret the parent who is just adding to the joke by pretending to take it seriously.

I understand "The tail wags the dog."

I also understand "Tail wags dog."

But "Tail wags the dog" -- why the articular/anarthrous difference? What does it mean?!?!

I doubt the scribes of Sumeria bother doing the tablet themselves. They were among the top of society, they probably had people making the tablet for them (at least the clay preparation, apprentice modeling the tablets from it). You don’t create a piece of paper from scratch either everytime you want to write.

The cuneiform we see is mostly accounting and short snippets to glorify the ruler of the day. So, basically, W2 forms and Trump tweets.

Most cuneiform is an inventory of stuff like amount of wheat and who owes who how much.

Most surviving cuneiform is that kind of thing. Various incidental items, though, like the complaint letters sent to Ea-Nasir [1], suggest that casual discourse was far from unknown and may just have usually been done with un-fired clay that wouldn't have lasted for long periods.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nasir

I loled.

Digital clay. A revolution in computer interfaces.

You speak of cuneiform as it is the highest form of expression. That is foolish, for how does it compare to the high art of painting on a cave wall? Rhetorical question, poorly of course. Cuneiform completely bypasses hunting for most crimson okra , blackest ash, and sparkling chalk. And that is before we get to the availability of the writing surfaces. Tablets are cheap but caves are rare! We are talking about pondering for many moons of what messages to send to the far futures versus mindless hammering of most inane things. It is plainly obvious that the gulf between the two is like that of Arecibo message compared to a conversation between two twitter bots.

Given the most pervasive argument that is as a matter of fact is a fact. I am sure you will agree that cave paintings are the most superior form of communication bar none.

Dude writes like GPT-3

That would be backwards. GPT-3 was trained on content and comments from the internet so it quite literally writes like him. Considering the length of his comment it is probably fairly biased towards his style of writing.

/s (slightly)

Doesn’t this mean handwriting requires more “cpu” (or resources, whatever) than typing? So in other words, it’s worse?

Quite the contrary is the case. Whenever the brain gets stimulated, it forms more or "better" connections.

It's not helpful to compare the brain to a computer in this sense, because both simply work in vastly different ways.

The more you use your brain, the better it gets at the task and in general (at least to a certain degree). This is not the case with CPUs, which only get hotter and often slower (i.e. running at lower clock speeds) when utilised more.

Perhaps it works for some people but handwriting was always slow and painful for me. I tried a bunch of different pens, grips, and writing styles. Nothing really worked. Hated writing and note taking in school when I couldn't use a computer. Now fortunately I can avoid it almost entirely.

The article says "handwriting", but there's nothing to support cursive vs. printing as a contributing factor.

Otherwise, I believe it. There's a reason we have a practice called "whiteboarding" in tech, and one of the biggest adjustments to remote work for me has been using digital whiteboards.

I got an iPad specifically so I could kinda get a hybrid of both technology and handwriting. The new ios hand writing feature made it even better.

I agree on the iOS 14 handwriting update... for Chinese. Despite normally being easier to process than, the Latin alphabet recognition is poor, in normal condition of writing (i.e. I won’t adjust my writing to olease the system). Or made it’s the model language that only knows English? Anyway it didn’t feel good enough yet for real world usage.

> I won’t adjust my writing to olease the system

Hardwriting recognition failure?

Oh dear, I just had a flashback to the "handwriting" on the Palm Pilot.

I believe it to. Anecdotally, my old method for studying while in school was just to handwrite out notes as I read. I would not even go back to review them as the act of simply writing it out by hand was enough to retain it. Typing I feel like is much more autopilot. The amount of times I misspell or write the incorrect word while typing is way higher than anything done by hand.

That said, my handwriting is also atrocious and I would not want to ever have to disseminate something in that form over a nice, typed document.

Our brains are (to use a crude analogy) muscle movement computers/orchestra conductors. I reckon there are just more parts of your brain involved creating specific fine motor movements for holding a pen/pencil than just tapping keys that never really move relative to your hands.

Of course -- you gotta use your body.

The biggest complaint of all I have against Silicon Valley is exactly this attempt to make us 'bodyless'. The truth is, if you're everywhere, you're nowhere. And if you're not grounded in your physicality, you're a "candle in the wind".

In my religious tradition, demons, or their effects, are essentially disembodied thoughts ("logismoi"). Which supports my experience that social media can be hell on earth.

I like this. Thanks for the note.

> Impassioned thoughts either stimulate the soul’s desiring power or disturb its incensive power, or darken its intelligence (396).

https://thoughtsintrusive.wordpress.com/2013/12/09/what-logi...

The root word for the devil, diablos, means ‘divider’ so any tendency or thought that brings about division...

Social media skipped telepathy kindergarden and went straight to telepathy high school.

Old studies suggest the same. Here's a random one from 2009: https://doi.org/10.1177/154193120905302218

I always have a notebook by my side. I like to "draw" algorithms and "prototype" things in pen and paper. I've always felted that I can think better that way.

I know writing (cursive) notes about something results in me learning faster. But typewritten I can save more information in a neater format. Note I see younger people block printing (not cursive) which seems incredibly slow and awkward compared to cursive writing.

IIRC, it was Neal Stephenson who said he always writes his novels in pencil/pen and paper first.

He said that he is able to type faster than he can think, and that it negatively affects quality.

I noticed the "type faster than I can think" phenomenon when I switched to a Kinesis Advantage for the first time and took a significant speed hit. My writing immediately improved because I had more time to choose words before I got to them. When I'm typing normally at 100WPM I am forced to pick words much faster.

If I need to clearly and calmly plan out a tricky bit of software, I will often bring out an old-fashioned dip pen. I'm not slow with it, but I have to write a bit more carefully than a regular pen or pencil, and of course it's much slower than typing. I tend to end up with a page of thoughtful self-debate which I can then condense into a typed summary to use in implementation. It is a silly way to work, but it does work.

It's for this that I bought the reMarkable and drag it into every meeting I attend. I feel like I'm in more control of what is happening instead of staring at a laptop screen and not really showing interest in the meeting at hand. I hold the device like a notepad and it gives for a completely different dynamic then a laptop (or even an iPad tbh).

Interesting, I thought everyone already knew that you remember this better if you write them by hand, I guess I was wrong.

Well then let me share you another thing that I think everyone already knew, if you start writing, just writing, anything, your mind will enter into a state similar to meditation, thus it can be quite stress relieving and can help you with better sleep ^^

More engagement is terrific but my written output is 90% less; there's not a lot I'm going to be engaged about.

They don't even teach penmanship at schools in my area anymore. Everything moved to keyboards at a very early age.

Maybe handwriting engages the brain more because that's how most people worked while learning new things as a child? Is there a chance the next generation will have the opposite correlations?

I doubt it, but it seems like a reasonable hypothesis to investigate.

An unrelated question to HN. English is my second language, and we don't use the Latin alphabet. My English handwriting is pretty bad. I always wanted to improve it, but didn't have much success. Are there courses out there for practicing handwriting for adults?

What I found worked for me was to find a font that I liked and imitate it. Computer fonts are nice because you can use it for a bunch of text to practice copying, but you can do it without that and just take care to imitate the style as you write. Don’t rush through things and take as much time as you need to imitate the example style.

You may find useful books from the early 1900s on the library of congress website.

That’s why you have to do typing + something else.

That something else is mind mapping, as it helps create topological layouts of information nodes. This works amazingly well on touch devices, because it activates other aspects of your mind/body memory.

I use ithoughts :)

> Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! "Have courage to use your own reason!" -- that is the motto of enlightenment.

- Immanuel Kant "An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?" (Was ist Äufklarung?) (30 September, 1784) [0]

Anytime we read a paper book or write with a pen, we break free of the tyranny of the device. The mind is one step further removed from the connected mob and therefore one step closer to thinking on its own terms.

[0] http://web.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/web%20publishing/KantO...

Does higher measured brain activity for one task relative to another performed by the same individual conclusively mean that task is "better", or maybe just that individual is more efficient/practiced/comfortable with the other task?

I'd be curious to find out if these children and young adults had learned to write or type first. Perhaps this is an artifact of learning writing first, rather than anything inherently beneficial about writing over typing.

I wonder how this relates to Braille. Is typing braille also that bad? What about stylus and slate (making the dots with a stylus)?

I wonder if there are any alternatives that provide the same benefits as handwriting and are accessible to the blind.

Interesting aside is that neither engage the brain as much as oral storytelling.

Imagine having to remember and tell your history repeatedly encompassing generations including complexities of land boundaries down to the nearest tree or bush

It’s great to get confirmation scientifically. Though Intuitively it has always felt that handwriting engages brain more than typing. It’s as if we need an almanac of proofs that validate widespread intuitions.

[quote]areas of the brain correlated with working memory and encoding new information were more active during handwriting.[/quote] I could have told you that. Writing it down helps me remember it.

Is this a good thing? I find my thoughts flow out best at a keyboard, by far trumping both speaking and writing. I then wonder if the issue is overthinking when not at a keyboard.

Given these studies, I suspect that writing code out on paper before typing it in might be an effective way to learn programming. What do you all think?

I haven't had much luck convincing anyone under the age of 30 to consistently do this.

I did this and didn't notice any benefits. And it was very slow.

Maybe, if your writing pseudo-code to grasp the logic?

This looks like a small study that only measured a surrogate outcome.

Given the huge problems that persist in psychology research the relevance is pretty small.

I'm curious about whether using a digital graphical tablet might be a decent alternative to pen & paper handwriting ...

How is this a new study? I knew about it 6 years ago and specifically didn't take a laptop to class because of it.

Exactly, this is so common sense.

I agree that this is common sense; I've been cognizant of this effect ever since I was in college. However, sometimes common sense turns out to be wrong, so there is value in actually putting common sense to the test.

This is like the 5th study that confirms this. It's pretty conclusive by now.

I wonder if subjects would be touch typists would it change anything.

anedcotally, i've known this to be true about myself for years. my typed notes, while MUCH faster, are rarely as well memorized (on first pass) as my hand written notes.

barely surprising, considering that more muscles are involved for a longer time for writing each letter.

How much more?

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