I've always struggled with writing by hand primarily because I tend to over-tense my grip on a pencil/pen even with an ergonomic grip attached. I learned to touch type pretty early on, so back in school before they let us bring laptops to class I would sometimes "type" notes and imagine the text of them in my head as I typed. This still helped with my retention compared to just listening and making mental connections between the concepts being introduced.
To this day, if I'm trying to learn something new, I will sometimes "type" on an invisible keyboard if I don't have a pen/paper or a smartphone I can write down specifics on. It doesn't work as well for things like memorizing phone numbers or like support ticket ID numbers, but I've found it helps me ingest knowledge even if it doesn't help as much with raw information the way writing by hand does.
Always found that writing stuff down helps me to remember things better, whether studying something, prepping for an exam, or in general. Didn't even matter if I didn't look at those notes again, it just got "stored" better.
Didn't know he is a lefty too! Fountain pens + lefty is a tough combo; we had to use fountain pens in the 1st grade and my wrist was always stained on the side. Agree with the rollerball angle, Pilot V5 is my go to now...
A corollary to this is, when reading books, mark them up! Don’t be precious with them. Destroy the spine so it’s easier to read, fold pages, write the important stuff inside the front cover of the book. Cross out stuff you disagree with, draw a big circles around the stuff that resonates.
Not only does it make consumption a lot more engaging, it makes a revisit of that book extremely rewarding.
Don’t get caught up trying to figure out the right notation or highlighter color for a line. Just mark them up and later it’ll make sense.
I use a folded computer paper as a book mark and take notes on that with a page number for reference. It preserves the book and makes it easier to find what I want.
I buy used books: it sucks to see someone else's notes scribbled all over the page. It's like a really annoying guy whispering at you with vapid explanations while you're trying to pay attention to a lecture.
"Cross out stuff you disagree with" actually makes me sick.
It also seems useless for understanding and retention, since highlighting is almost always misleading and margin notes are almost always empty. If you want to write notes, get a notebook, which gives you space to write real thoughts down. I use a trapper-keeper.
Your argument is that in order for you to have a better experience the previous owner should not “ruin” the book for you. I’ve read better arguments on bathroom stalls.
No, my argument is that it's totally obnoxious to lend or resell a book that you've written in, and it's a shallow way of taking notes to begin with. It is precisely what Socrates warned us about.
My grandad had a big library of books, but in his obsession of preservation, he wrapped all of their covers in gift wrap paper. It kind of defeated the purpose of having so many books in a library. You weren't able to browse them easily. I should go dive into them to take some some.
In middle school we had to make covers for all our textbooks on the first day of school (it was a school requirement, I guess to get a bit more lifespan out of the books). We used brown paper from old grocery bags.
Of course a lot of kids would then personalize their books with artwork and stickers. I guess it was that generation's equivalent of covering a laptop with stickers.
Michael Stevens (of Vsause fame) copies long quotes into notebooks, and he claims the act of writing it helps him remember. And if it's not worth writing, it's not a good enough quote.
I recently overcame this as I've been reading more of the unread books populating my shelves. I always wanted to keep my books in pristine condition and never wanted to mark them up. Now, I realize they are part of MY collection and marking them up with highlights, underlines, notes, etc., only make them more valued since they contain their intrinsic knowledge from the author as well as my own views. Even if I want to give them to friends to read, they'll see areas that jumped out to me and maybe appreciate some of the additional context or focus I noted as well.
Marginalia is the best! I have a handwritten note about Ayn Rand in my 27 year old copy of Enchridion, a great reminder that she is like chicken pox, better catch her as early as possible. And several books such as I Claudius held together with duct tape. And soy sauce stains in Gargantua and Pantagruel from the place my grad school gf worked. Those count.
A bit of irony, going through old stuff I found a copy of Neal Stephenson's In the Beginning... was the Command Line on top of handwritten running logs from sr yr of college. In that book, there was a ticket stub from the time I was 86ed from an amusement park. (I did not eat enough after training that morning.) I was escorted on a golf cart back to our car where I finished Neal's now charmingly quaint essay with the plastic handle listening to Nirvana.
This was August 2001 and Mac OS X had barely come out. Maybe AI rhymes where Chinese free open-models clean up but someone proprietary figures it out. Which is sad as someone dominant in the ecosystem right now is the equivalent of Gary Kildall.
If I'm really studying a book I'll have an office supply store cut the spine out and make the book spiral bound. It's pretty cheap to do it too, like $10 or something.
Eep, I guess it depends on what kind of learner you are. For me, the notes being in the book, and the book being somewhere on my shelf spatially encodes it into my mind.
Offloading things into a centralized store according to a system not only causes me anxiety but it doesn’t have the same spatial kick.
I used to take notes on loose sheets of paper, fold them, and stuff them into the book between pages. I guess there are lots of ways to build a system.
A few books I've taken enough notes to collect them in a folder. I put section tabs in the book and tabbed dividers into the folder with matching colors. I note the page numbers for each note. Then I shelve that folder to the right of the book it was noting.
not as much as I used to but I still take handwritten notes when reading something I deem worth doing so by some personal semi-rational algorithm. my favorite exercise ~15 years ago was reading People's History of the US and Kissinger's Diplomacy at the same time, and taking notes in the same notebook in parallel columns. Naturally I went into product
Depends on the edition. I lent a book years ago to someone that was destroyed by damp on a window sill. I've never been able to get another copy of it.
A less rare book in a mass market edition would be another thing.
Wow, I can't believe Neal Stephenson of all people writes exclusively by hand. His books are tomes.
I totally buy that this is the case for him. I wonder how much is just what he's used to vs what's actually better. I feel like I write so slow compared to how fast I type that I struggle to put the words together on the paper. I can spurt out something with a keyboard 10x as fast, and then re-review and re-organize and all that.
Knowing that makes a lot of sense. Sometimes his prose can read like a sentence that was started but he’s too much effort in to give up on. It probably helps his writing to do it by hand - you can’t edit quickly on the fly with paper (unless you’re cutting stuff out). I could see this as being part of his process - just write and let the editing happen later.
Whatever the process it is, long as his books may be, it works.
I wonder if fiction writing at that level is like coding. You can learn to type and navigate really fast, but unless you're working on blub software, if you're doing something interesting and novel, you won't actually get to the goal faster. The bottleneck is the ideas, the structure of the story and the development of the characters, amongst many other concerns.
I taught Gore Vidal how to use a computer in 1995. After a week worth of trying to use a PowerBook Duo, he went back to pen and paper. When asked how to improve my writing, he said use a pen and transcribe your favorite author. That I would eventually find the rhythm and style and make it my own.
That's really cool. I read Lincoln when I was around 18 and it has always stuck with me. The books you read become a part of you; they grow your view of the world. Books are the only way we have to capture the experience or mind of another person, and directly transfer not only their words but almost a sliver of the authors soul directly to others. Movies, sure.. But books hook into the imagination and mind.
Very interesting. Hunter S. Thompson described the same technique for learning to write. I'll try it even if it only gets applied to technical blog posts...
For last few months, whenever I am trying to understand a difficult problem or a concept or addressing a complex issue at work or in relationships, I try to write one page by hand. Often it brings clarity or surfaces the core confusion/misunderstanding. I don't know why that works but it has been really useful.
That was a reccomendation from a philosophy professor I had in college. By the end of the semester, I didn't even have to review my notes.
I went back to school at 25, and that moment made me realize why school felt strangely more difficult, and then I remembered that we wrote down everything back then.
Don't underestimate the importance of a pen, ink, and paper you like. I found my pen a decade ago: Lamy Studio, in British Racing Green, with a medium nib. I found my ink not long after, from J Herbin's collection.
It wasn't until I got a nice notebook from Leuchtturm 1917, though, that the ensemble came together and I started looking for excuses to get my kit out and write things down. Since then, I've moved onto notebooks from de Kempen, but the point stands
I'm curious about everyone's opinion on writing "by hand" with a stylus on tablets like the Remarkable, Kindle Scribe, iPad+Pencil, etc.
I like sketching and outlining with pencil and paper, but my handwritten notes are often illegible and disorganized. I know it's partly process and my poor penmanship, but digital surfaces compensate for this with built-in organization, searchability, and easier integration into projects and knowledge bases.
I tried for years to make handwriting on the iPad work, but it never clicked for me. I randomly encountered a reMarkable Paper Pro Move recently, instantly purchased it. For the first time in my life, I no longer tote a paper notebook with me. The software, simplicity, low-latency, form factor, writing feel, everything is absolutely perfect for me.
My handwriting is roughly legible on paper (but getting worse). It is the same on an iPad+pencil with a Paperlike screen cover. It was impossible to read on my Remarkable 2 - the resolution just isn’t there for me.
I think it’s important to have that friction between the stylus and the screen. And if you have that, I am pretty happy with notes on either my iPad or paper.
I think tablet handwriting is fine. I had some six weeks of down time a while back and took advantage of it to go through the Getty-Dubay book Write Now: the Getty-Dubay Program for Handwriting Success to improve my handwriting legibility. There's a website now https://handwritingsuccess.com/ and for your purposes even more relevant, there's a mobile app. I'm not affiliated, in case you're wondering.
As for disorganization, that's kind of the nature of early notes.
There are ways to kind of organize them. One technique I use is writing them on notecards or notecard-sized paper, which I can later shuffle and organize.
> you’re going to get tired faster if your muscles have to exert more force
I like to handwrite, but my right hand gets tired very fast, especially as I got older. I write almost a shorthand style, and it is hard to read, but I value speed of writing things down versus the neatness or readability afterward. The author recommends fountain pen or gel rollerball pen, which I have both tried.
Does anyone have any other advice for preventing fatigue? I've also tried to learn to use my left hand, so I can switch hand when my hand gets tired. But even after months (or years?) of trying, I could never get it to write, or atleast to my satisfaction.
Other posters are providing advice about writing from the shoulder, and writing slower etc which I would agree with. The other thing I would mention is: how tightly do you grasp/hold the pen? Try relaxing the grasp a bit.
(I've noticed this with students I support. In the UK the public exams known as GCSEs and GCEs are written papers, and some adult students who need to take them have similar fatigue problems).
If you're willing to try things like non-dominant hand writing, it may be worth learning something like business cursive. Most of the movement is done with your arm, and it was designed for people who had to handwrite all day for their job.
Don't hold the pen too tightly. Find a pen and paper combination that doesn't require force to write. Ball point pens on cheap notebook paper are notorious for requiring too much force. On quality paper with a good pen the ink will flow effortlessly because of gravity and capillary action. You will only need a light pressure.
I like writing by hand, but I don’t agree with the logic that it’s good because it recruits more areas of the brain. The less effective the medium is, the more of the brain it will recruit; chiseling on a stone tablet is probably a more complex task and it probably gives a more broad stimulus to the brain, but it does not mean it’s such a good idea. I would personally prefer to use a text editor for effective writing and then crochet for fine motor skill.
> Removing friction by using a hard stylus on glass will actually make the process more tiring.
Well since I've never written with a fountain pen, and the type of paper I write on with the fountain pen matters, I'm probably better off picking up the habit with an ipad or the like.
From the source paper:
> Existing literature indicates that connectivity patterns in these brain areas and at such frequencies are crucial for memory formation and for encoding new information and, therefore, are beneficial for learning
I would also be interested in whether the parts lighting up are actually contributing to learning the task at hand. The 2024 paper quoted above didn't mention a test for comprehension. The prior Stanford experiment also reasoned that writing helped with comprehension because students were forced to summarize.
I'd like to see an experiment that forces both groups, typing and writing, to summarize while their brains are scanned. I'd also like to see results from tests for comprehension for each group. I feel like that would make a stronger case for whether the benefit from writing is actually worth it.
This is why I use a reMarkable tablet for my notes. I noticed a few years ago that when I wrote down my notes I actually remembered them more easily. Something about the hand/brain connection helped etch my thoughts more deeply.
I still use Apple Notes, but more as a place to store copy/paste info I want to save or checklists. But for meeting or game design notes? Writing those down 100%.
The Remarkable tablet is so close to what I want. I just wish it was 13".
My iPad is 13" and having a a display about the same size as a sheet of A4/letter paper is nice. It's so nice to have a full size display for marking up pdfs.
Now that I've gotten used to the iPad with Goodnotes, I'm not sure I'd get a 13" Remarkable. I'd probably buy one, but I suspect their notes app would be enough of a downgrade that I would probably return it.
How is the remarkable at converting handwritten notes into text? Especially so that you can search over it?
Yeah, I used to handwrite my notes on paper back in the day, and still do for a couple of important topics, but switched over to putting things in Evernote several years ago. The reason is actually do need to do searches over them quite often, and it’s obviously very difficult to do with handwritten documents.
I know this is true and all but I think a lot of people never really write anything anyways. Texting, random notes, emails. Strange to say but it feels kind of hipster and performative with the technology we have, which kind of makes it hard to enjoy. What I mean is I understand the theory but never have a chance to implement it or even want to.
And the long term studies will show that it’s indeed not good, people will discuss it, and nothing will really change, except that there will be a counter movement, and writing code by hand will become a real craft again.
Somewhat related, I've seen more and more colleges now banning devices in class and reverting to handwritten notes and exams only, presumably due to AI. When I went to college this was actually already done, where many professors, even for CS, made you write code by hand. And it's true, it actually helps you reason better when writing it down over typing it.
> when you write things down by hand you’re recruiting more of your brain, which is a good thing.
I completely agree! Perhaps it's simply for one reason: slowness.
Writing by hand slows down and the brain "breathes", calms down, and the waves of thought flow at their proper pace.
We aren't made to rush always: by slowing down, our brain also has time to better process thoughts and information, one at a time, and each one is given the "time it deserves."
Our brain works best when it's relaxed and has time to make all its connections.
Thinking is, first and foremost, an exercise in slowness.
(ps: I'm also left-handed, I wonder if this also affects the functioning of the brain...).
I have been thinking about that with regards to the new generation, I forget where but I saw a YouTube video interviewing Gen Alpha and how they couldn't recognize calligraphy texts.
I was sad, of course, but at the same time, it made me think if their brain is just being shaped differently. Could it be that this sort of thesis "writing = good" applies to us because we belong to a generation that had our formative memories shaped through that activity?
Is there something inherent to writing that makes it good or is it just a consequence because we did things that way?
I've done Julia Cameron's "morning pages" exercise off and on over the years, write three full pages of flow of consciousness by hand first thing in the morning, and it's shocking how good it is for unlocking ideas and working through problems when done consistently.
I buy nice notebooks and nice pens that are satisfying to use. I practice my handwriting, so the finished work is satisfying to look at. I think it gives me a bit of dopamine boost.
I switched from an Obsidian fanboy to only writing by hand, and I'm never going back.
It seemed preposterous to put notes in something I can't back up or "CTRL+F" search, but I've found that yes, sometimes I spend two minutes looking for a note, but when I do I generally never have to look up that information again... as opposed to things I'd search Obsidian for constantly that seemed to never get stored in my brain.
i like writing by hand, and definitely generate better content / thoughts. I don't like going back through my writing and putting it in electronic form (an no writing on an electronic device (ipad/remarkable etc.) doesn't is not a substitute).
I haven't written cursive in many years, i should try it again but since i'm out of practice i find it takes more time to write than going print. Which of course does lead to hand cramps etc
> If the pen’s ink reservoir is partly empty, so that it contains an air bubble, and if it’s positioned nib down, then, when you go up in an airplane, the bubble will expand as the ambient pressure drops, forcing ink out the nib. Once I figured that out, I got in the habit of making sure my pens were positioned nib up when taking off in an airplane. If I have time I’ll also refill the pen before departure, to minimize the size of the air bubble.
Finally! this was one of those things that bothered me for many years, but not enough to spend time to research :) . Thank you!!
I'm a huge fan of N.S. and what he says might be true, but I have an aversion to writing by hand after being tortured while growing up in the late 80s.
I just couldn't seem to hold a pen or pencil the right way and would always fall behind following along with the rest of the class. I was forced to spend hours at home with worksheets tracing over letters. I was led to believe that if I couldn't write properly I would be a complete failure.
It turns out being able to use a computer and type quickly was a more useful skill.
> I can say that, when writing by hand, one is continually solving a series of small problems having to do with the spacing of words, how letters are connected, the crossing of the letter t (sometimes more than one in the same word) and the dotting of the letters i and j, and how to accomplish all of those things through coordinated movements not just of the fingers but of the whole arm.
Do you think he needs to be a neuroscientist to make this claim?
Appeal to Authority is a logical fallacy. Perverse incentives exist in every domain, and you cannot discount the human factor. The experts can be wrong.
And in this case, Van der Meer's experiment showing more "elaborate" brain activity during handwriting was correlational. The conclusion that this leads to better learning outcomes does not follow.
More to your point: calling "appeal to authority" does not license argument from ignorance. Furthermore, appeal to authority only refers to an authority who is not authoritative in the domain in question.
The experts in the sciences usually back their claims up using citations, and can be disproven through the normal methods of disproving citations. not through "vibes"
To this day, if I'm trying to learn something new, I will sometimes "type" on an invisible keyboard if I don't have a pen/paper or a smartphone I can write down specifics on. It doesn't work as well for things like memorizing phone numbers or like support ticket ID numbers, but I've found it helps me ingest knowledge even if it doesn't help as much with raw information the way writing by hand does.
Didn't know he is a lefty too! Fountain pens + lefty is a tough combo; we had to use fountain pens in the 1st grade and my wrist was always stained on the side. Agree with the rollerball angle, Pilot V5 is my go to now...
Not only does it make consumption a lot more engaging, it makes a revisit of that book extremely rewarding.
Don’t get caught up trying to figure out the right notation or highlighter color for a line. Just mark them up and later it’ll make sense.
"Cross out stuff you disagree with" actually makes me sick.
It also seems useless for understanding and retention, since highlighting is almost always misleading and margin notes are almost always empty. If you want to write notes, get a notebook, which gives you space to write real thoughts down. I use a trapper-keeper.
That's like, elite literary territory though. Let's stick to the discussion on books.
also if you're buying used books, expect them to be used!
Of course a lot of kids would then personalize their books with artwork and stickers. I guess it was that generation's equivalent of covering a laptop with stickers.
A bit of irony, going through old stuff I found a copy of Neal Stephenson's In the Beginning... was the Command Line on top of handwritten running logs from sr yr of college. In that book, there was a ticket stub from the time I was 86ed from an amusement park. (I did not eat enough after training that morning.) I was escorted on a golf cart back to our car where I finished Neal's now charmingly quaint essay with the plastic handle listening to Nirvana.
This was August 2001 and Mac OS X had barely come out. Maybe AI rhymes where Chinese free open-models clean up but someone proprietary figures it out. Which is sad as someone dominant in the ecosystem right now is the equivalent of Gary Kildall.
Offloading things into a centralized store according to a system not only causes me anxiety but it doesn’t have the same spatial kick.
A few books I've taken enough notes to collect them in a folder. I put section tabs in the book and tabbed dividers into the folder with matching colors. I note the page numbers for each note. Then I shelve that folder to the right of the book it was noting.
A less rare book in a mass market edition would be another thing.
I totally buy that this is the case for him. I wonder how much is just what he's used to vs what's actually better. I feel like I write so slow compared to how fast I type that I struggle to put the words together on the paper. I can spurt out something with a keyboard 10x as fast, and then re-review and re-organize and all that.
Whatever the process it is, long as his books may be, it works.
I see this style of informational writing all over the place now.
https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2017/10/02/how-ben-franklin...
I went back to school at 25, and that moment made me realize why school felt strangely more difficult, and then I remembered that we wrote down everything back then.
It wasn't until I got a nice notebook from Leuchtturm 1917, though, that the ensemble came together and I started looking for excuses to get my kit out and write things down. Since then, I've moved onto notebooks from de Kempen, but the point stands
I like sketching and outlining with pencil and paper, but my handwritten notes are often illegible and disorganized. I know it's partly process and my poor penmanship, but digital surfaces compensate for this with built-in organization, searchability, and easier integration into projects and knowledge bases.
I think it’s important to have that friction between the stylus and the screen. And if you have that, I am pretty happy with notes on either my iPad or paper.
As for disorganization, that's kind of the nature of early notes. There are ways to kind of organize them. One technique I use is writing them on notecards or notecard-sized paper, which I can later shuffle and organize.
This. Don't use pencil or normal ballpoint bell with thick ink. Good gel pens are really good and not that much more expensive.
I like to handwrite, but my right hand gets tired very fast, especially as I got older. I write almost a shorthand style, and it is hard to read, but I value speed of writing things down versus the neatness or readability afterward. The author recommends fountain pen or gel rollerball pen, which I have both tried.
Does anyone have any other advice for preventing fatigue? I've also tried to learn to use my left hand, so I can switch hand when my hand gets tired. But even after months (or years?) of trying, I could never get it to write, or atleast to my satisfaction.
(I've noticed this with students I support. In the UK the public exams known as GCSEs and GCEs are written papers, and some adult students who need to take them have similar fatigue problems).
Edit: another poster has mentioned grip
Well since I've never written with a fountain pen, and the type of paper I write on with the fountain pen matters, I'm probably better off picking up the habit with an ipad or the like.
From the source paper:
> Existing literature indicates that connectivity patterns in these brain areas and at such frequencies are crucial for memory formation and for encoding new information and, therefore, are beneficial for learning
I would also be interested in whether the parts lighting up are actually contributing to learning the task at hand. The 2024 paper quoted above didn't mention a test for comprehension. The prior Stanford experiment also reasoned that writing helped with comprehension because students were forced to summarize.
I'd like to see an experiment that forces both groups, typing and writing, to summarize while their brains are scanned. I'd also like to see results from tests for comprehension for each group. I feel like that would make a stronger case for whether the benefit from writing is actually worth it.
I still use Apple Notes, but more as a place to store copy/paste info I want to save or checklists. But for meeting or game design notes? Writing those down 100%.
My iPad is 13" and having a a display about the same size as a sheet of A4/letter paper is nice. It's so nice to have a full size display for marking up pdfs.
Now that I've gotten used to the iPad with Goodnotes, I'm not sure I'd get a 13" Remarkable. I'd probably buy one, but I suspect their notes app would be enough of a downgrade that I would probably return it.
- whose gonna tell it to em?
- dont worry, the long term studies are going to pick this up big time 5 years from now
I completely agree! Perhaps it's simply for one reason: slowness.
Writing by hand slows down and the brain "breathes", calms down, and the waves of thought flow at their proper pace.
We aren't made to rush always: by slowing down, our brain also has time to better process thoughts and information, one at a time, and each one is given the "time it deserves."
Our brain works best when it's relaxed and has time to make all its connections.
Thinking is, first and foremost, an exercise in slowness.
(ps: I'm also left-handed, I wonder if this also affects the functioning of the brain...).
I was sad, of course, but at the same time, it made me think if their brain is just being shaped differently. Could it be that this sort of thesis "writing = good" applies to us because we belong to a generation that had our formative memories shaped through that activity?
Is there something inherent to writing that makes it good or is it just a consequence because we did things that way?
There's also the pens that use cameras and special papers like livescribe (I think?) but I didn't love those either.
I buy nice notebooks and nice pens that are satisfying to use. I practice my handwriting, so the finished work is satisfying to look at. I think it gives me a bit of dopamine boost.
It seemed preposterous to put notes in something I can't back up or "CTRL+F" search, but I've found that yes, sometimes I spend two minutes looking for a note, but when I do I generally never have to look up that information again... as opposed to things I'd search Obsidian for constantly that seemed to never get stored in my brain.
Neal, if you're reading this, will you ever visit Germany on a book signing tour?
I would hazard a guess it falls below knowing Spanish but above folding origami cranes.
All my childhood I optimized my cursive writing for speed. Most teachers I had only valued note taking, not thinking about what is written.
Finally! this was one of those things that bothered me for many years, but not enough to spend time to research :) . Thank you!!
I just couldn't seem to hold a pen or pencil the right way and would always fall behind following along with the rest of the class. I was forced to spend hours at home with worksheets tracing over letters. I was led to believe that if I couldn't write properly I would be a complete failure.
It turns out being able to use a computer and type quickly was a more useful skill.
Aaaaaand time to tune out.
> I can say that, when writing by hand, one is continually solving a series of small problems having to do with the spacing of words, how letters are connected, the crossing of the letter t (sometimes more than one in the same word) and the dotting of the letters i and j, and how to accomplish all of those things through coordinated movements not just of the fingers but of the whole arm.
Do you think he needs to be a neuroscientist to make this claim?
More to your point: calling "appeal to authority" does not license argument from ignorance. Furthermore, appeal to authority only refers to an authority who is not authoritative in the domain in question.