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> Today, it's typing.

Not for math, at least not for my kids. I was helping my son with his high school physics homework a few days ago, and IMO his poor handwriting was a genuine impediment to his mathematical problem-solving.

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That's true. My college freshman physics teacher took me aside after the first couple of assignments and said: "You'd make fewer mistakes if you could read your own handwriting."

Layout is more important than handwriting for maths, no?

poorly written 7's can look like 1's, and 5's like 6's. I lost a lot of points in high school math because I couldn't read what I had just written on the previous line!

Taking notes for my maths degree I learnt to 'cross' my 7s and zs.

More suggestions that I learnt: Put a line at the base of your 1, otherwise it looks like a lowercase l. Plus it helps distinguish it from 7's that aren't crossed out.

Same goes for 4's. A lot of people don't make the top into a closed triangle shape. Instead they write it like an unfinished or upside-down h.

I had a similar issue, made worse by the fact that I was left handed and writing from left to right. So aside from smudges, I’d visually cover what I had just written. Plenty of opportunities to lose train of thought or misread something

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