Nate Hoffelder is the founder and editor of The Digital Reader. He has been blogging about indie authors since 2010 while learning new tech skills weekly. He fixes author sites, and shares what he learns on The Digital Reader's blog. In his spare time, he fosters dogs for A Forever Home, a local rescue group.
Nice infographic. Preaching the choir 🙂 i ‘ve always handwritten my essays before typing them. I wish Wacom would make writing pads i’d prefer to write and the software convertit to text.
What about all the down sides: writer’s cramp, lack of backup, not being able to read your own handwriting, fire hazard, no encryption, no security, to name but a few.
Seriously, nobody is going back to paper and pencil. Studies are needed to figure out what works in our digital world instead of going retro.
iPadOS does a credible job of converting handwriting to text. So to the degree it is neurologically beneficial to make your hand do gymnastics, you do not need to consume writing materials.
I’d say it doesn’t matter if you use a sheet of paper or a screen and converting software. I assume the brain works the same way in both cases. Using your hands, concentrating etc are important. Converting handwriting to text just helps you do some things faster.
But there are a lot of people who do use pencil and paper. 😉
Too bad I can’t use my small fountain pen collection when writing on a screen 🙂 That’s one of the joys of writing by hand on paper. Perhaps the big fountain pen manufacturers could produce one. That’d be nice.
This is one of those ‘Whatever works best for you’ type things.
I’m one of those that the screen is the only way I’m going to write. Can’t read my own chicken scratch six months later, no room on the paper for all the corrections and added words a reread sees it needs.
So it’s only good for ‘you’ if it works better for ‘you’ than doing it some other way.
Nate
Nice infographic. Preaching the choir 🙂 i ‘ve always handwritten my essays before typing them. I wish Wacom would make writing pads i’d prefer to write and the software convertit to text.
xavier
What about all the down sides: writer’s cramp, lack of backup, not being able to read your own handwriting, fire hazard, no encryption, no security, to name but a few.
Seriously, nobody is going back to paper and pencil. Studies are needed to figure out what works in our digital world instead of going retro.
iPadOS does a credible job of converting handwriting to text. So to the degree it is neurologically beneficial to make your hand do gymnastics, you do not need to consume writing materials.
I’d say it doesn’t matter if you use a sheet of paper or a screen and converting software. I assume the brain works the same way in both cases. Using your hands, concentrating etc are important. Converting handwriting to text just helps you do some things faster.
But there are a lot of people who do use pencil and paper. 😉
Tom S,
Too bad I can’t use my small fountain pen collection when writing on a screen 🙂 That’s one of the joys of writing by hand on paper. Perhaps the big fountain pen manufacturers could produce one. That’d be nice.
xavier
This is one of those ‘Whatever works best for you’ type things.
I’m one of those that the screen is the only way I’m going to write. Can’t read my own chicken scratch six months later, no room on the paper for all the corrections and added words a reread sees it needs.
So it’s only good for ‘you’ if it works better for ‘you’ than doing it some other way.