The only conclusion that seems even remotely supported by the evidence here is that writing by hand is important for learning letters. As in, learning your ABC's. No arguments there.
The new study cited is a Norwegian small-sample-size study of college kids typing vs. writing Pictionary words while wearing an EEG. Not learning, I would point out.
What they observe is more connectivity between brain regions when they write, because well, writing and uses more of your brain. And then they make this immense leap to, "and it seems like the connectivity we see when people learn, ergo it's good for learning."
Then Scientific American amplifies it because it's a divisive non-falsifiable thing that people (like me, admittedly) get weirdly invested in. This is bad science and bad science comms. Show me how you decided that this connectivity pattern was evidence of learning when observed in a non-learning context—that's the crux of the issue.
I suspect you can't "see" learning of the type that college kids do in an hour-long EEG session. It unfolds over days, months, years.
I learned to read the Armenian alphabet a few years ago, and writing actually didn't help at all with that, reading did. What I did was try my best to read passages and have the English transliteration underneath as a cheat sheet. Despite not knowing much vocab, I learned the alphabet quickly this way. Then vocab helped later on because it made words more recognizable.
I was late to this game of "going backwards" to improve my memory and understanding of what I read and wrote. Being raised by two technologically forward engineers, we jumped on the palm-pilot/laptops/tablets/phones/e-readers bandwagon very early.
5 years ago I started turning back to calligraphy, fountain pens, and hand writing. I buy books and fill up my bookshelf. It wasn't just for the memory recall, it was the pleasantness of writing.
I can't begin to tell you just how wonderful it is to write with a nice fountain pen. This was the culmination of writing instruments prior to the bastardization caused by modern cheap pens/pencils. I heartily recommend folks pick up an affordable Parker pen or similar and try it. It's also a great stress reliever to just free form thoughts onto a page, and you'll remember what your wrote later in the day!
One other bonus, your handwriting improves. I had to fill out some government forms recently. The online forms were cutting off any addresses longer than 24 characters, so I filled it out by hand. Went into the offices to submit and after the clerk saw my papers they went, "oh my goodness, you have incredible handwriting!"
Besides the learning, recall, etc, there are so many side benefits. Read and write physically y'all!
People wishing to try experiencing the pleasure of fountain pens but avoid it because they are afraid of going down a rabbit hole can use the following: get one Platinum Preppy pen with black ink and either Medium (if you like thick, felt pen like lines), Fine (comparable to a regular ballpoint), or Extra Fine (if you keep your pencils extra sharp or normally use .38 or smaller pens) for $10 or less, and any notepad made in Vietnam for less than $5 at Walmart/CVS/Michaels/Amazon/etc. You don’t need to read any product reviews to try this out for around $15.
Why I recommend it this way: I enjoy pens and have done illustration and calligraphy professionally but the Preppy has essentially replaced my other pens except when I specifically want something special. Writing with it still feels special, mind, but to enjoy things you also shouldn’t be afraid of damaging or losing something precious, nor should you miss a day of writing because you didn’t want to carry some fancy instrument in your hoodie pocket or whatever. As for the pads, fountain pens are wet compared to other types and some paper will make it impossible to use or enjoy. Vietnamese paper is cheap, available, and known to work well for this.
I picked up a preppy a couple of weeks ago. I got a fine nib, and after seeing how it writes I should have gotten extra fine, but the biggest issue I'm having is that it seems to want the pen held at a shallower angle than what works for me. If I fold my pinky and ring finger under in an uncomfortable position then I can get my grip close enough to the page that it consistently inks, but otherwise it isn't consistent, which felt frustrating rather than special. I ended up switching over to the $2 Zebra ball point pen that I bought at the same time, and have had a much better experience, including pen on paper dragging that feels just as smooth as the fountain pen.
I would like to have a good experience with the Preppy, but I don't know if this is just how it will be because I have large hands, or if I'm doing something wrong, or just got a defective pen. What is the pleasure that I should be looking for? Is there still hope I can experience it, perhaps with a different pen?
> What is the pleasure that I should be looking for?
It should feel effortless and an absolute joy to glide the pen across the paper. If writing with a BIC pen is 3/10 tedious, a well made fountain pen should be 0/10 for tedium.
It should be so easy, you find yourself able to write for longer without tiring than you usually would. Ink should always flow freely, control of movement seamless, hand comfortable and not even the least bit stressed/cramped, and the nib should not feel scratchy or catching against the paper. It should glide.
This is why I went all-in with a proper fountain pen after being frustrated with various other pens. On a budget, I have tried and can recommend the Jinhao 51A to get started. If you are willing to go all-in, Visconti and Parker makes amazing pens.
The Jinhao 51A is a clone of the Parker 51 which was a staple every-day pen for white collar work in the 40-50's. They are physically wider to fit large hands and the pen tip is fine and precise.
Good luck, I hope you're able to find something that works for you, fountain pens have very different characteristics. I own several and none of them are quite the same as the other.
In case you haven't already, try several different kinds of paper and see if there is any difference. Not necessarily "better" paper; the smoothest writing I felt recently was on the back of a receipt of all things.
The steeper your angle the more the nib rotation matters so you can try adjusting that while holding the position which is still comfortable. Someone recently tried mine and had a similar issue because they held it almost vertical; pressure on the page helps spread the tines and allow ink to flow but not if it's stabbing. Holding the pen at a different rotation to suit their writing motion worked and made it more comfortable to use less pressure but it did take some trial and error.
I love handwriting. As in, I hand-lettered every single one of the hundreds of diagrams in my two books [1]. I am also a sucker for nice pens and fancy paper. Office supply stores are like toy stores for me. (What can I say, I was a teacher's pet growing up.)
So I am 1000% the kind of person to get into fountain pens.
But I'm also a lefty. :(
I know it is possible to learn to use a fountain pen while writing left-handed, but it's a serious uphill battle and is never as easy and natural as being right-handed. Every now and then, I'm tempted to learn to write mirrored.
Ooof, yeah, left handed with a fountain pen is not easy. I once foolishly went left handed "just to try" and ended up with a beautiful shade of dark green ink all over my palm and wrist. The ink just doesn't dry fast enough, even with premium papers. Maybe there are new inks that work well for this?
It sounds like you've found some other pens that work well for you if you managed to hand draw hundreds of diagrams. I do feel sad you won't be able to fully experience "the glide" you get from fountain pens though. It's a real treat.
(also, side note, thanks for writing Game Programming Patterns, Crafting Interpreters, they are excellent books!)
> It sounds like you've found some other pens that work well for you if you managed to hand draw hundreds of diagrams.
Yes! Technical pens are great. My first book was all done using a Faber-Castell Pitt pen and my second book was Pigma Microns. I think Pitt pens are my favorite. I also have some Copic Multiliners which I was very excited about but ended up being a little too narrow for my taste.
Ah, yeah, I prefer the Faber-Castell Pitt's with the fine point to the Microns as well. The Microns do seem to be easier to find here in my end of Canada though, so there are tons in the house and my wife enjoys them as well.
Have you tried the FC Pitt brush pens [0] at all? They seem like a lot of fun for diagrams and doodles.
Yeah, I have a couple. They're OK, but brush pens are hard for a lefty because the strokes that should be pulled and align with the direction of the brush don't always work that way when writing left handed. Probably fun for drawing though.
You don't really have to learn it, a couple minutes of concerted effort will get you most of the way there
When I first started I'd say I was up to my normal speed within about half a page of Freeform journaling, initially it took conscious effort but then the brain just kinda went "oh."
Tangent: after that first day I had the thought to hold the resulting pages up to a mirror. The backwards writing was disconcertingly neater than my regular. (And remained that way even as I got faster and lazier)
Also for some unknown reason I formed the lowercase "A" entirely differently - everything else was the same..
I remember the diagrams in Crafting Interpreters and thinking what a great application of hand-done diagrams it was. So glad you did them that way.
Also left handed, BTW. If you're ever interested in going it even more old-school -- dip pens with India or Sumi ink are the absolute bomb. The ink is blacker than anything I've seen except perhaps in intaglio/etchings -- it can be made darker than fountain pen ink because there is no fear of clogging. Yeah, there's a bit of cleanup after every use, but very satisfying too, for some use cases.
Not a fountain pen, but the LAMY Safari (Rollerball) and Zebra Sarasa Dry (Gel) pens will each dry fast enough to write left-handed with most papers.
I find the typical rollerball to be far more conducive to cursive writing than a ball-point, as very little pressure is needed to release the ink. Kind of a "fountain-pen lite"
I am an Urdu speaker, which is written RTL. Right-handed people never have any trouble writing Urdu, but left-handed people struggle to write Urdu. I don't exactly know why.
You're welcome! People always assume I drew them digitally somehow, but nope, literally on paper with pencil and pen. Here's a video I put together showing the process:
FWIW: I went to an unusual grade school which required us 3rd graders to use fountain pans. There were many stained fingers and homeworks, but yet, they insisted on using what seemed to us archaic devices. Fast forward to now, decades later, and I have recently rediscovered fountain pens and what a delight it is to use one compared to the cheap disposable ball point. I am using an inexpensive Pilot Metropolitan pen and, given a choice, will never go back to ball points.
My story is similar to yours -- forced to use fountain pens (in grade 4-5, IIRC). Perpetually ink-stained fingers, and absolutely hated these irrational rules back then. Decades later, I came back to fountain pens and now love the feel of writing with them. My handwriting also improved tremendously -- when you deeply enjoy writing, you put effort into it, and you see results :)
It was a German school in South America (no WWII refugees there, lol). I guess the school leadership was taught that way, and they were sure to make the kids learn that way too - with fountain pens!
I moved to Germany a few years ago and my kids have to use fountain pens for all their school work, even math. It's this way for grade school and high school.
Just wanted to +1 on physical books and writing with fountain pens.
My daily routine involves journaling in the morning with a Pilot Custom 823 in a blank Midori notebook, doing all of my work planning + notes with a Lamy 2000 in a Traveler’s Company notebook built-up in a way that works for me, and reading physical books, marking them up with a Kaweco brass mechanical pencil. It’s flexible, keeps me on task, keeps me organized, and I feel like I’m getting better value for my time, if that makes sense.
I’ve tried so many different ways of trying to handle these things digitally, but have found that for me it’s best to use pen and paper for these sorts of things in conjunction with digital counterparts mainly for reminders and archives.
That's great and I have no doubt it's nice writing with a good fountain pen but people should not get caught up in that they HAVE to write with some expensive fountain pen or mechanical pencil. Most of the time, a basic pencil and notepad will work just fine.
Not that that is what you do but people may read your comment and get fixated that it has to be a nice fountain pen or mechanical pencil.
You ought to be able to find a pen without a scratching feeling. The nib, the ink, and the paper can all contribute to a scratchy feeling. If you have been trying with an old pen, the nib could be damaged, or the ink too dried out.
If you are writing with a new pen the you might need a wider writing nib, a medium or above is your best bet. In pen reviews, look for how "wet" the pen writes.
I like writing very tiny letters and use a Pilot extra-fine, an it is can be scratchy, but I replaced the medium nib my Pilot Metro was sold with. It was not scratchy with the medium.
Certain brands like Platinum and Sailor are known for this — it’s somewhat euphemistically known as ‘feedback’ and some people like it. I’ve been partial to it in the past.
Pilot is an example of a brand known for smoother writing. Try one!
There is also the possibility that the nib is just out of alignment. You might need to look at it under a loupe and perform some adjustments… there are various guides online or you can pay an expert to do it.
Yeah, that comes down to the nib. Not all pens are scratchy. I sorta like a sweet spot of a little bit of scratchiness.
I have an old pilot metropolitan that is almost too smooth. I even dropped it once and had to re-form the nib. I usually use a pilot v5 rolling ball pen with the water based ink which is a little scratchy but requires very little pressure compared to a normal ballpoint.
Holy cow I feel seen. All throughout school I was plagued by that “nails on chalkboard” feeling that I get from using a pencil. Pens don’t typically give me that feeling thankfully.
Everyone's hand and preferences are different. Just look at a guide like this [1] and buy one within you budget. You will eventually learn what works for you.
For Parker's, there are just so many options. However, it can be extremely pricey to buy-and-try or your local store may not have many in stock.
I started with the Parker 51 by trying out a clone by name of Jinhao 51A.
My suggestion is to look for the knock-offs like Jinhao and buy a few of them (you can get 4-5 pens for the price of the cheapest Parker). Then you can try them all and whichever you like most, when you choose to upgrade, buy that variant of Parker it was trying to clone. Or maybe the Jinhao ends up good enough for you and you stick with that, nothing wrong with a nice affordable pen!
Also, the Jinhao's make pretty gifts for small occasions, they're very colourful and elegant, if you upgrade away from them, can gift them to friends/family.
There are nice cheap pens out there, but fountain pens are beautiful and separating the choice of ink from the choice of pen gives a lot of flexibility.
What’s particularly wrong with appreciating tools? Why brand it ‘fetishisation’? For me, a good fountain pen is a work of art; the fact it happens to be useful for work is an added bonus.
Yeah. I’m a bit of an audiophile (used to be a music producer) and have almost no interest in audio hardware other than how it sounds.
But it seems strange to me to apply the same reasoning to stationery. With sound, there is literally only one thing that matters: how accurately and precisely you can vibrate the air. With pens, it isn’t so easy to quantify. How do you measure what it means to feel nice to write with, or to hold in the hand? Or what makes a particular ink pleasing to the eye? There’s huge scope for personality and opinion that isn’t present in other kinds of what you might call tools.
And, separately: what is meant by ‘fetishisation of x’? Is it synonymous with ‘interest in x’? To me it seems to be used simply to look down on those who have interests not considered worthy; if one disapproves of singing one might as well refer to it as ‘fetishisation of the human voice’. But perhaps there’s more to it than that.
> With sound, there is literally only one thing that matters: how accurately and precisely you can vibrate the air.
I’d argue that that’s not what matters. What matters is does the song you’re listening to sound good.
The measurement that you’re talking about is precisely the bit that obsessive audiophiles get wrong, and it’s the parallel that I’m drawing with folks who obsess over stationary too.
I’m not saying that hobbies and interests are wrong, just that often they miss the point that makes the tool useful in the first place. A cheap pen can write nicely without needing to obsess over then pen, paper, ink, etc, just as much as a song can sound great without obsessing over which particular tube amp sounds warmer.
> What matters is does the song you’re listening to sound good.
Good point. I still think there’s very little scope for customisation though. Once you find what sounds good, you can stop.
With stationery, there’s no such thing because the question isn’t as simple as ‘does it sound good?’. It’s more like ‘does it feel good?’, ‘does it inspire me in my work?’, ‘does it work well for this particular situation?’.
I personally think you’re wrong to write all of this off as fetishism; it can be a life-enriching interest. Of course there are people who take it too far, and you only have to go to Reddit to find those people.
To some extent it’s also a matter of fashion, and if you’re one of those people who doesn’t ‘get’ fashion (in clothes, or in anything else) then there’s not much to be reconciled — it just doesn’t please you and that’s fine.
> obsessing over which particular tube amp sounds warmer.
I agree that that kind of thing is just boring as hell and detracts from any possible discussion or enjoyment of music.
Seeking perfection actually is particularly boring to me, which is why it’s not what I do with stationery either. It’s more appreciation of an object, flaws and all, than it is a pointless never-ending (and wallet-draining) search for some fictional nirvana like it is with speakers.
Sometimes the journey is more important than the objective.
I have a 3d printer because I wanted to play with a 3d printer. Same with a drone, zero-turn lawn mower, welding machine, oscilloscope, and a host of other things my wife would be more than happy to tell you about.
Most of us here are engineers of one sort or another. We tend to have disposable income and a predisposition for gadgets.
I doubt many of us are truly ever under the delusion that we need these things.
1. Tools are important. "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."
2. There are cheap and good fountain pens. There are disposable fountain pens. Fountain pens are not some premium product, they're just a different type of pen (like wooden pencil vs mechanical pencil).
The main tradeoffs compared to ball point pens is that they write more smoothly and require less pressure (thus better for people with weak hands like children or elderly) but they can dry out if left uncapped or unused.
I wonder if it also had to do with the fact that handwriting is slower.
Which means that you generally hold the concept in your working memory for longer than typing. Which often times does not require the concept to be held in working memory at all because typing speed matches reading speed.
I also wonder if looking down at the page as you write vs looking up at the board. Constantly looking up and down is like a high frequency spaced repetition game, whereas the latter is a more motor/mechanical practice.
In addition to holding the concept in working memory for longer, writing being slower also leads to better refinement of the ideas as you write as the brain has more time to process the thought being written down.
I perhaps wrote it suboptimally; sorry about that.
I meant the brain having more time to process the thought and thereby also actually processing it to refine it by connecting the dots better with the existing knowledge & understanding by recalling the latter too into the working memory from the long-term memory, as well as perhaps the working memory creating a stronger stimulus for the long-term memory to record better.
As an abstraction (which would not match how this actually works in the brain), merely having/holding a thought constant in the (working) memory for longer before transfering it to the long-term memory should not by itself lead to a better long-term memorization and recall, nor to a better understanding of the concepts involved. It could at best strengthen the working memory itself.
Please let me know if I misunderstood your question, if I am failing to answer it, and/or, if you think my understanding posited is not correct, accurate or complete. Would be happy to learn back and/or discuss further.
I think what you said makes sense! Making connections with existing knowledge definitely strengthens the knowledge beyond simply holding it into your working memory and rote memorizing it.
The former feels like it leads to understanding, where as the latter leads to ...memorizing.
However, I feel like the difference between the two(understanding/memorizing) is actually closer than most of us imagine!
Understanding, for the brain, is ultimately memorization too. Memorization need not be understanding. More below:
Going by a reasonable approximation/assumption that the the information in the brain is stored as synaptic weights, both understanding and rote memorization would end up as those weights.
The difference is how much semantic structuring happens in those neurons/weights. Rote memorization would be closer to relatively unlinked pieces of information whereas understanding would have more cross-linking.
The same thing arises for machine learning too. Certain models basically just store all data. When a good model generalizes, it is able to interpolate/extrapolate better to unseen situations, which is going beyong rote memorization.
The double-descent phenomenon in large neural networks however is surprising and is something I do not currently understand enough.
Upon observing myself, something similar or related seems to happen for the brain too. I've noticed that when memorizing by rote (e.g., practicing a specific song on a piano), I tend to make mistakes when starting out, become better, but then again start making mistakes, and finally improve and settle.
My own personal and completely based on anecdote opinion on note taking is that I can write notes while paying attention to something else, but typing has a much higher cognitive load, so more of my attention is focused on operating a keyboard vs. listening.
I'm also someone that needs good visual organization to really study and learn things, so a habit I built in college was to write all of my notes, and then later transcribe them to computer. That helped it flow through my brain twice, organize the notes, and also do so when my sole task was working with the notes rather than capturing notes AND listening at the same time.
Maybe it's because I have terrible and slow handwriting, or because I had a job transcribing audio interviews as a teenager, but I find it's the complete opposite for me. Writing makes me miss more because I can't keep up.
Everyone's brain works differently. My mom worked at the county court and her side gig was creating transcripts of the court case. It was always amazing to see her fingers fly as she sat with headphones and a glazed look as the words seemed to flow directly from ears to paper.
I had a teacher who told us that when we took notes, we could not just transcribe what the teacher said - we had to take the ideas and write them down in our own words, because we would actually be thinking and learning and not just brainlessly writing it down.
This may well require to much time to do depending upon the material.
I remember a math class that drove me nuts because the instructor used overhead sheets. Usually they were at least limited to output speed of their own hand writing so I could keep up but with the overhead protector I was always scrambling to even get it down.
It depends on the class. If you tried pulling this in organic chemistry you would certainly fail the class. Writing down each and every step the professor is writing on the board for the reaction is critical in that class.
Anyone else remember less from reading an ebook compared to a physical one? This happens to me, and I think it's a similar explanation. I recall less of where I read something in an ebook. But in a physical book, I often remember that a phrase was at the top or middle or left side of a page, or that I was sitting in a particular chair when I read it. There's simply more of the brain working when I read a physical book, much as handwriting needs more of your body than typing.
The thing that bothers me is that I can't flip back and forth the same way I can with a book.
I'll frequently read something and want to go check something 100 or so pages back. It's so easy with a physical book you hold the place and scan backwards. Much more difficult with an ebook.
I also tend to remember where a tidbit of information was physically. For some reason, details like "~50 pages back around the end of the paragraph in the top-right corner of the right page" will stick in my brain. Then I can quickly scan and parse out keywords to find what I'm looking for. This doesn't work reliably with e-books for me.
This is exactly the theory I proposed in a previous post about handwriting aiding memory - that it's the paper and spacial memory assisting, not the handwriting itself.
I did this often during school, looking up information in textbooks - I'd remember roughly the chapter/page, recognize the exact page, and know where on the page something was, even if I couldn't directly remember the thing itself.
That’s how a “studied” physical chemistry. Before the test, I’d flip through the book and review the equations. My brain encoded it as location on the page. Then at the beginning of the test, I’d scribble down all of the relevant equations from pictures in my mind. During the test, I’d flip back to my index of equations to solve the problems.
This absolutely happens to me. Happy to know I'm not the only one.
> But in a physical book, I often remember that a phrase was at the top or middle or left side of a page, or that I was sitting in a particular chair when I read it.
Exactly! And for reasons I cannot explain this helps me with better recall too! Like when I remember something I read, I know roughly where in the book that stuff was physically printed and what other stuff were around it and how they relate to each other.
With ebook too I still know how things relate to each other but the clarity feels much less. I can see it much less in my mind's eye. I don't know why! And it drives me mad!
This is pretty universal, and for some books (think: novels) it's not a major issue, but for referential works, I need the printed copy, and I do not want to switch versions.
The perfection of ebooks will be when you have one physical book with virtual pages that can change, but other than that it feels like a real book.
Maybe the article covers this, but there an ancient memory technique (still used today) of “places and things”, also known as a memory palace. You put objects into spaces in your mind, then walk through that imaginary space to remember things. Turns out that humans are much better at remembering things when the context is spatial. Makes sense that this would apply to reading physical books.
I almost exclusively use spatial memory for programming. It's basically a flowchart I can zoom in or out of. A whole application or problem will be a forest I can walk through or fly above. Everything in a single context to avoid context switches.
When I'm reading a book, some quiet part of me is always aware where in the book I am - from the weight distribution of the book, from the pressure on each palm and finger, from the visual feedback. I know before I pick up the book roughly where I left off, and my fingers often find the page on their own somehow. Recollecting info later, I might not even know exactly what I'm looking for - but I know where it is.
Reading a digital book cuts a lot of that entirely out, and I can't help but feel that it diminishes the experience (before, during, and after) far more than people realize.
> Anyone else remember less from reading an ebook compared to a physical one? [...] But in a physical book, I often remember that a phrase was at the top or middle or left side of a page, or that I was sitting in a particular chair when I read it.
This seems weird to me. Does your ebook reader not have a "page" concept? I read China Mieville's Kraken on a Rakuten Kobo about 6 months ago and I distinctly remember the layout of the page where the protagonist does something that shows the culmination of his personal growth throughout the novel, or the page where you find out who is burning the past and why. I also remember distinctly where I was sitting when I read both of those passages.
The biggest difference between the eBook and physical book experiences for me is the smell--I miss the smell of the binding glue when cracking open a new book, or the pleasantly-stale paper smell of an old library book. I'm not saying that the eBook and physical book experiences are equivalent at all. I'm just saying the specific examples you're pointing out seem odd to me.
I'm also highly skeptical of the observations that come from a mind perceiving itself; one of the most striking takeaways from all the neuroscience I've read in the past few decades is that a lot of previous philosophy and psychology theory on how the brain works based on self-perception is blatantly just wrong.
When I remember passages from books I definitely recall whether it was on the left or right leaf, top or bottom or center, and roughly how far through the book it was. If I read it on an e-reader I may have some recall of the vertical positioning but nothing else.
I can take a book from a shelf that I only read once years ago and find a specific passage in a minute or two using this approach. For an ebook I have to try to remember a phrase and search for it, which doesn't always work if I remember just the physicality and sense of it, but not the specific phrasing.
For me, the biggest difference between print and ebooks are:
- I just won't carry around some door-stopper printed books, so I am less likely to read them in printed editions.
- So much of what I want to read isn't in print anymore.
I am in the habit of writing in the margins of print editions as I read, but I haven't started doing this for ebooks. One sometimes remembers the place on the page and page in the book, the smell, the tactile experience, but I can't regard these as real criticisms of ebooks or true benefits of printed editions.
In my experience, having a digital copy of the book is, often enough, the difference between reading it and not reading it.
If you're using multiple devices to read a book, physical memory goes right out the window. The location of a phrase on your phone screen is very unlikely to correspond with its location on a tablet screen. It gets even worse if you change the font size depending on your situation.
I think it depends on what you remember. For me, I tend to remember how far into a book something is (my kindle always shows the percentage completed) and what keywords I can search for. Remembering what a page looks like is actually more difficult for me.
As a result, I generally have an easier time locating things in digital books. I'll occasionally read a physical book and then start looking for the search button... tap words, pinch to zoom... etc. I get really irritated when I realize I can't change the font. XD
I've always had a terrible memory for things I've just read, even pre-smart phone. I always liked the idea of E-books but I couldn't find a solution for easily exportable notes so I gave up and started using small post-its where i'd give a 2-3 word summary and align it with the line on the page.
I still wish I had a unified way to take and export notes. If I could read a book on my ipad, make annotations and highlight, then export those highlighted excerpts + annotations to say, markdown, I'd be so happy.
I've wondered whether this is connected to the olfactory system. Real books have a discernible smell about them, especially older books, and smell is said to be one of the best senses for memory recall. Do you remember less from an ebook because your ebook isn't smelly?
Yes. I find the physical book provides context, as I can feel how far into the book I am. So if in need to find something later I know roughly where to turn and what the pages looked like as I fan through.
With audiobooks, I find I remember better if I’m walking somewhere new. It also provides context. I can recall details of the book by remembering where I was walking when I heard it.
If that lack of spaciality bothers you, you could try reading ebooks on a bigger format. Using a 13" ipad or Surface, or another tablet/reader for instance allows to have two pages side by side (or one A4 full page) which is pretty close to the physical book format.
Was reacting to the "I often remember that a phrase was at the top or middle or left side of a page" part. In particular for technical documentation, having a vague memory of how the page looked like and where in that page the information is IMHO tremendously useful to get back quickly to the relevant parts.
I personaly see less use of feeling the weight of the book or the physical artifacts (even for the position in the book, the ratio on the scroll bar is to me a good enough replacement).
I can relate. I thought it was due distractions, but I usually get more distracted at the phone than I do at the computer and, yet, I get worse results out of my readings at the latter. An e-paper based ebook reader didn't improve the situation either.
As someone with dysgraphia (more info here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysgraphia), I often find the discussion about handwriting both amusing and sometimes disheartening. I understand that handwriting may help some people learn better, but I have found many other effective learning methods. It was liberating when I first managed to get my school teacher to accept printed homework. I'm not keen on articles that label handwriting as the "best" method, mainly because I believe there are many other equally valid approaches.
I'd go a bit further: for those who have terrible handwriting (or spelling, or both) typing has played a big role in landing an education or job. Before modern word processing it was much harder for these people to be taken seriously.
I don't doubt that writing by hand can be very useful to many, maybe even most people, but it's not for everyone.
This reads like the usual beat about students taking notes in school. As usual the title and article conclusions are wide reaching, while the study itself is only done in a very limited context on a very specific scope.
PS: Is there so much research just to counter cursive getting removed from school requirements ? What is the reason for so much focus on such a seemingly limited subject when there's basically no research on professionals using keyboards instead of pens.
I understand the "appeal" of writing by hand but here is the thing.
I am told when I was a kid, I started to have a dispensation for writing with my left hand but mums being mums "corrected" me to use my right hand.
This is one theory but I have never enjoyed writing by hand. I just suck at it. I remember all my school life was like "improve your handwriting".
Covid gave me an interesting experience. I had a short exam, like 2 hours during the time and I opted for " remote proctoring".
Suddenly, for the first time in my life I was like "now its my time to shine"
I learned to type from when i was a kid because my handwriting was a physical disability and with typing, I could simply wish that problem away.
This has progressed in my professional career where I can just type for hours at end comfortably but I cannot write my name in block letters on a form. I ask one of my coworkers to do it for me. (Its that bad)
There is another important angle to all of this that I have discovered:
I began writing/journaling several years ago by hand and have off and on kept up the habit. For me personally, the experience is enjoyable and therapeutic, given my day job is 100% on a computer. (I'm also an illustrator (focus on traditional, rather than digital) so I naturally nerd out on pens, paints, ink, paper, etc. Illustrating with analog tools also has a similar effect as writing.) I have found that I very easily enter flow state writing, for whatever reason.
More importantly, I recently felt inspired (HT to the late Humphrey Carpenter's excellent biography of Tolkien, who wrote to his kids a ton) not just to write for myself, but to write to my sons. This has given my writing even a greater purpose, as I want to give my thoughts (I'm not some profound thinker or such rubbish) and encouragement to my boys when I may not be around (not just in death, but even not near them).
I want them to hear and remember the goofiness, and some of the things that went unsaid, or may have been missed, to apologize for my own failings, to really know how much I love and am proud of them. And I want them to not feel alone and discouraged in this world. That sort of stuff.
I don't believer there would be anything wrong with typing things to them, however It feels like actually holding a thing that my dad held, and seeing his lines, scribbles, ramblings, bad spelling and stuff...but meant for me...would be really meaningful.
I think it depends on the way your brain is remembering. Like there are types of memories specific to the sensory modality. For people who have visual memory more developed, I think, writing by hand is better way for remembering.
> Like there are types of memories specific to the sensory modality.
My understanding was that this was a myth... what's important is to actively pay attention, which seems to be the point here: "It’s very tempting to type down everything that the lecturer is saying, [...] but you don’t process the incoming information. [...] But when taking notes by hand, it’s often impossible to write everything down; students have to actively pay attention to the incoming information and process it [...]".
So it's not directly the fact of writing with a pen on a piece of paper, but rather the fact that it makes people "actively pay attention".
Worrying about how to compress the data in real time doesn't seem like a good way to pay attention.
Maybe jotting down reactions helps maintain attention.
Actually paying attention, and writing down things you want to follow up on later so you don't have to hold them in memory seems better than both superficially stenographozing on a computer or trying to compress for handwritten notes.
I suspect that writing helps by letting you forget, not helping you remember.
I think what could make the difference is the process of selection "what is important to me to compress".
If you know something already you can skip writing it.
If you heard an interesting idea you should write it in a way you would understand it the easiest later. For me, not all notes taken by people on exactly the same course were as understandable, because everybody did some "reinterpretation/selection" - which for me could be a proof of some intricate processing.
If you want to follow up later, well, I think that's a different use-case - not related to focusing on the topic (also important but in other circumstances)
> Worrying about how to compress the data in real time doesn't seem like a good way to pay attention.
Well the whole point is that you should only do it if it actually helps you pay attention. If it is a distraction, then of course you should not do it.
I guess typewriting tends to generally be more of a distraction. But again, if it turns out that typewriting is the best way for you to learn, feel free to do it!
I think I need to actually read the studies for this, because this has been completely contrary to my personal experience on this. I'd like to see how they're controlling their variables.
I cannot read my own handwriting anymore, so I almost never write anything by hand now, but when I was in college the first time I took notes by hand in a notebook, and later moved to typing on a laptop. I don't feel like I retained appreciably less information when I was writing by hand, BUT I did have the ability read my notes later, in addition to being able to search and index them easily. Additionally, I type a lot faster than I can write by hand so I was able to write down more detailed notes during lectures.
Now, obviously, college-age Tombert was 18-20, not a young child, but I still do school, and I still pretty much exclusively type my notes. I've found that the utility of using Obsidian to be able to try and figure out ways in which things are connected is just as valuable to me.
I'm not a complete idiot; it's possible that I'm actually not learning as well, but I really have no desire to go back to physical notes.
ETA:
I would like to point out, I've always resisted the urge to simply transcribe what the instructor is saying. I always try and summarize/break-into-bullets, because I feel like the summarization is part of the learning process; reading the article it looks like a lot of people typing notes are just larping as stenographers, which I would agree is a terrible way to actually learn.
The study's questionable, and at the very least not universally generalizable. My handwriting is so bad notes are pointless typically, and I avoid hand writing anything so far as possible since writing is painful as well as pointless. I do not learn better taking written notes, I've tested this, personally I've tried it a few times and always found hand writing notes actually hinders my learning - I associate the subject with needless pain and busy-work.
I have spent time working out how to most effectively learn news things. Associating the learning with something you enjoy is critical, I hate physical writing, it can only hinder learning for me.
Better for memory doesn't necessarily mean better for recall. I think if high fidelity recall is your goal, it is best to assume your memory is flawed, and create artifacts to account for that. The product of writing by hand is useful, but relatively clumsy next to a lot of computer-based note taking systems. Hyperlinking and backlinking are gold when it comes to note recall, and you can't really get that with handwritten notes.
> She notes that children who have learned to read and write by tapping on a digital tablet “often have difficulty distinguishing letters that look a lot like each other or that are mirror images of each other, like the b and the d.”
Not saying the broader claims of the article aren’t without merit, but the sentence quoted was true long before ubiquitous touchscreens (mid 90s, and long before then too I imagine)
In university I noticed that some of my classmates just sat there and didn't take notes. So I stopped as well. I sat there, listened and then took pictures of the blackboard. This method worked better for me and I noticed that I performed better. The lesson here is that people learn in different ways.
This was key for me as well. I tried doing transcription style notes on my computer (I'm a fast typer), and I tried doing deliberate handwritten notes. When I first started actually paying attention without noting I learned so much more
To extend this further, most of my math notes in college were done with a wacom tablet and a note app, xournal. this worked better for me than an ipad because I was able to keep my eyes up, my small laptop screen right below the whiteboard in the front. I was able to handwrite, but also adjust scale to make tiny annotations or large diagrams. I could also use built-in tools to quickly make perfect straight lines for graphs, change the background to lined, graph, blank, or a pdf, insert images, etc.
Then I was able to export notes as pdfs for classmates, retaining the speed of handwriting for non-text notes but also having the digital usefulness and never forgetting a notebook.
Yeah the more auditory learner types don't need to take notes. If I try to do this as a visual learner I'm like "yeah yes OK I get it!" then completely forget what the lecture was about 30 min later. If I just take like two- or three-word notes, especially placed around some kind of diagram, it allows me to remember a little bit of what was said (and, more importantly, be able to look it up).
I handwrite almost all my college notes except for a few select classes. While it defiantly helps with learning....I have diagraphia and it makes learning so difficult....and iv recently been informed via my doctor I might have diacalculia as well and I might want to get tested.
I really only have 1 downside when it comes to hand written notes....it is not easily searchable compared to text files, and it can be much harder to take notes when their is diagrams or a math problem where the teacher is skipping steps....
This means I really need to go find a second hand review via a video to ensure I know what's going on
Anyone had success with improving a kid's handwriting? My son's writing is 2/10. I myself am only 3/10. With reading and math I am able to help him. I have not found anything effective for penmanship.
A teacher and my parents both tried to improve my penmanship by forcing me to write page and pages of letters.
My handwriting got worse each time. So I don't recommend that.
I think you have to want it to improve, and to value it. And then you have to practice with that in mind. At that age, I was unable to see a reason to improve it, and it was a lot of work, so I didn't put any actual effort into it beyond that torture they were putting me through. (It hurts my hand to write.)
Lately, though, I've considered finally improving it. I think improving it will involve re-learning how to hold a pen and move my arm/hand while writing. They way I do it is basically guaranteed to produce bad results, and I should approach it more like art than utility.
That all said... I still haven't found the energy or resolve for it.
> A teacher and my parents both tried to improve my penmanship by forcing me to write page and pages of letters.
This is a decent tactic if, like you said, you want to improve your handwriting. You have to want it. You have to go slow and form the letters perfectly every time so you develop that muscle memory. I printed pages of a single letter in the font I wanted to imitate and traced the letters. It's a great activity to do while you're sitting in front of the TV.
edit to clarify: the decent tactic is to re-learn how to form your letters IF you want to improve your handwriting. DO NOT force your kids to do so. It will be counter-productive because they won't focus on forming the letters. They'll speed through it to get it done and wind up with worse handwriting than before. As wccrawford and I both said: You have to want it.
I have always had horrible "Penmanship". When I was in 9th grade - the last year of my parochial school, my home room teacher made me retake second grad penmanship. It did not help much. I do think my poor writing style is connected to my ADHD symptoms. Anyhow, a few years back- here on HN people were discussing fountain pens as a way to improve writing. Hee, I now have a bunch of Lamy fountain pens. I think because I spent 70 dollars on a pen, I sometimes slow down a bit and write better. Even if it does not help your kid's writing ability, I think he will enjoy having a cool pen.
I used to write horribly until I took an engineering drawing/drafting course.
Mostly it's just slowing down. Write a little slower and pay more attention to how your words line up and spacing of letters. Read over what you have written and see which letters are hard to read. For letters and numbers that are ambiguous try adding something like a slash through zeroes and a dash through sevens.
If you write a lot this way people will start thinking that you had a computer fill out forms. It also helps a lot if you buy a good pen like a G-2. I find bigger nibs like a 1.6 keep my lines more even.
I remember hearing "back in the day" that boy's cursive was neater than print because they learned it later, and had developed better fine motor skills by that point (and it's easier to learn a new script than unlearn bad habits with an already known script). So maybe wait until he has better fine motor skills and teach him a different writing style?
If he doesn't want to learn the Palmer method (what you probably learned if you grew up in the US), then perhaps Getty-Dubay?
Slow down to do it well, then as the muscle memory improves, the speed can increase.
There are a lot of penmanship videos on YouTube. I fell down that hole one day. They talked about picking a font a training to write in that font. But the kid would have to find the idea of picking the font they will write in compelling enough to train it.
You don’t even need a fountain pen for it to feel nice, for me there are many nice needle point pens at a decent thickness 0.5+ that have a great feel to them. That and a nice Japanese paper notebook like hobonichi and the like and you’re in for a good time
I rarely end up reading what I write or take down in notes it’s mostly a form of recitation for me, what did I remember and how did I structure it in my brain -
Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread brain connectivity - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39364576 - Feb 2024 (191 comments)