CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

How Technology is Rewriting the Way We Write

The manuscript pages of James Joyce’s Ulysses with the original text in ink and Joyce’s edits in crayon.

When was the last time you wrote something by hand? Was it a stylus signature at a checkout stand, a kitchen calendar reminder, or a note jotted down on a scrap of paper? These days, writing largely lives in the digital realm. Despite its advantages, handwriting has been pushed to the fringes of everyday life.

Historian Christine Rosen, author of The Extinction of Experience, explains that handwriting is a vital embodied experience that allows us to make sense of our world. In a Guardian article, Rosen points to calligraphist Bernard Maisner, who “argues that calligraphy, and handwriting more broadly, is ‘not meant to reproduce something over and over again. It’s meant to show the humanity, the responsiveness and variation within.’”

Is the decline of handwriting an inevitable loss or a harmless evolution? To answer this question, we trace the historical significance of handwriting, investigate its cognitive impact, reflect on its cultural meaning, and explore its future relevance.

A Brief History of Handwriting

Unlike speech, which is an innate capability of the human brain, writing is an invention. Just like modern digital tools, such as computers and the internet, writing systems—from logographic to alphabetic—were invented, albeit thousands of years ago. The oldest form of writing known to us is cuneiform, a script developed in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) around 3400 to 3300 BCE, with Egyptian hieroglyphs likely following around 3000 BCE.

Although cuneiform was most commonly imprinted on clay, Egyptian hieroglyphs appeared on a variety of media—carved on stone and written in ink on papyrus. Much later, in medieval Europe, scribes trained on wax tablets before moving on to parchment as they learned textualis, a Gothic writing style.

Throughout history, writing has maintained an aesthetic component. From calligraphy to Spencerian script, penmanship is a form of artistic expression that encourages writers to wield their creativity to capture detail, contrast, curvature, and negative space. In describing Platt Rogers Spencer’s inspiration for Spencerian script, master penman Michael Sull says:

You should be able to create visible language on paper that has so much personal expression that whoever reads it could understand how you felt, what you meant. Because everybody is different, it allowed people to write the way they wanted to write.

You should be able to create visible language on paper that has so much personal expression that whoever reads it could understand how you felt, what you meant. Because everybody is different, it allowed people to write the way they wanted to write.

Other techniques prioritized function over form. The Palmer Method, first proposed in 1894, facilitated speed, legibility, and ease through fluid arm movements rather than finger movement, making it a helpful method for people with fine motor challenges.

Around the same time as the introduction of the Palmer Method, a new technology was transforming the world, ushering in a significant shift from handwriting to typing. With the typewriter, speed and efficiency were prioritized yet again—this time to meet the demands of industrial growth. But within a century, typewriters were surmounted by word processors and digital computers, solving several issues, including the ability to revise, store, and share written information more easily. In the 21st century, mobile technologies have come to dominate; people now use laptops, tablets, and smartphones to type.

Handwriting and the Brain

On the surface, the written word is valued for its role in sharing and recording information, but it serves a multitude of cognitive functions. In addition to improving fine motor skills, writing by hand stimulates greater comprehension and neural connectivity. A 2024 study published in Frontiers in Psychology found that, compared to typewriting, handwriting showed more “widespread brain connectivity” in areas associated with learning and memory. Speaking about the study, neuroscientist Ramesh Balasubramaniam told Science News, “It shows that there’s more involvement of these brain regions when you’re handwriting, which might give you some specific advantages.” He added that the reasons for these differences in brain activity warrant further research—an opinion echoed in a 2025 commentary on the study.

A greater understanding of these mechanisms will also better inform educational policy. Handwriting’s link to literacy is another reason why researchers recommend that early childhood education programs include handwriting instruction. A 2025 study published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology revealed that the development of reading skills is critically dependent on handwriting. “[T]he physical act of forming letters by hand enhances the mental........

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