Writing is fun, but writing by hand is an art, and an important cognitive skill.
by Cherene de Bruyn
PUBLISHED: 20 august 2025 on Substack
There is a certain pleasure that comes from writing things out by hand. Nothing beats being on the receiving end of a personally addressed handwritten letter (while few and far between). We find joy in this experience, probably because we recognise that writing by hand takes a lot of effort.
Writing is a craft. It consists of the careful construction of a sentence, where each word is knitted together with clear precision. Writing by hand, however, something we regrettable do less of in this digital age, is not only a craft but an incredibly important tool in the intellectual pursuit and communication of knowledge.
Within human history, writing is a skill that humans developed to help us communicate. It might have started as Petroglyphs or scribbles on a wall, but it developed into pictograms and letters, sharing our ideas. In our repertoire, writing is one of only a handful of recently developed skills that don’t directly relate to our fitness or species survival. Other similar skills include mathematics and reading, for example.
Funny, however, even though it’s been such an important and pivotal skill, we are doing less of it. As a PhD, it is almost impossible and inevitable that you will engage in typing instead of physical writing for a big part of your day. Pushing buttons and sending communications across the wireless line we call the internet. Much of our modern world has pretty much evolved around the pushing of buttons. Most likely due to the convenience and ease of it. Small squares printed on plastic, armed with code, convey complex messages in a second. While this has allowed us to convey messages instantly, it has come at a cost.
Access to the internet, knowledge is literally at the tips of our fingers. This means that PhD students today have access to far more knowledge than any generation before. We are almost overwhelmed by it. It is sometimes a struggle to keep up to date with recent publications and to digest scholarly work. Armed with fancy pants Zettelkastens and second brains, many PhDs are tackling this project one digital note at a time.
I recently, however, have started wondering whether I should be going back to basics. Writing things out by hand. And not in the grocery shopping bullet list kind of way. In proper, good old-fashioned long form. Pen and paper never failed anyone. So, while an old idea, for my cognitive development (not getting any younger here, but hopefully wiser) and for my pleasure, it might be a good one.
A recent study from Italy has shown that the benefits of writing by hand far outweigh the benefits of typing. It was found that writing not only increases students’ ability to retain information, but also their concentration. Something every PhD student needs.
Writing by hand takes focus. You have to concentrate on what it is you want to write, the tone, and the tense, but also on the shape and size of the letters. It requires far more fine motor and cognitive skills than typing ever could. When we write something, we also engage with the content more deeply, which probably helps us remember it. The lack of engagement from typing is probably why many students struggle to remember information copied and pasted in MS Word documents (been there, done that).
Lastly, writing is intimate. It’s a reflection of our current physical, emotional, and mental state. The slant, the pressure, and size of the letters all tell a story- our story. It would be a shame to lose this skill, this art, just for the sake of convenience.
According to Aristotle, “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” So I guess to know myself, I should write. Which is what I intend to do. The pen is, after all, mightier than the sword... and the keyboard, it would seem.
Stay curious. Stay kind. Begin again – rewritten!
BruynChild