Denis: Writing is on the wall

Mar 6 2009 Huddersfield Daily Examiner

IT was with shock that I read that an American author has predicted that handwriting will be a lost art by the next generation.

Kitty Burns Florey says in her book Script and Scribble: A Defence of Penmanship, “There’s a widespread belief that in a digital world, forming letters on paper with a pen is pointless and obsolete …

“ I am part of the last generation for whom handwriting was taught as a vital skill.”

Handwriting in some schools is already being replaced by keyboard instruction and she predicts that in the future, the only people to write will be those who keep a diary.

This is appalling, I thought. Bring back the quill and parchment. Shakespeare will be turning in his grave.

And then I realised that I, too, am guilty of keyboarding rather than handwriting.

The fact is that I can write faster on a keyboard: my fingers keep up with my brain easier. If Shakespeare had had a keyboard instead of lumpy parchment and a quill pen with a propensity to blot in the middle of a soliloquy, he might have written even more plays and sonnets.

I wrote my first book in longhand, typing up the pages each day, correcting them again in longhand and typing them up again. It was a long process.

Hallelujah, I said, when computers arrived. I could put my words straight on a screen and correct them without industrial quantities of Tippex and discarding amounts of wasted paper equivalent to a small rain forest.

Like all journalists, I still use a pen to take notes but letters are either emailed or, if posted, they are printed from my computer.

It’s sad but I think Ms Florey is correct. The only handwriting that will be practised by future generations will be by diarists.