Is it cognitively different?
I don’t care. They’ll take away my keyboard from my cold, dead hands.
4 thoughts on “Writing Versus Typing”
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Is it cognitively different?
I don’t care. They’ll take away my keyboard from my cold, dead hands.
Comments are closed.
Was discussing writing with SF author Larry Niven some years ago (it’s a long story); he opined that he wrote differently in longhand than on a keyboard, but attributed it to using two hands while typing and hence both sides of the brain. Anecdata, I know…
Cthulhu,
That clears something up for me. I’m using both sides of my brain when typwriting, one when handwriting, and neither when using the Dragon voice writing.
I’ve long considered typing superior to handwriting in terms of expression. It allows me to put my thoughts down at approximately the rate of conversation, and so I can compose thoughts in the form of an inner monologue, and set them down immediately. It makes my writing more resemble my natural voice. (It also has the annoying effect of having me occasionally transcribe conversations I hear that override my inner monologue as I type.)
I still take my notes at meetings in a lab notebook, and they are still somewhat legible (though decreasingly so as I get older). My handwriting has degenerated into a mish-mash of printing and cursive, the latter invoked automatically when speed becomes important. I find that taking notes by hand allows me more “presence” in the meeting itself. In other words, I remember the meeting itself more clearly. When note-taking with a computer, I get a very complete transcript, but have almost no memory of the events at the meeting. It’s kind of like video recording or filming an event. You lose out on the experience to a large extent.
The remaining point-counterpoint arguments in the article all struck me as silly or idiotic. But the most frightening statement was: “I have to tell you, I can’t remember the last time I read the constitution,” countered Steve Graham, a professor of education at Arizona State University.
That’s certainly evident.
Isn’t this a little dated? People have been typing for a long time. The piece would be more relevant if it looked at the differences between typing with all of your fingers, much like playing a piano, and typing with your thumbs on a tablet or smartphone.