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Excerpt:
People often credit my good handwriting to my Catholic school education—like a nun with a ruler and a taste for corporal punishment perfected my penmanship. But that’s not why. It’s because of my mom. An engineer by trade, she can execute the kind of perfect block letters that only come with years of working on a drawing board. As a kid, I worked to mimic her print as well as her incredibly ornate cursive. I don’t practice those skills nearly enough as an adult, though: As a reporter, speed trumps beauty when it comes to taking notes. Now, with so much of my job being done on a keyboard, I worry even that scrawl is at risk.
Mine is not an isolated devolution. Parents, educators, and fellow penmanship advocates have been lamenting the end of handwriting for years. Email began edging out cards and letters decades ago. Then smartphones hit the market, and our reliance on paper notes, wall calendars, and Post-it reminders dwindled. In US public schools, the focus has shifted from handwriting to typing, as more and more kids are exposed to iPads and computers in tandem with pencils.
