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On the gadget front, I really love the paperlike screen protector for the iPad. This combined with the Apple Pencil made a huge difference in the usability of my iPad for writing/drawing. I still prefer to write on paper, but it’s really great for things like my writing group where we generally meet over zoom & I can give the author a marked up manuscript (with multicolor notes).

I’m also opposed to getting too precious about writing tools. So many people have drawers full of fancy notebooks with something on the first few pages and the rest empty. Get something and use it. Don’t matter if it’s a dollar-store spiral notebook or a fancy Leuchturm 1917 notebook, just as long as you use it. Same with the writing utensil. Pencil? Ballpoint pen? Whatever. I find these days I prefer to write using a cheap mechanical pencil (the kind they sell in bags of 20 at the supermarket), but I’ll use whatever.

I used to be really precious about these things. I only used college-ruled 9½×6 150-page spiral bound notebooks and wrote in 0.4mm fine-point felt tip pen. Did all my first drafts by hand. It ended up being an excuse to not finish stuff. I do most of my first drafts typing now, because it lets me get s⸻ done (although I still take notes by hand because that helps me remember what I took notes on better).

I don’t buy the cursive thing, mostly because I write slower in cursive than in print (although I have a handful of ligatures and abbreviations I use to speed up some things).

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.

Edit: I think the broader point that some of you may be missing is that I’m not prescribing a particular form of notetaking. I’m saying that reading is made more rewarding with active engagement. How you best engage is up to you.

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.

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.

> "don't use a gadget"

I agree with this but for a different reason than what the author gives.

When you write in a notebook you can see where what you are writing is within the notebook (e.g. ~1/3 of the way through, etc). That seems like a small thing but I think it really helps with anchoring the memory when writing, as well as with referencing it later. And of course you can also add all sorts of tabs and page markers to help even more.

The same is true when reading a book.

As a child I was diagnosed with a condition known as dysgraphia, which makes it difficult for me to make my hand write what my mind wants it to without straining myself. Typing doesn't seem to be as affected for me for some reason.

Sometimes I'll skip whole letters in a word without thinking and need to go back fill it in. Sometimes my baselines will drift as I write a sentence despite the paper _being lined_. Cursive is nearly impossible for me without extraordinary effort, despite me thinking it beautiful and wishing to improve my abilities there.

Dysgraphia for me makes it difficult to write for extended periods of time, and results in very poor handwriting. In fact, the reason I first got a computer as a little kid was so that I could type school assignments, and this was in elementary school in the 90s when everything was still handwritten where I grew up. I even typed my math homework with awkward notation in College (my professors hated me).

All of that said, I still find that I agree with the sentiment of this post, and I do keep notebook. It's laborious for me to write, but I still find that the intentionality and forethought that it demands produces (think about it, you're committing something immutable in the real world with ink and paper) something we're losing: deeper introspection. I know this might sound silly or pretentious like hipsters and vinyl records, but I think there's something in physical writing worth keeping despite its inconveniences.

I've always been pretty skeptical of the data which says handwriting is better for learning than typing. Yes, handwriting causes more brain activity, but just because your brain is doing more does not mean it's doing the right thing!

For example, if I asked you to code FizzBuzz while riding a unicycle, I'm pretty sure you would show more brain activity than if you were just sitting at a desk. This does not mean it's an efficient way to program, nor that coding on a unicycle is better for learning.

I know lots of people do say they learn better when handwriting, just like some people say they learn better while going for a walk. This does not translate into a universal theory of learning.

I loved reading the writing-setup guidance. After a lot of writing myself (mostly throwaway stuff) I've settled on a fountain pen with a small stack of decent printer paper on top a stainless steel clipboard. I skip the clip and use four magnets on corners of the paper to hold it in place. The magnets are either small enough or slide around easily enough to give me the space I need to write but hold enough to keep the paper in place. Importantly, the magnets don't cause any ripples or rising of the paper as the clip does over it's backing. Writing on this setup feels uniformly smooth.

Once I settled on this method, other writing setups felt unsatisfying. Maybe others will enjoy this setup as much as I do :)

I find his dismissal of iPad writing to be unconvincing. He talks about how we have calibrated our writing utensils over centuries to involve the proper amount of friction, and how that knowledge goes out the window when you're writing on an iPad.

That may be true, but it's not like you can't just re-acclimate to the experience of writing on an iPad. Most people don't handwrite much, period, so if they start handwriting again they're going to have to have an adjustment period either way.

I personally would think that the the benefits of digital writing (searchability, portability, infinite canvas, handwriting cleanup, digitization) would outweigh his friction quibbles. I personally don't find it to be tiring to write on an iPad, even without a screen protector (which some people use to increase friction). Also, e-paper devices tend to have more friction-y feedback, but he doesn't address this at all when dismissing all "gadgets" outright.

I always wrote by hand - probably because I spent over a decade in academia dealing with equations. I always have a pen in my pocket (without a pocket protector!)

About a decade ago I went back to writing with fountain pens after a nearly two decade hiatus. Oh, the joy!

But very sad he has no (real) tips on dealing with hand fatigue - other than to write in cursive. I always had hand fatigue for writing long stretches of prose - even back in my school days. A few years ago, I simply had to change how I grip the pen to reduce the pain, but I still can't write many pages without significant pain and the need for breaks. I can't imagine writing a whole novel that way.

Also, I wish he told us how he gets that handwritten stuff into digital form. Does he just mail handwritten stuff to the publishers?

In the past, I'd write twice: Once by hand, and then I'd type up anything worth saving to get it in digital form. A royal pain!

Then with Whisper and LLMs, life got a lot better. I would simply read what I'd handwritten, and get an LLM to clean it up. I only occasionally needed to fix it up after that.

Now LLMs are so good at it that I simply take a picture and send it to the LLM for transcribing.

I don't care how much people hate AI - for me it has quite literally reduced physical pain in my life.

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.

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’m 2.5 years through college in pencil and paper. I’m 45 and the Apple Pencil sucks compared to regular paper and pencil. It was fun for the procreate course but I would never depend on it for actual note taking. My retention is off the charts compared to my fellow students who are largely not taking notes that I can tell, at least when they’re younglings rather than my middle aged self. Apparently the biggest problem with modern students and note-taking is that they cannot handwrite rapidly because they never learned cursive.

Don’t be involuntarily incapable like your peers, kids. If your school didn’t teach you cursive, teach yourself ASAP. Not calligraphy, not oblique italic roundhand, just pick a cursive and do an entire drill book end to end and make sure to take hand breaks whenever it hurts for 5min.

The core idea is really solid, but isnt half the article about finidng the right type of paper and taking care of fountain pens? I don't think my setup (free notebooks from events + ballpoint pens) will reduce yourt brain activity compared to a fancy fountain pen and fancy italian paper.

Wacom tablets come with a stylus that simulates a pencil lead.

It actually wears down over time which may sound like a bug/trying to get you to buy more but I have to say that it really does feel like using a pen. There is just enough drag to give you the sense of moving without it feeling like drawing on glass (like an iPad).

A lot of people reading this may say "But I'm a SWE, not an artist. Why would I ever need this?" My response is that if you ever used a whiteboard and now you work remotely, you would be surprised how much faster meetings can go when you can quickly draw out a data flow. I'm a DevOps/SRE and I've also used it during outages to explain to management or other teams "ok, here is how it's supposed to work and here is what's broken"

If you get one, I highly recommend the Medium [0]. The Small is very portable but feels a bit cramped and the Large is too big for someone who isn't using it all the time. The Medium is just big enough to be comfortable but easy to put aside when you are using the keyboard.

0 - https://amzn.to/4bbT6lM

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 don’t know about the brain but it’s good for the final results in my experience coding, writing and composing (orchestral music). The results are better and it takes less time if I start with pen and paper before “committing” to the computer. One of my favorite authors Jennifer Egan also writes fiction on paper (non-fiction articles still on the computer). More thoughts: https://www.phpied.com/starting-in-the-analog-domain/

I love handwriting. I do daily logs of my workday. I just write what’s happening, what I’m doing during the day, what tasks are coming in, and so on. Surprisingly, it works well for a person with ADHD. It’s a method to ground myself and avoid slipping into ADHD hyperfocus.

The only problem I have is doing it comfortably. My desk is cluttered with a keyboard, laptop, and monitor. There’s barely any room to write with proper posture, and shuffling things around every time just isn’t practical

Having tried gel rollerball and fountain pens, I always end up going back to clutch pencils with soft leads.

The author dismisses all pencils because he has to press down hard to use them, but I don't press down any more than I would with a fountain pen.

Being able to erase is also a bonus. Not to mention the ASMR sound!

I'm a convert to the idea of just having a cup full of Bic Cristal (cheap, ubiquitous, reliable, replaceable, 76 year old design) ball point pens. Whenever I temporarily misplace one, I just grab another from the cup as I find them. When I'm cleaning up, they all go back to the cup. However, his point about how hard you have to push to write is making me reconsider. On the other hand, I'm also not writing 42 inch high stacks of manuscripts like him.

I don't doubt the premise, but this sounds like another in a long series of Doing X May Delay Onset of Alzheimers articles.

Most of which includes the author's favorite mental task, food, or exercise.

- coding without an LLM is also good for your brain

- 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'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. Sometimes I would type out the full detailed notes and then by hand write out tiny personal shorthand bullet points that would help me recall the general point.

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.

Now all of that said, I have also found, like Neal Stephenson, that a high quality, low friction pen on notebook paper tends to feel the best and produce the least cramping. To this day, when I absolutely need to take handwritten notes, I use a Sharpie Rollerball 0.5 black pen with a small notebook, primarily for D&D (and other TTRPG) prep-work, so that I can recall specifics off the top of my head better while improvising.

> Pains me to say it, but rollerball gel pens are about as good as fountain pens on this front.

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 have used fountain pens for the past 30 years. To me, writing with a good fountain, pen and quality paper feels like an air hockey puck floating on an air hockey table, smooth and effortless, and it allows me to get into the zone and think much better than I can by typing and to a lesser extent writing with other types of pens. Whenever I have something really important that requires deep thought I always use fountain pens. They do require maintenance in the form of periodically cleaning them, but the benefits of improved thinking outweigh the minimal maintenance cost.They are inexpensive and I find the quality of the paper is also important which I did not originally appreciate. Personally, I like Pilot fountain Pens, which start at about $15-$20, and Maruman paper. Both are readily available on Amazon or from specialized sources.

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.

Back in uni, I used to write down notes both in class and during my own revision. It truly helped me pass tests. My go to was the Pomodoro technique. 25 minutes of reading and writing then 5 minutes of rest. Did this for four 25 minute sessions. By the end of the day I had short notes of what I had read that day.

As an academic, I concur with the findings. However, some points for discussion:

1. I don’t believe iPad doesn’t offer the same benefits of writing with pen on paper. I mean iPad writing can be made to be almost as realistic as pen on paper with good accessories. It can be slow, doesn’t waste papers, you can edit, color code it, annotate in a way that’s backed up. I definitely like writing on paper, but I don’t see too much of a difference with iPad.

2. I absolutely love using Pilot V5 RT pens, and haven’t found something that is as smooth and satisfying when put on paper. What are your favorite pens? Are they available on JetPens for trying? Thanks!

> 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've no idea on the state of research about this topic but I've always wondered if this really has to do with the locomotion side of it or if it's more about the fact that writing by hand takes a bit more effort and time.

For example, for taking math notes it's easier for me to write by hand rather than take notes in my laptop (because writing LaTeX takes time). If I spend more time on my notes in my laptop, would that improve retention?

Since this is more about tools than the purpose I’d like to add my favorites:

Pilot friction pens - the four color versions. I find multicolored notes great and they are erasable.

Muji spine notebooks - hit the perfect balance between cheap and nice to write on. For me, a moleskin becomes “too nice to waste on this meeting” - the spine version lays flat and it is easy to rip out a paper if someone needs a sheet or you are really unhappy to keep some scribbles around.

It scores bonus point for cardboard cover making it easy to write on the outside

Added bonus points for no spills, blobs or airplane worries.

> 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.

This is why Microsoft created Tablet PC and later Surface with handwriting pen: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/surfaceitpro/thinki...

Go a bit further and use pencil or charcoal so you can smell the wood and lead and feel the texture of the drawing surface, helping your brain make more connections.

It also allows you to make more mistakes, which can lead to surprising directions.

And the team who makes the most mistakes usually *wins*!

See also:

The Hand - How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture By Frank R. Wilson

Drawing on the Right Side of The Brain by Betty Edwards

Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court by John Wood

You Matter More Than You Think by Karen O’Brien with illustrations by Tone Bjordam

I write by hand to hack my productivity.

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.

Does anyone here handwrite a blog? I've been thinking about doing that, but I'd be interested in how people accomplish it. Personally, I'd like this to be a hobby that gets me away from screens, so I'm looking to focus more on handwriting and minimize how much I'd need to interact with a digital device.

"Paper Website" seems appealing, but I haven't tried it yet: https://paperwebsite.com/

I’ve recently gone back to writing by hand, at least for text that is of a reasonable length. The workflow that works for me is a third-party app on my iPad that converts my handwriting to digital text that I can then paste somewhere.

I’m sure, as the author says, it’s not as good as the real deal of writing with an actual pen, but I need it to be digital text eventually and don’t want to waste a lot of paper. I have found that I’m more creative and enjoy writing more.

This is a good pen: https://schneiderpen.com/uk/ballpoint-pen/slider-rave/132503

I was filling notebooks too quickly and didn’t know what to do with them so I switched to a Kindle Scribe. It’s more expensive than a bunch of nice paper notebooks but it’s worked well for me. I export my handwritten notes for safe keeping and can have AI conversations with them as material. I also tried Kindle HD tablets, which worked just as well, but I got a lot of eye strain since I also work on a computer all day.

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 was cleaning my office a couple of days ago and found stacks upon stacks of paper. I've had a habit for over a decade of taking printer paper, folding it half length-wise, and scribbling notes on it as I work. I use it like a temporary scratch pad. It is an ingrained habit at this point, as soon as I have difficult focused work to do I reach for the paper and pen. Urgent site-wide outage? Start scribbling. Big feature decomposition? Start scribbling.

So I have this massive stack of notes that I glimpse at before shredding or whatever. Nothing of permanent value, nothing that I look at even 24 hours after it is written. But the sheer volume of the writing like that I do surprises me ever time I clean it out. It's like a novella sized stack of paper with server names, sketchy diagrams, peoples names, dates, commit hashes, debug messages. Lots and lots of lists. Things underlined, circled, stars, strike through, arrows, etc.

It is such an ingrained habit that its almost a compulsion, like someone is tying my hand behind my back if I don't have access. It is like my brain needs reassurance that some detail I just noticed won't be lost, at least it will be on the paper if I need it in the next 5 minutes. Like an extension of my short-term memory.

I have also kept a journal for 20+ years, mostly on paper. I often use a fountain pen (Lamy 2000) and notebooks with high-quality paper, but I am not super picky about it. I've used the cheapest school notebooks to the finest Japanese boutique papers. I'm a fan of the Pilot G2 and pens that have a similar feel. I'll also journal in Google Docs, Apple notes, or text docs in VS Code.

It is hard for me to disentangle the supposed benefits from the sheer weight of habit. It is just something I do, part of who I am.

On the topic of left handed writing: Switching to the uni-ball jetstream (RT SXN-210 or Sport SXN-150S) was a noticeable improvement for me. I did not search for other alternatives but would be interested if there are similar quick-drying options that work well. I tried the Pilot G2 before that because it got recommended often, but for me it was way worse.

> 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 was my personal trick at the university. I was writing down all the notes during classes, even at the ugliest of my handwriting, but after classes insat down and rewrote the whole Notes in a better and clear way, so I was directly storing information in my brain.

I just needed to re-read the better notes 1 or 2 times and I could already recall the information, even at distance of time.

It's ironic that the article that caused him to write this post (https://substack.com/@justindeschamps/note/c-261265212?utm_s...) is written by AI.

I see this style of informational writing all over the place now.

I've always love stationery. Over the years I've looked up pen reviews and tried out many different types including fountain pens.

I watched a video recently from someone, from memory the creator behind the youtube channel vsauce. Very briefly, he lost some notes to water. His words, thoughts and ideas vanished. His solution was switching to pencil.

I found the interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfY2JACiDGU

I'm addicted to people talking about pens and pencils. Adam Savage also has done a few videos on his favourite mechanical pencil.

Apparently Stephenson loves fountain pens and reluctantly gel pens. In general, those are water based inks and will wash away with water. There are one or two fountain pen inks designed to be more permanent and won't wash away with water.

Just something to keep in mind if you're currently writing or want to start.

dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49004202

Speaking of ancient practices coming back into favor: Are other people thinking meditation would be useful as they wait for their LLM to finish?

I've incorporated back writing by hand some time ago but find as models get smarter and I throw more at them they have also been taking longer.

In these moments even a notebook can register as something of a distraction. I already aim to keep my phone far away but I'm curious about trying to commit to meditating between prompts. Part of me feels like it would be a little silly. But maybe not.

Doodling in a notebook feels preferable in these moments but also feels like a context switch when the agent is done. Then again perhaps I need to just refine my process so notebook planning can feel like it is working more in parallel with the LLM rather than us blocking each other...

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.

Writing by hand, marking stuff and seeing the paper come to live is very rewarding when looking back at what you've done. But at the same time its so hard to organize, archive, and find previous notes, that's mainly the reason why I take digital notes more often.

Used to write all meeting notes by hand to help me focus on the meeting and actually retain information. Fell out of the habit but must get back into it! Definitely helps especially if it's not a topic that's naturally gripping to me.

Perhaps there is a balance to be struck? I have thought long and hard about this, and I have settled on taking notes by typing on my laptop. The benefits are far too many: I do not have to carry my notes around to read them on the commute; I do not have to worry about losing them; I can rewrite them to my heart’s content without messing up the layout; and I feel that I type faster than I can write.

I do partly agree, though. When I am studying a new concept or reviewing old ones, I tend to scribble my thoughts down. I have not been able to replicate brainstorming while scribbling and doodling on an electronic device. The friction of my pen on paper seems to actually wire the pathways in my brain.

I still hand write a lot of code, and especially when starting out on projects or making more fundamental changes. I find it leads to better architectural solutions. My thinking has been that writing it out by hand can be slower so my brain is incentivized to think through the options and come up with more concise solutions. But maybe, as the article suggests, there are other small factors to hand-writing that lead to an improvement as well. I also use then go through the hand-written code to "execute" programs in my head and I think this also leads to higher-quality code. I encourage anyone that wants to be genuinely good at programming and software engineering to give it a try.

> I use a lot of moleskine notebooks and Mead comp books, which I can buy in bulk online.

Moleskine notebooks are beautiful, but I always felt they were far too expensive. Would love to learn where they can be bought in bulk for a more reasonable price.

I can't remember the last time I wrote something significantly long and it didn't hurt my wrists. Maybe in middle school.

I hated paper until I found a decent pen (frixion erasable, mediocre) and paper (Lemome grid notebook, very good). It's still harder than typing, but I've found nothing better for thinking through challenging problems.

I have been experimenting with more hand writing notes as well. What I have been finding is better retention and more focus on what is that I'm following, wether is a book or a meeting.

I recently also started to review flashcards by printing the cards due today and writing down the answer opposed to reviewing them on a screen, and I have noticed a much higher retention as I am not distracted by the mere presence of the device.

When learning new languages, frameworks, or systems, I've learned over the last ten years that I -- as ADHD riddled as I am -- retain and engage with information a lot more when I write by hand, even if I am not medicated.

today I posted a show HN that got insta-flagged by an AI detector. I had written the post then gone back and forth with claude, getting to a refined version I thought was much better. claude said it would hit way better with hn (me?).

after getting flagged I found the original, reposted, and it is actually so much better. not polished, not a masterpiece, I'm nowhere close to a professional writer. But it's like a human story with the marks of human care.

i fear my brain's getting smoothed down by reading all the generation and I need to drop the AI crutch for a while, at least for copy/writing.

If you're like me and lose things and want cheap pens that offer water resistance, try the PaperMate Inkjoy ballpoints. They roll much easier than other ballpoints, in my experience.

What the research shows and what Stephenson is alluding to also points to the way the design of digital technology has flattened human-computer interaction by prioritizing speed.

It is not impossible to design digital products that achieve the same balance of fountain pen on paper. But having used the iPad for journaling with a good toothed screen protector, I think we are still far from it. Even with the barrel rolling and pressure sensitivity, an actual pen just writers so much more expressively.

In fact, there's no scientific consensus research-wise on whether writing things by hand actually helps in any way.

Anecdotally, it never helped me to remember the stuff I was writing down.

Well, sorry but look at the methodology on this. The study the post leans on did not study learning. 36 adults went around copying familiar words, and their "typing" is key presses using one index finger (!).

I'm afraid this one's close to going down the replication crisis whirlpool. According to Sol:

"Direct replications found no reliable learning advantage, while a 2024 meta-analysis found only a *small* handwriting benefit but a far larger typing advantage in information captured."

Typed Versus Handwritten Lecture Notes and College Student Achievement: A Meta-Analysis” by Abraham E. Flanigan and colleagues, published in Educational Psychology Review on July 12, 2024

I’d like to point out that basically all education research is only partially reproducible or not reproducible at all. So even though this study says it’s good for your brain. Have some skepticism.

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?

Whew... reading just the title I thought this was about me having to write code by hand.

I keep a handwritten journal and write in script. My penmanship isn't great, but it's good enough.

For exams in my intro programming classes, I allow students to bring a handwritten notes sheet if they wish. I get anything from a few sentences to a sheet so full of writing it almost looks gray. From what I can tell, students who really put effort into their notes sheet look at it less frequently but tend to score higher. This tracks with the studies I've seen on handwritten notes.

I wrote this reply by hand and then used by keyboard which is connected with my mac mini using Bluetooth to type it here so you guys can see it.

"I write all my notes and letters by hand and I started writing them like 2 months ago when I was researching on something and found out the benefits of writing by hand. My post went mega viral on X (@ihteshamali) you will see it here on X and it got like 120k likes and people really loved it. And most people said they will now turn back to writing by hand which is nice."

I'm a huge fan of fountain pens, it's a very satisfying experience to write with a nice pen on a proper paper.

I use platinum 3776, it's quite expensive one, but it's just amazing. I originally bought it for sketches, but ended up using it for journaling.

Ended up buying one to my wife, she said I'm crazy to spend so much on a pen (200$) but few weeks after the gift she said that it's amazing and she enjoys it a lot.

> The paper will bear a visible imprint where it was pressed down by the writing instrument.

Can I have your pencils then? They must be made of titanium. My 2mm nibbed pencilpoints break off if I put any pressure at all on them. :-D

My hand hurts when I hold a pencil for too long, it has always been that way since when I was young. The computer saved my ability to write longer texts.

As some have noted, if you like writing by hand for all of the benefits listed in this article but also want a digital copy for search, taking a photo and having an LLM read your handwriting works really well.

To streamline this process I wrote an iOS app that does exactly this. I used it to digitize my handwritten diaries, but it works for any handwritten paper.

https://inksightful.app/

> Being left handed is fine

As a lefty, I would rather never write another word then twist my hand the way he's doing (above the current line) to avoid the smudges.

I need good handwriting OCR. Like perfect. Because id love to write things like blog posts on a remarkable or something, and then be able to just export it to text and publish

> I want to again live in a world where application developers use public, community driven standards to create interoperable applications with common data standards.

Has this ever been the case?

Also common data standards in a way restrict innovation when the standard body can't move fast enough.

> It might then seem reasonable to think that writing with a stylus on an iPad or similar would be best, since no force is needed and friction is minimized. I don’t think this is true. A small amount of friction is actually desirable.

I find digital handwriting quite pleasant and almost better than writing on paper. Friction is indeed an issue, but you can just buy a dedicated screen protector to address this problem.

i'm not totally sold on writing prose by hand. it's still a little too uncomfortable for me. but, for doing mathematics or memorizing things, i have specific rituals built around handwriting that i finally figured out how to make work quite well. i have funny hard requirements though: a) clean, white printer sheets only, absolutely no lines, they are distracting b) mechanical pencils only c) a flat, hard, stable and clear writing surface is a must d) a real eraser must be available

my technique for memorizing things involves a handwritten spatiotemporal reproduction from memory (put everything in the same place on the page in the same order) with spaced repetition that exploits sleep cycles. took me forever to figure it out, but once i did things like exams that build on toolboxes of rote memorization became a lot easier!

i guess i should also mention that i have long had an interest in reproducing the causal nature of handwriting for composing text on the computer. things like write only editors that attempt to encourage that same sort of causal flow.

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%.

I wonder how much of this is handwriting versus simply removing distractions. A notebook doesn't have notifications, tabs, or an autocomplete constantly trying to finish your thoughts. I hope to to see studies comparing handwriting with typing on a distraction-free device

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.

I hand write my notes so that I don't have to find them again when I need to remember them. I used to study the same way - just summarize everything I'm reading into hand written notes, maybe read them once more before the test if I had time, and pass the test. It's nice to see that my successful practice is now backed by research.

I remember when pretty much everyone knew how to write cursive. Imagine how surprised I was when my 12 year-old nephew didn't even know what cursive was. Makes you realize how much things have changed.

That is why I call good pens like my Fink [1] a thinking tool. I always wonder if it is nature or nurture, but I am sure that writing helps me to think in a straight line.

[1]: https://www.stefanfink.de/en/writing-instruments

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.

I am really trying to get everything digital. But I much prefer writing by hand, especially when doing math. I got Samsung s10+ and have 2 problems: the pen is too damn small and my handwriting sucks for recognition so it's mostly PDFs for now instead of fully digitized. Anyone have similar problems with solution?

I agree with the content of the post.

It does feel like a post stating things that are obvious, were someone not blinded by technology.

Curious if others have noticed a trend of going back to "old school" methods, once there is research etc around it. Seems like you can have just not used the new flashy thing.

This reminds me of Donald Knuth writing drafts by hand.

This is something you don’t need to argue about. You don’t need a cite studies.

The studies are not geared for a sample size of one there is only one you.

Just… Try it.

You can just do things. They don’t have to be rational, the best things rarely are.

"Writing by hand is good for your brain", but it does not say the habit or behavior can help you achieve some success, many achievements, especially the more significant ones need a complicated system and long-term hard work (remember 10000 hours theory?)

I really like this talk[0] by Big Suze from Peep Show on how children learn better with physical writing than with typing.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V6nucKFK88

At least in high school I was the opposite. If I had a class with a teacher strict about notes I didn't absorb the material as well because I was more focused on getting the notes correct than engaging with the material

I literally can't think without a pen in my hand. Especially when I'm stuck, writing anything, or even better, drawing, activates my brain cells.

Typing forces you to think linearly, it feels constrained. That's not how the brain works.

i've been writing since i was 8 and always felt there must be something special about writing by hand. nice to read this post and see the science behind it.

i recently bought my first fountain pen and some nice ink and paper and it's even nicer that way :) highly recommend it

These days, you can easily take notes and mark things in digital books. I wonder if that would be helpful, too?

But how do you convert your handwritten notes into Markdown blog posts or LaTeX or Typst? Can multimodal LLMs do that?

I'd rather learn a language than write with a pen. In my life at least, writing with a pen is now depreceated. Maybe writing left handed would be worth it but I can't think of another good reason to bring it back.

I find that writing with ai is far superior both in terms of results and for my memory. Writers like Neal won’t be competitive for much longer. It’s time to put the pencils down.

I'd like to go back to writing with pen and paper, but my bad handwriting bothers me. So any time I start writing something, part of my concentration is wasted on trying to make it look good.

I exclusively take notes by hand now, and have amassed a pretty interesting collection of pens, paper and notebooks.

I like writing by hand and now it’s easier than ever to just take a picture and give it to an LLM for a transcription if you need it on your phone/computer. Small local models work well for this too.

I like handwriting, but it struggles when you need to copy it in your obsidian

Is there an online support group for people who have been on the keyboard so long that their penmanship looks more like klingon than english? Is there a way to correct this?

Somewhat apropos... I started re-learning cursive about two years ago. I'm old enough to have been taught cursive when I was young, but my dad preferred block letters (he was trained as an engineer) so I took after him when I entered college. My handwriting was never going to win any awards (either cursive or block) but with attentive practice, my cursive is up to about where it was in 9th grade.

I wonder what my brain would look like writing cursive instead of block two years ago vs. today? If you're comparing type-writing with cursive penmanship in a sample that doesn't control for how much experience individual test subjects have with cursive, I suspect you may not get the results you're looking for.

I don't have any data for this assertion, but was disappointed to see the research not control for this variable. Not to say the research wasn't useful... In fact, were I to have control of the research budget, I would give them more money for a larger study that controls for more variables including age, experience with cursive and (what the heck) socio-economic background.

So... I recommend trying to (re) learn cursive. It's sort of fun to watch the faces of people when they realize you've reverted to jr. high school penmanship.

I have always found interesting that we thing as equivalent "different parts of the brain light up" and "good for the brain". I say this as someone who has an tiny knowledge of neuroscience, but wouldn't you want sometimes to have low brain activity, for certain things?

Having the brain making more connexions and using more resources to do the same thing could be seen, from one point of view, as waste ?

Not that I disagree with the article, of course. Test results speak for themselves, but for example, when I am writing stories, do I need to "better remember" them, or do I need to go faster through my first draft ? (3 years and counting at the moment...wish me luck !)

Writing by hand is in no way good for your brain.

Probably one of the best interview questions that I've been asked over the years, is to write a script (can't remember the purpose) in bash, using pen and paper.

Really made me think hard.

0.7 Energel pens ftw. There are subtle difference but I favor Made in Japan.

This is gonna open up the science of stimuli necessity. Everything we do is effort then reward, we need to do things on our own.

So, why nobody write a code by hand using pen onto paper right now? If it's that good, shouldn't we?

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.

> Don’t worry about conserving paper

The best suggestion, thank you

I completely agree with this, but where do I start if I have terrible handwriting and never really learned cursive properly?

not only writing, but drawing, art, putting a pen or pencil to paper/tablet and just flowing is great to keep the brain muscle active.

Great advice. Didn't know Neal is left-handed.

Neal, if you're reading this, will you ever visit Germany on a book signing tour?

So I should buy a drawing tablet for my laptop so I can hand write my AI prompts? Got it!

(/s if not obvious!)

im right-handed and was taught to write by a left-handed parent so i have a goofy technique where i have my hand above the line like a lefty. this causes me to write the letter "s" backwards, from bottom to top

Doesn't work for everyone. I have essential tremor and my handwriting is abysmal.

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).

>Use cursive

Any good resources to learn cursive?

"Sure, doing X the old-fashioned way is slow, inefficient, and inconvenient in a hundred minor and major ways - but haven't you considered that it might, on an incredibly shaky connection with low effect sizes and uncertain causality, be better than your brain?"

Sorry, but no. I trust that "the Old Way is just Better in an invisible, unproven way" about as much as I trust any other "appeal to tradition".

I like Neal Stephenson's writing, but I wouldn't take this advice seriously.

Absolutely. It helps me a lot, especially when it comes to remembering important tasks or planning my days.

What if I told you writing in all caps is even better for your brain.

What about writing code by hand?

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 have had, and continue having, way above average use for my handwriting. It works for all sorts of math, quick diagrams on anything from geometric reasoning to electronics, composing tricky fragments of text, taking notes on something I'm doing that requires a myriad of easy-to-forget details, and so on.

But my 1st grade teacher and my 1st to 12st year classes variously agreed on how atrocious my handwriting was. Famously, my 1st grade teacher told my parents, "there's no hope". She was right. And, four decades later, it irks me to no end that every time I grab a pen and start writing, the ghosts come to look over my shoulder and judge. "Look at it, he's at it again. That 'f' looks like anything but... That's not a proper uppercase 'I'... you could summon a demon with it, but it would be a pitiful one. That 'g' is vicious. Is that a '1', a '3' or a '7'? Didn't we fail you enough times in basic arithmetic for that? Also, that line of text is sagging as much as your sitting, boy..."

This applies to code as well, except, typing, instead of generating

Here’s my question, what if the writing looks like handwriting?

My thoughts on this is there is a deliberate act going on that is doing more for retention than just the simple act of using a (fountain) pen.

If I am in a lecture and I am writing down everything I hear as fast as possible in one ear, on paper, out the other style I don't think writing is any different than typing the same way.

If I am in lecture and I am trying to stay deliberately between the lines of paper, then I have to take the info in, process it in a way where I analyze and summarize it, and then put it on paper neatly. I have to do that for brevity and to keep up with the lecture. Its not the act of just writing, its the analyzation that occurs before the words hit the paper. This can be achieved with typing as well if you deliberately style your notes.

I think sometimes we correlate this in too simple of terms to use pen = better, the pen forces the deliberate action of analysis easier than typing does.

All well and good for folks without hand issues.

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I <3 Stephenson's earlier works: Snow Crash, Diamond Age, and even the lesser stuff (the university one, In the Beginning There Was the Command Line, etc.) were all incredibly well written, and I'd strongly recommend them.

But Cryptonomicon started to go in the wrong direction (though it was still good), and after that he completely lost me by writing 1000 page books that require you to learn half of an entirely new language he made up! His success seems to have made him completely lose the magic (of writing well) that he once had.

As such, I'd take any advice he gives with a mountain of salt. It's like getting advice from a "has been" former athlete: it might be good advice from their glory days, or it might just be junk they spew in their obsolescence.

tbh the value of this seems overstated and overhyped imo

I've always dabbled with this but gone back to just typing instead of writing by hand as it seens to possess many more advantages

The closest thing I have to this is more like speech to text or notes on a phone which seem more manual (speech) or slower than touch typing (phone)

Out of all the things I’d consider to help me improve or be more productive, this has to be at the bottom. I actually used to write notes all throughout college, mostly because I couldn’t afford a laptop and would use the school desktop computers when actually writing code. But, I don’t see any degradation from moving to a workflow where I never physically write anymore.

I also don’t understand his stance on using cursive. Everyone that writes quickly develops their own scribble, which they can easily read and doesn’t involve taking the pen off the paper. What’s the point in relearning proper cursive?

> 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!!

This post makes me feel old

20 years ago when I use to instruct a 101 class on programming, in the first 2 weeks, I made everyone write simple programs with paper and pencil. Students thought that was insane, I would catch them mocking it. I always had the last laugh... those who took it seriously always performed the best and went on to have more successful careers.

I have about 20 or 30 fountain pens. I do system architecture diagrams, with notes in the margin, using pen and ink. It does help me think. I actually find it relaxing and fun.

I'm surprised he didn't mention editing. On a computer this is trivial; on paper you need an ink eradicator, correction tape, or correction fluid. And even those are only good for small corrections. If you want to insert a sentence or paragraph somewhere, that's not really possible with paper.

Also, if you want your text to be published online or printed, it needs to be digitized somehow. Which is a good OCR tool for handwriting, especially if it's not very legible? Just feed scans into Gemini perhaps?

I don't think that the research is as conclusive as the article makes it out to be ( I know he links ).

I would consider this: maybe useful, do it if you find it entertaining.

the pencil industry has been waiting 30 years for this paper

"don't use a pencil" i stopped reading there. That's a completely invalid and stupid thing to say. Pencils are superior to any and all other writing instruments.

Very little young people are writing by hand nowadays :( Mostly vaping xd

Do crosswords count?

Surprised honestly we haven't had similar claims for typing on keyboard versus typing on screens or dictation.

I mean, I love writing with fountain pen and I do it every day, but I have _read_ Anathem.

Anecdotally I find I connect more with what I write by pen as well.

Ultimately I want things to in text documents though (typst for me these days). If there was a non-slopware solution to ocr scanning to a typst doc, I would do it a lot more .

Stephenson mentions the Pilot G-2 Gel, and it is a great pen, especially for left-handers. I've found one that improves on it: the Pilot Acroball. It's a better G-2 and though it might be a bit hard to find at retail it can be found online in all kinds of variations.

I wrote almost my entire PhD thesis by hand, with a pencil. When I made mistakes I erased them. My handwritten notebooks contain close to the final version of each chapter (there were, of course, some further corrections after typesetting).

I don't like writing in pen. I like being able to erase stuff. Having scribbled out bits looks messy and gets on my nerves.

Whatever implement you choose, I do concur with the author that writing by hand is good for you.

I don't write much these days, but I do fill pages full of notes, mostly diagrams and other pictures. I don't understand how some people with jobs similar to mine don't use paper at all.

> I’m not an expert on how the brain works, but I can say that,

Aaaaaand time to tune out.

Decent article.

No notes.

Remember when serious debugging meant at least an inch of greenbar?

More like old habits go hard - heh

As another fountain pen aficionado, it's reassuring to see that Neal's handwriting is as bad as mine.

Another article from that substack.com - this website has terrible UI, please stop using it. And I noticed that usually if an author uses substack - the article quality is bad.

Regarding the topic - "more brain activity/connectivity" does not automatically prove better long-term intelligence or brain health.

Great!

HN should add downvote option.

everything by hand is good for the brain! writing of course, but inducting a younger person working the till, into the dance of correct change, or an aproximation that leaves them with a float, and/or not getting a pocket full of coin, and watching the light go on as they activly get into the game of useing simple math in a practicle way for the first time, big grins all round, or some few mildly enraged and uncertain as to what just happened, this bieng a common experience as I use cash for most of my personal expendature, which more recently is getting comments from other customers and employees, but I like it, pay and be done. I also dabble in scrap and precious metals, back woods deals for a wide variety of primary building materials, supplys, feed, manufacturing equipment,etc, which is all done with cash, live, right now, on your feet, make a deal, be good with it, done and on to other things.

Always boggles my mind that some people can't write cursive. So you write each letter one by one?