National Handwriting Day

In a day and age where handwriting is almost a lost art, today celebrates it. Writing is so much more than putting pen to paper. It improves hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills. Psychologists and neurologists suggest there's a link between handwriting and broader educational development. We retain information longer if we write it out. Many young people today can't read or write in cursive. And that is a shame.

In the article What's Lost as Handwriting Fades, a number of studies demonstrate how important handwriting actually is. For example:

A 2012 study led by Karin James, a psychologist at Indiana University, tested children who had not yet learned to read and write. They were presented with a letter or a shape on an index card and asked to reproduce it in one of three ways: trace the image on a page with a dotted outline, draw it on a blank white sheet, or type it on a computer. They were then placed in a brain scanner and shown the image again.

The researchers found that the initial duplication process mattered a great deal. When children had drawn a letter freehand, they exhibited increased activity in three areas of the brain that are activated in adults when they read and write: the left fusiform gyrus, the inferior frontal gyrus and the posterior parietal cortex. By contrast, children who typed or traced the letter or shape showed no such effect. The activation was significantly weaker.

In another study that followed children in grades two through five, Virginia Berninger, a psychologist at the University of Washington, demonstrated that printing, cursive writing, and typing on a keyboard are all associated with distinct and separate brain patterns — and each results in a distinct end product. When the children composed text by hand, they not only consistently produced more words more quickly than they did on a keyboard, but expressed more ideas. And brain imaging in the oldest subjects suggested that the connection between writing and idea generation went even further. When these children were asked to come up with ideas for a composition, the ones with better handwriting exhibited greater neural activation in areas associated with working memory — and increased overall activation in the reading and writing networks.

So today, write something by hand. A shopping list, a letter, lecture notes. Buy some beautiful stationery and reconnect with the long lost art of letter writing. Emails and texting are so much quicker, true, but not nearly as satisfying. Try it, you'll see what I mean. Learn calligraphy if you want something different. Try writing in italics. Just do it.