Typing Is Better Than Handwriting, Here’s Why
Benjamin Domine
Handwriting is a great way to get a record of things, convey ideas, and send messages to people. But is it the best? Back before computers and typewriters, people would handwrite things to get their notes written or their ideas conveyed. But now that the world has entered the technological age handwriting is starting to become less than optimal. Handwriting is useful, but it is being overtaken by typing. Typing is much more convenient and useful, and everyone should always have a choice on whether they type things or handwrite them.
If you happen to have bad handwriting, typing can allow you to level the playing field. A study conducted by Lynda R. Markham has shown that having bad handwriting can hurt your grades, even if it’s not supposed to. In this study several teachers were each given one of two assignments, and asked to grade it. Both of the assignments given out were the same, except one was written in better handwriting than the other. The assignment was supposed to be graded based on the content, not the handwriting, but the submission with the better handwriting tended to be graded higher than the one with bad handwriting. If this assignment was typed instead of written by hand, there would be no handwriting difference to worry about and therefore, the assignments would get the same grades. This is important because lots of the time, students can’t help bad handwriting. If you weren’t a student, maybe someone writing a resume to try and get a job, type it! A boss might judge you for bad handwriting, but not with typing!
Typing is also much easier to export and send to people. When you write a book or another piece of writing and you want to get someone’s feedback, you have to put it through a photocopier or something similar and mail it to them or just hand it to them personally. Once they get it, if they want to make edits, they have to make it on their copy and then get it back to you. Digitally, this entire process is much simpler and quicker. If you type your document instead of handwriting it, then to show it to someone, you can just email it to them. You can even use other software to allow people to edit your document directly. Typing is just so much more convenient.
Lots of people say that handwriting is better than typing because you are more likely to remember what you wrote than if you typed it. This is helpful because if you were taking notes in a class, you would want to remember what you wrote better. Handwriting would be better than typing in this case because you would remember your notes better, right? Not really. Although you would remember the notes you wrote pretty well, because of how slow note taking can be, you have to be pretty selective of what you write and while you are writing you might miss something else. With typing, you can be much faster, and you can put more notes down. Once you have your notes saved digitally, you can then review them on your own time, and remember them just as well. You might miss important things while taking handwritten notes. However, with typing, you could impress your teacher by how much you know, because you reviewed your notes after class. Which would you choose?
All in all, typing has many advantages over handwriting, through many different areas. In a school setting, typing can level the playing field and improve your grades. Typing can also improve the quality of your notes, and allow you to write down more. Although people may think handwriting is better in a note-taking scenario, typing allows you to write down more. And finally, typing is so much easier to share and export. Everyone should have a chance to type things instead of handwriting them.
