The cursive thing is almost certainly because he's using fountain pens. Pencils and ballpoint pens lend themselves to printing more easily, because they require pressure to write, and when you let the pressure up between letters, the line stops. The first time I picked up a fountain pen and tried printing with it, I found all my letters were connecting whether I meant them to or not, and I suddenly understood why cursive exists. Everyone who's learned cursive in the ballpoint pen era has been unwittingly taught a performance optimization for a tool they're not using.

Not a sarcastic response, instead, to double down on your point. If you show this to 99.9% of the world and require the spend of $50 for the screen protector on the $500 iPad to get the "paper feel", they will tell you might as well just get that Leuchtturm or Moleskin notebook.

Personally found newest paperlike to be a lot like glass still, you barely get that paper feel at all and I hated it. They tried to keep clarity of the screen near glass level, but that affects the feeling a lot. Eventually I did some research and found that Japanese screen protectors that give you a feel of Kent paper are excellent for writing, so I wholeheartedly recommend those. You can find best rated ones by looking at top rated ones on jp websites, I have bellemond one.

I think you're right. It's very easy in any hobby to make the gear side of the hobby be disproportionate to how much you actually do the hobby. Think someone who's spent $3k on camping gear and constantly researches gear, but rarely camps. On the other hand, if you do actually camp a lot, it is nice to have the lighter weight higher performance gear, up to a certain point. So, Stephenson, as someone who does actually write a massive amount, is right to be using high performance gear, but for someone just getting started, getting into fancy pens/paper is a distraction from actually writing.

I used ballpoint pens in school but I don't like the process: my hand often feels too tense, and getting handwriting legible is a lot of effort. Once I switched to fountain pens I enjoy the process a lot more, and the result generally look better without much effort.

I'm sure many people are OK with ballpoint pens and might even prefer the feel.

Fountain pen (+ ink and paper) doesn't really cost more than a paperlike screen protector. So it can be entirely functional. But many people also enjoy it as a hobby, collecting pens and whatnot.

> I find these days I prefer to write using a cheap mechanical pencil

I know this is contrary to your advice but mechanical pencil, get a Kuru Toga, it's a really nice improvement and not very expensive. It auto-rotates the pencil tip, so you don't have the sharp end at some point.

For permanent writing get a Uni ball gel writer, it's supremely smooth to write with. Also not hugely expensive.

They're both not the cheapest option, but an amazing writing experience without being the fancy kind of expensive.

I think people send too much time optimizing the notebook instead of optimizing what goes into it. I've seen beautifully organized notebooks that were never opened again and messy scraps of paper that someone referred back to after years.

Paperlike is indeed nice for handwriting, but it has drawbacks. The increased friction makes it uncomfortable to use your fingers to navigate the iPad for long, and since it makes the finger motion along the screen less smooth, it sometimes prevents the iPad from correctly interpreting drag-and-drop or multi-finger gestures in my experience. It also makes writing very noisy compared to the stock iPad, and also compared to paper, so if you have a shared office you might want to reconsider. I ended up removing it again from my iPad. But to be fair, this was on a $400 iPad ~5 years ago, so perhaps high-end iPads with newer Paperlike versions work better.

Pro Tip: In addition to the Paperlike protector, one can buy a range of different nib types from Amazon and experiment to find a one that suits you best.

Seriously, just do it with what you have and what you can, like cameras, the best pen/paper is the one you have with you

> I really love the paperlike screen protector for the iPad

Let me purposely be a little provocative here, and I don't mean any disrespect:

This is missing the point. It's not just about using the hand for a writing motion. It's about the physical sensation of actual pen on actual paper. It's about turning pages, arranging them, organizing them. It's about the serialization and finality of the words you put down. The offline character that forces a different mental discipline and requires (and enables) focus. You get a lot out of leaving your electronic gadgets behind and that's why trying to emulate that on an iPad misses the point.

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I noticed this as well and the question caused me to go pretty deep into writing in general.

Switched to a 36 key ergo split with a tweaked alpha-thumb layout (R is on my left thumb, Space is on the right, base layout is Hands Down Vibranium V). Started learning Pitman shorthand (again) then switched to Noory Simplex and stuck with it. Became fascinated with Zaner's Method of cursive where the writing is done entirely through arm movement and using the rhythm of the muscle movement instead of by conscious control over the pen position. At the moment I can write at about 100wpm on a keyboard, 70wpm in shorthand, and 26wpm longhand.

I believe that the improved ability to learn comes from the need to focus on a concept for longer while writing and not on the motion of the writing itself. My ability to retain is better in cursive than in shorthand and I don't notice a significant difference in retention between keyboard and shorthand.

There's absolutely something to this. Writing something down on your phone or computer does not commit it to memory at all.

I am left handed, and my wrist is not stained.

There are a lot of fountain pen inks that dry faster, like the Iroshizuku line. And some specifically built to be water resistant etc. It is a lot different from years ago.

I've thought about how hard it must be to be a lefty fountain pen user. What is one to do? Learn to write without resting your hand on the page?

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.

I _love_ buying a used book and finding a previous reader's notes in the margins. It's the greatest.

A tiny glimpse into a stranger's thinking as they processed the same pages I just did.

Thoughts they may never have shared anywhere else, that may not have made sense to anyone anywhere else. A secret code only for people who just read the last few pages. Shockingly intimate.

I abhor highlighting, underlining or writing in books by some previous "reader" as well as by myself. Why? It adds emphasis or de-emphasis which impedes and usually eliminates the process of rediscovery and potentially seeing something in a different light. I prefer my reading to be dynamic and unbiased by other people as well as by myself, whether that's from a few minutes ago or a few years in the past. Commentary, which is often situational and ephemeral, should be separate from the original. When a book is marked up, your choice to ignore or seek commentary is taken away.

Many of the things you mention, crossing out, circling, I do not think of as actively engaging with the material, which a quick skim of the underlying research pointed out in the TFA (or maybe an earlier 2017 paper of theirs) requires using the fine motor control of actually writing. Writing marginalia is good for the brain; if you disagree, write out why, if you agree, write your reaction. Highlighting, circling, crossing out are mere consumption and only useful for finding passages later, not engaging your brain.

No. Carry a notebook. Long after you’ve given the book away, you’ll always have your notes.

Totally agreed. I've never understood why people are so opposed to marginal annotations - it's part of why the book format succeeded as a technology! (i.e you can't marginally annotate a clay tablet). Incidentally, I always loved how Tolkien's maps had these pointing hands to indicate significant bits, and only after reading a lot of old manuscripts and incunabula in grad school did I realize that he was copying the favorite annotation of medieval writers, the manicule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manicule

"Write by hand and mark up your books" is excellent advice... that I no longer follow.

Marking up books didn't come naturally to me, but I did it for a while. Paper books are just decaying bundles of plant fiber — and the ideas within them are likewise ephemeral. The illusion of permanence must be confronted and reckoned with.

But for the last 15-20 years, I have been taking notes in text files that are saved to version control, which I find suits me better.

* Notes are not space-constrained by the space of the page margins, nor by the initial form they take on the paper page.

* Notes can be revised at will without requiring complete duplication to maintain optimal appearance and organization. There is no reason to resist revising notes — the history is completely preserved in old versions, so nothing will ever be destroyed even if deleted. Even though those old versions will almost certainly never be revisited, knowing that they exist frees the mind.

* I can indulge my perfectionism and write math notes in LaTeX, music notes in Lilypond, diagrams using SVG... The act of typesetting is itself a form of active engagement the source material, although it does not have all the advantages of hand-copying and can be time-consuming.

* Digital notes take up no physical space, compatible with a minimalist lifestyle. They can expand infinitely without needing to be stored or carted around.

* Digital notes don't need to be defended against physical threats such as fire, flood, or vermin. However digital notes still require precautions to preserve them in the form of a backup regime, so this is something of a wash.

* Ultimately, I don't expect anyone but me to be interested in my notes, and I don't owe anyone my notes. When I'm gone, the notes will vanish into nothingness — and since they are not constrained by being part of a legacy for heirs to pick through, they can take whatever form suits me best during my life.

I love nothing more than going through my mom’s cookbooks and seeing all her notes. It connects me with her even though she’s gone.

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.

> 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

This is actually the biggest reason I own a Remarkable 2/Kindle Scribe, let's me "destroy" the book while also not having to worry about losing my notes.

I buy paperbacks, chop and scan them [1] then use a reMarkable tablet + RCU [2] to do the reading.

Digitizing paper books and writing on them with digital ink is 100% the best way to have marginalia. I've tried special dotcode pens, portable scanners...writing digitally with a stylus is the best. Yes, it destroys the paper book, but it more than makes up for it with the freedom, flexibility, and durability of the digital copy.

[1]: https://www.davisr.me/projects/books/ [2]: https://www.davisr.me/projects/rcu/

I so don't have time to revisit books that I've already read. I'd probably be embarrassed by my earlier naiveté.

I need to remember that this is okay. I didn't do it because of concerns about resale value... but recently I sold books for the first time in a while and got so little money that I realize this is not worth worrying about.

I was once telling a friend about a book I had just finished. They were curious about it and asked me to borrow it. I politely accepted knowing very well they could never read my copy for it was embarrassingly covered in the messy marks I had enjoyed making during my read. Fortunately neither of us ever brought the subject again and I now think twice before messing up my books!

Unless it's from the library. I've had to keep an eraser handy to undo some rando's bizarre markups.

I have a better way. Make a notebook and write stuff down there.

Mortimer Adler (of how to read a book fame) has notes on this https://socrates.acadiau.ca/courses/engl/rcunningham/2022-23...

MAny a times, the books I read don't have enough place to scribble so I keep a A5 half folded as a bookmark and write notes on that with page numbers. Once the book is over, I read through the points and try to reconstruct.

I use a mechanical pencil myself since I like the teeth and my handwriting is better when I use it. Also, ability to erase (not for cleanliness but more to avoid wastage of space) is useful.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I use high-quality tape on the spine after flattening it for easy reading; still flattens well, but holds together longer.

With mild (self-diagnosed) OCD, I can't even read a book with a single dog ear on it, let alone markings and writing.

This may not be you aim, but there is research out there indicating that highlighting text does not help with retention.

If you want to write in your books go right ahead, but the claim that marginalia and annotations have any benefit is dubious at best. A separate notebook is required. Nothing worth saying can fit in a margin.

I've come to using a pencil (usually mechanical) for this. I can write lightly (so that annotations don't dominate the printed text) and erase stray marks or correct erroneous ones. I've developed a notation convention which tends to make my intent clear without visually dominating the text. A light vertical line along sections I want to highlight, stars, question marks, or bangs, occasional comments of my own.

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.

For sure. The literal first two pages of any book, essentially the back of the cover and the title page, always host a huge list of pages plus summary of something interesting i saw in the book. For instance, it will say something like:

* p85, interesting semaphore usage

or some such. This also condenses the books to important things so I can do a speed read to recall the most important parts.

You don't need to "destroy the spine" and severely shorten the book's life; you can and should break books in[0].

0. https://www.museumbookstore.com/blogs/blog/how-to-open-a-new...

Know what's way easier? Writing in a companion notebook next your book, with as much space as you need.

> A corollary to this is, when reading books, mark them up! Don’t be precious with them

I do all that, all the time these days... :-) I thoroughly enjoy it! Sometimes I feel like having discussions (disagreeing or agreeing) with the author and will write entire pro/cons examples and/or arguments.

Better yet, take actual notes abd give yourself space to think: https://www.dsebastien.net/2022-02-17-how-to-capture-book-no...

I do this, but with Post-it notes. Something to do with the deification of books in the culture I was brought up in, which makes writing on the margins of books a sin.

Yes! 100x this. I do this all the time with my print technical books.

I recently lent a book with some scribbled notes of mine to a friend and they were all like "oh we love scribbles in books". Another way to connect.

I've found I don't like marking up books, because what was highly insightful and revelatory on the first read, seems obvious and boring on the second read

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.

for situations like this - I feel like e-readers are beneficial - the one's with a pen.

since u can always create copies of documents. u can make it up as many times as u want.

or the old school way - using a photocopy for the pages u want to markup / print 2-4 pages in a sheet of what you want to read. & throw away.

I started doing this in cookbooks, less of this, this needs longer time in the oven, etc.

The first time it felt like a crime.

> A corollary to this is, when reading books, mark them up!

Not library books though.

Every so often I get one with stuff underlined with pen or highlighter, and it's one of things that really makes me angry. (Lightly in pencil I'm okay with.)

Advice from an inexperienced reader, please disregard (and don’t do this to library books!)

No. Books are not to be massacred that way, if you need take notes you can still write that down on a piece of paper and leave in the relevant page inside the book. If you need to write that much have a notebook and put your book notes there, no need to destroy a book.

The way people take care of their property says a lot about them. Destroying and defacing one's own property is not someone I would trust. I'd prefer to work with people who treat their possessions with proper respect.

Post it notes tho...

I hear you, some books are precious on a personal level but most books are made to be used, worn, enjoyed, thrown in backpacks etc.

I can understand the used book experience gets ruined a bit, but to be frank I didn't buy the book for someone else, and they made tens of thousands of copies. I'm going to dogear the pages, write notes where I want and generally utilize the book.

I feel the same about most things to be fair, I love seeing the wear marks and signs of life and use on items. Nothing lasts forever, and it's nice when you can see the stories told by an object by it's scars.

> Cross out stuff you disagree with, draw a big circles around the stuff that resonates.

I hate it when people do this. Please don't. If you must, do it sparingly and for the love of all that's good please do not cross out words or sentences.

The only thing I can forgive is people who quote a particular paragraph they liked about the book in one of the first pages where there's enough blank space. It's a personal touch that doesn't taint the rest of the book.

Some mark that this belonged to someone, maybe from decades ago, can be charming; but please, do not ruin the book for me by scribbling all over it.

No.

> Destroy the spine

That's why I got an e-reader in the first place all those years ago, fucking books closing themselves all the time. Terrible UX, smh.

no, I'd rather use sticky notes or washi tape

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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.

If writing by hand is good for your brain (and I suspect it is), the slowness may be part of the reason for that.

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.

If I was a writer, I wouldn't use paper not because I want to write faster but because my brain works best in iterations. I want to try out an idea and see how it feels and course correct. Doing so after writing a hundred pages would be tedious. But then what do I know, I haven't actually written any books.

David Foster Wallace was a longhand manuscript writer too.

I gave up on the Baroque Cycle, personally, because it felt like it was taking as long to read as it was taking to hand-write.

The point is to write better, not faster.

I wonder if Brandon Sanderson writes by hand :-D

Speed is the enemy.

As I understand it, that's more or less what Benjamin Franklin says he did to become a better writer.

https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2017/10/02/how-ben-franklin...

Benjamin Franklin said the same in his autobiography. I wonder if Gore Vidal had read it.

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...

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.

when studying mathematics and computer science i would handwrite algorithms, draw all psuedocode on paper first, and reconstruct steps from published papers, all extremely useful

i've actually had marketed to me on the socials a course on "transcribing" professional writers demonstrating various angles of the craft. I'm sure the course was vibed or something. Pretty easy to identify authors you like, and whose dialog snaps, whose descriptions you identify with, whose doing great character development, etc. And then transcribe them....

EDIT: maybe the term I was looking for is: copywork?

i read half of Troilus and Criseyde out loud to myself one summer in college and i may be a weirdo but it paid dividends. unbowdlerized Chaucer is the tits

Never knew about Ben Franklin. Thanks! After spending a week with him, no doubt he was the smartest and best-read person I'd ever been around.

Yep. Same here. But I don't do notebooks. Any gain I might get from the writing is outweighed by the huge discomfort that writing gives me. I'm well shot of it.

When I take notes when typing, I can transcribe the content word-for-word without knowing what I am hearing and without thinking about it.

When I hand write, I am generally forced to either slow down and repeat what I am listening/watching (if an option), or actually think about what is being said, and choose the important parts to write down, or rephrase it in a more efficient-to-write way.

I am taking a course right now and I find repeatedly that I understand the concepts from taking down the notes (many aha moments), and then I remember. I rarely if ever actually look at the notes I take - they are objectively inferior as a product compared to the official course notes or the textbook.

Maybe typing would be efficient for learning if I was bad it - could be an interesting hypothesis to test.

This is how it was explained to me by a tutor: handwriting is better for learning because it's slower. The need for brevity forces you to mentally engage the material in ways that are more conducive to understanding and recall.

If you can replicate that mental engagement while typing, you'd probably get similar results.

This makes a lot of sense to me in light of what we know about how learning happens. I have never seen any research on brain activity though, and my tutor didn't cite any.

>your brain is doing more does not mean it's doing the right thing!

the thing it's doing when writing with your hand is fine motor control, one of the most important and distinguishing abilities that humans have.

I tutor in a makerspace and one thing I've observed it's that it's now easier to teach old people how to solder than younger kids, and that in my experience has never been the case before. Due to growing up on impoverished digital interfaces I see lack of dexterity that I've never seen in young people before. Same reason I suspect you see a decline in people picking up tactile musical instruments like the guitar or violin.

Handwriting notes engages your spatial memory, which is incredibly powerful (see: the ancient method of loci/memory palace techniques)

There were times in college where I blanked on important information during an exam, but was able to recall it by visualizing the physical sheets I had written my notes on. I aced several infamously difficult classes like OChem and OChem 2 using that technique.

I’ve never found it possible to do that with typed notes.

I think like many things, it's not universally true. At least for me I'm a really slow writer (and poor spelling), that if I were to hand write notes in a lecture, I'd focus on writing and miss half of what is said, and fall behind to the point that something I was copying from the board gets wiped off.

Maybe typing isn't ideal, but it's the better of the 2 options for me.

Riding a unicycle and coding are not complementary activities - you are multitasking. Writing is aligning different parts of your brain to the same task, perhaps it is just creating additional focus.

That's completely the wrong analogy. It's fairly well established through studies that language acquisition in preliterate kids is improved through handwriting (as opposed to typing or tracing letters).

Anecdotally from only place where I have experienced both. When playing TTRPGs like Dungeon & Dragons when people fill their character sheets by hand they tend to remember their abilities, features, and spells much better than people who use a fillable PDF and print it out. Even same person with fillable sheet will have to read through it constantly versus them writing it up by hand.

Probably chunk of that is copying vs interpreting, meaning just writing the rule as written vs rewording it to make it more concise and fit your brain, but also part of it definitely is it you remembering where you wrote something down instead of having to scan through bunch of stuff just to find the place you need.

The studies I'm familiar with have tested recall at various intervals, not brain activity.

> 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.

If lots of people said they code better while riding a unicycle, I'm not sure I'd just dismiss it off hand.

It probably depends on the task. I find that writing things out by hand is extremely helpful for memorizing.

I share the skepticism, I feel you could probably pull up a bunch of random examples like walking being better for you than driving somewhere at a short distance but it's just not practical for long hauls and so they are definitely pointing to tangible benefits but maybe taking them out of context (enthusiasts for handwriting over typing pointing to real benefuts of writing but maybe ignoring how this can slow you down in impractical ways for greater speed and movement, etc.)

The problem is you immediately assume studies haven’t thought of that

Do you know that is how simplistic these studies actually are?

False equivalence, the writing is always closely related to what you are thinking about.

The unicycle and FizzBuzz is (hopefully!!) not related.

A better scenario with FizzBuzz would maybe be writing down a sequence of numbers at the same time.

For myself, a significant difference is that writing a single word longhand "feels like" a single long unified action whereas typing a word "feels like" several short distinct actions. The motor-sensory action of writing matches that of speaking a bit more closely than typing, especially if you're a scribbler. OTOH I suspect typing is better cognitively for transcriptions, meeting minutes, etc., where deep understanding is unnecessary. I am sure you can cook up a study that proves or negates any one of these suspicions.

Sometimes I get benefit taking notes on a computer, e.g. I read Wittgenstein with notes in org-mode, took lots of notes about software/CS directly in the comments of the program implementing the ideas, etc etc.

This is pretty easy to prove via experiment, no?

1. Pick any topic,

2. purely reading,

3. try to write about it

I find myself "thinking" I understood something a lot more than I want to admit.

> universal theory of learning.

There is no such thing. Presumably there is a person who concentrates on algorithmic problems better while riding a unicycle. To the best of my knowledge the research shows people do not learn in the same way, although our hardware is more or less the same. The trick is to recognise what works for you, and only way to find it out is bu trying different things. Most people who succeed at all in higher education become experts on how they themselves learn best, simply because you won’t learn multivariable calculus, become fluent in Mandarin Chinese, or become an expert in late medieval poetry without trying every trick in the book to ram all that information into your brain.

Saying that, there is things that work for _most people_, active recall being probably the most universal one. Which simply means that if you do something a lot with a lot of repetition, you will eventually get quite good at it.And the probably is something in hand writing that forces you to actively engage with information processed better than typing for most/many people.

Personally, I have also noticed the better I get at touch typing the smaller this gap in enforcing learning by writing by had versus typing comes. That is purely anecdotal of course, but when we forced all the kids to use laptops to learn, did we teach them how to type properly first? Or to use computers in general? Or did we just gave them Chromebooks and said “good luck kiddo”?

I personally hate handwriting. My handwriting is ugly and slow, and I keep making annoying mistakes that I can’t fix. It’s generally a terrible experience.

If given the choice I’ll always type.

> 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 is an astoundingly bad comparison and I think you know how invalid it is. Doing two separate unrelated activities at the same time is not the same as engaging more parts of your brain by focusing on a single task.

You’re right in that what works for one might not work for others, but your argument is dishonest at best.

I mean, be skeptical all you want, but at least TRY it.

I know I retain more if I handwrite notes. It's my lived experience, so that's what I do in meetings, generally. These notes get transcribed back into some orderly data store for later reference, but the initial notes are pen and paper.

Indeed, the research is just laughable on its face, and of course it doesn't address the real issue - proving that all that extra brain involvement is positive, but hey, the author has already invested in the fountain pens, needs to prove it was the right choice!

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The muscles in your hand and fingers are small and tire pretty easily. The muscles in your arm and shoulder are bigger and can do a lot more work. Back in the day, folks who were taught "business cursive" like the "Palmer Method" were taught to keep their hand mostly static, and to guide the pen strokes using their arm. The way I do it is by planting my forearm on the desk as a pivot point, and moving my arm and shoulder to make the pen move. It took some getting used to, but my handwriting looks about the same as it did before, but no more hand pain.

> But very sad he has no (real) tips on dealing with hand fatigue

I also spent a good amount of time in academia (math & physics), wrote everything by hand (dozens of pages per day), and I, too, suffered from serious hand fatigue & RSI for years, even when using a fountain pen. My recommendations:

- Use as light and as thick a fountain pen as possible. Also, very thin & hard pen tips may be nice but in my experience they make it harder to write.

- Work on your posture (if you don't do that already). Work out your neck and your back in particular to compensate for sitting all day every day. A stiff neck (even if you don't feel that it is stiff) can seriously impact the nerves in your arms & hands and, thus, muscle tension & recovery.

I also write with fountain pens these days. Do you have a favorite model?

Learn to write with both hands. When one becomes fatigued switch to the other one.

I went down the physical-writing-digital-capture system over a 10 month period. Bought the right stylus tips, the paper-like screen cover, etc.

Ultimately went back to my moleskine that fits in my back pants pocket and I don't have to worry about battery life.

Perhaps the biggest reason why my experiment failed was that I found it difficult to look back at digital written notes beyond a week. There is no physical flip...

Equally important though, I didn't retain information quite as well when writing against a screen. I can't explain it. I wanted the system to work, but it didn't. Maybe I tried to write too verbose, more carefully than I would a paper page... hoping my more careful writing would be captured by OCR better. I don't know but it was different. Intended focus matters.

Less effort = more retention to me. Digital writing, at least at that time, was more effort to me it seems

My issue with the iPad is that it just does not have the fine-fidelity or response time of real ink, and it's not something that never fails.

It's so frustrating to be so pregnant with an idea, to open ones iPad, and to find out the battery is low, Procreate isn't working, the Notes app is confusing to navigate, oh no you're writing but your palm has slid on the screen, etc.

I've spent a lot of time searching for a digital alternative, but IMO we're at least a decade away from digital handwriting being even close to on-par with paper, even ignoring friction and feel.

The study he cites is also specifically using digital pens

> Brain electrical activity was recorded in 36 university students as they were handwriting visually presented words using a digital pen and typewriting the words on a keyboard

kinda funny.

It's also not clear from this study that there is actually any benefit to "more brain activity". Of course doing more complex motor tasks requires more brain activity but nobody guarantees that this helps with remembering things.

I have a "paper-feel" screen protector and a metal nib on my Apple pencil. The combination provides a comfortable amount of friction for me, and the fact that it's matte cuts down on reflections.

Friction is also variable, with pen and paper type. Although the iPad is a bit too slick, it gets very fatiguing (I did most of my HW in college on the iPad)

The problem with digital writing is that you loose spatial orientation because of panning and zooming. At least I think this is the reason why I sometimes prefer pen and paper.

I think you're missing the forest for the trees with this statement and it makes your comment seem a bit reductive. It's not so much a dismissal of writing on a particular product (iPad) as much as the article is about optimal writing by hand, the best materials, and some of the reasoning as to why.

While you may be convinced writing on a screen or tablet is objectively superior to doing things the "old way" there is literature on the topic indicating otherwise you might want to consider - that being said, everyone is different in their preferences and anatomy. I for one can't stand to write on a plastic/glass surface with a stylus, the ergonomics feel wrong and my retention for journaling is significantly worse.

iPad is terrible for hand-writing. It's (relatively) heavy, so you can't hold it and write on it. It's slippery, and the friction between the pen and stylus is bad.

The pen itself also produces gigantic strokes.

I agree that “more areas of the brain” does not mean better necessarily, however I do wonder about the chiseling stone thing.

If you chiseled some formula or something into stone you’re unlikely to forget it any time soon. I wonder if forcing yourself to ruminate over something a bit longer than it takes to type it, in a way that can actually hold your attention or repeatedly bring it back to the topic, doesn’t indeed help.

Right, it's a false signal. It doesn't mean that more things are retained.

I think what happens in these types of threads is that the people who like handwritten notes, perhaps even obsessively so, all pour in. But that population of handwriting fans isn't necessarily representative of the population overall.

Totally agree.

To others: The book is called "The Artists Way", and is an excellent guide to become more creative and expressive.

A nice pen is... nice. But it's as easy to fall into geeking out about pens and paper as it is keyboards, knives and other kitchen utensils, tools, etc. In most cases, any pen is as good as any other. Or just find a cheap mass produced pen that feels good in your hand. They are plentiful. Then buy a stock of them.

I actually like using pencils, with a thick lead because I tend to have a pretty heavy hand when writing and I will continually break a thin lead.

Huh. Sounds just like me :D Depth helps there. Since I started working mostly on desks with a depth of 80 cm in front of me (or 31 inches that is) it's gotten usually pretty easy to squeeze in a notebook or a paper (also hanging the monitors on the wall, so that no foot is on the desk any more, gives another extra 10 cm).

You need more desk space, you need mega desk: https://youtu.be/nwoIJxDRu8M?is=P5Z1Zi4qas1Wi2BM

The modern version of this is the Pilot G2. Scatter 'em around everywhere! 80% as good as fountain pens at 1% of the fussiness.

I have a Lamy 2000 (well, more than one...) that I adore for writing anything with any actual length. But I still scatter those G2s around.

I've never heard of clutch pencils before! I'll definitely check them out since I'm not sure I'd ever put pencils and asmr in a sentence together -besides the one I'd just typed- and yet I still occasionally need one.

>pressure

the gel pen I use can write under its own weight, so it's surely less pressure than any pencil would require, unless it's particularly soft and hefty?

There was a study with nuns in the early 2000s which found them doing crossword puzzles daily....

I have found writing even on my ipad with apple pencil to be wayy better than typing on my keyboard.

I am thinking of switching to a supernote which allows me to write on a paperlike surface, but mainly because it is free from distractions and notifications on an ipad.

i mainly like the idea of a blank canvas and writing and rearranging thoughts on that canvas - which pen and paper do not allow.

That's not the point he was making at all though.

He wasn't saying "buy a fancy pen, it's better for your brain".

The positioning is "every time people hear that I write on paper, they come up with all these reasons why it won't work for them (crap/smudges/etc). These are the things I do so that's not a problem for me"

I can write code just fine on a random Dell membrane keyboard I got for free, but it's much more satisfying to use a mechanical keyboard. It seems like the same idea applied to hand writing, and I think you're more likely to do more of something if it's enjoyable.

I don't think there is an argument in the article that contradicts you. The part about choosing a pen is to point out that pencils and cheap ballpoint pens require more effort than fancy fountain pen. Which is true, but it is mostly commentary about "writer's cramp".

The part about choosing paper is about fountain pens being blotchy where better quality paper helps.

You can write with anything and on anything, but just like how it is much more enjoyable to type on a fancy mechanical keyboard it is more enjoyable to write with fancy fountain pen. Although I prefer gel pens since they are just easier to have a bunch around.

Agree, the best part of writing by hand for me is that I can do it anywhere and anytime. Randomly during a hike or laying outside in my backyard, small notebook + pen is easy.

Fountain pen + fancy paper sounds like I am tied to a desk again. Stephenson is probably doing way more intense sit down grind out some pages type writing sessions though.

Don’t wait for the right equipment to start writing, _but_ there is a little joy in just splashing a little on a nice pen and nice paper. A few decades in life and I’ve assembled a set of multiple fountain pens, in different colours and sizes with different inks and colours. It adds to the fun like herbs add to a dish.

the point isnt that it is 'italian paper' (actually the high quality stuff is generally from france and japan), but the coefficient of friction of the paper is much reduced. It is not fancy as much as it is very well engineered

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.

I thought the purpose of coding was to produce software, but apparently every action I take should be evaluated on how well it achieves arbitrary brain calisthenics.

Coding manually keeps you focused on irrelevant details. I find people that actually like that cognitive style and try to remain in it for as long as possible insanely unproductive. They'll spend years coding up shit that can be replaced in a month. I've seen it happen multiple times now and I'm getting sick of it. Proper problem decomposition and architecture is everything. Think about your problem domain. Code is just bullshit.

I'm dealing all day with developers incapable of thinking about anything else than "queries", "classes", "structs" and "early returns are bad". Semantics, ontologies, interfaces, abstraction boundaries, problem decomposition: ain't got no time for that.

We got structs to initialize, copy constructors to worry about and header definitions in bloody C++ to deal with! Oh look, you forgot to use Yoda-speak in your conditional, also you initialized two variables instead of one in this completely transient, temporary piece of code that is only run once every two months. Let's talk about this all morning! Because code hygiene is so extraordinarily important. You should definitely worry about each and every line of code. I hear it's "good for the brain".

I wonder if an LLM could just turn my hand-written notes into code, and if so, where this’d land on the brain health spectrum.

Kobo stylus is similar. Closest experience I've had to actually writing on paper. Quality of thought too, is closer to that of actual paper writing, compared to typing.

If you love the V5, then the next step is definitely a fountain pen. There are plenty of guides out there, so I'll not waste time doing an inferior job of making a specific recommendation.

Clench the other fist while writing. This loosens the writing hand. Something in the subconscious releases tension in the other hand. It's a trick I've used with reasonable success and it's immediately effective. It does require a bit of conscious effort, but overall it's a great hack.

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).

Edit: another poster has mentioned grip

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.

A liquid ink rollerball pen, for example the classic "uni-ball Vision Elite" is even closer to the effortless writing experience of a fountain pen (i.e. with a minimum pressure on the paper), than any gel pen (but gel pens are still much better than traditional ball-point pens, which require an excessive pressure on the paper; fountain pens and liquid-ink rollerball pens need to just touch the paper, almost no pressure needed).

Versus a fountain pen, a liquid-ink rollerball pen has the advantage of being insensitive to orientation (which may be difficult to control if you tire easily) and it is also much more unlikely to dry up when unused.

I do not write so much by hand as to become tired, so for myself I prefer a Japanese fountain pen with a nib that allows variable-width lines, for less boring letter forms, but if the criterion for choosing is the maximum possible comfort then I recommend a liquid-ink rollerball pen, and I have experimented with all kinds of writing implements known to mankind.

Except for using the most comfortable writing tool, there is nothing else to do besides changing the style in which you write, to simplify the hand movements.

Perhaps you should alternate between 2 different styles of handwriting, because they might stress different hand muscles.

I have no idea what style of handwriting you use, but I am not convinced that the kinds of "cursive" handwriting that were taught in many schools are really the least tiring, despite their emphasis on minimizing the number of times when the pen is raised from the paper. Many years ago I have abandoned the kind of writing that I was taught as a child and I have switched to one of the variants of the so-called "Italic" handwriting, which are now promoted in many places and which are a revival of the Aldine letters from the Italy of the 16th century, which have also been the base from which the so-called "Italic" style of the printed typefaces (fonts) had been developed. Such a handwriting has improved readability, but how fast and comfortable it is felt, can vary a lot between people. It works for me, but that does not mean that it would also be the best for others. There are books and on-line tutorials about this.

Perhaps you should just write slower, to avoid fatigue.

Consider using "bubble mapping" and connecting words/thoughts, instead of writing linear text.

I write a daily journal - in this calm relaxed mode, I write linearly (on dotted paper).

When I'm in a business meeting, or taking notes where time is fleeting (a speech / seminar), I use bubble notes - which is effective for quickly getting the thoughts down, and connecting them.

Give it a try!

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.

There is a technique where you keep your hand almost still and move the whole arm instead.

https://youtu.be/-F8SA_QySkc?is=z0P7I8loxuHVwKXn

Write slower.

Agreed. As someone who frequently rearranges the structure and order of sentences as I go, I don't even know how to attempt writing by hand. It would be a complete mess. I expect that the common refrain would be wait until the second draft to make such rearrangements, but it's often the bones of the story I'm trying to set properly, and if the bones are broken, there's nothing for the meat to dangle upon.

But maybe it's different for me, since I write nonfiction?

I suspect it's because Stepenson stopped editing his work a long time ago.

He used to write a ton and edit it down to a normal-sized book, but once he got popular he just decided to (seemingly) publish everything he wrote, without editing.

Not a blog, but I handwrite presentation slides sometimes. And, of course, pages of notes. I use my ReMarkable 2 for that, so it's pretty easy to import to desktop and run scripts.

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.

I used an iPad + Apple Plencil for my last 2 years of University. I love the idea of digital notebooks, but for me writing 99% of the time in cursive zero friction between Pencil and glass was not a good combo. I find, at least for me, cursive needs that friction.

I tried some big name matte screen protector, I can’t remember now what it was called, and it was pretty good. It was like 70% of the way to feeling like paper. The Pencil tips would wear away but they still lasted much longer than the sticks for a mechanical pencil would. But the way the matte finish would diffuse light hurt the sharpness of the iPad display so I’ve been using these Pencil tip covers instead. It took some getting used to, and I still prefer actual pencil to actual paper but this at least saves me from buying and storing tens or hundreds of notebooks.

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 am in the same camp. A year ago I switched over to taking notes on a Kindle Scribe, and as a voracious note taker it has been going very well. There are a few small negatives: - twice a page of text just vanished completely, in roughly 500 pages written in the past year, due to some shenanigans with the selection tool - Over 40/50 pages notebooks don't seem to export reliably. So for my work notes I start a new notebook every month (I average approximately 1.5 pages per workday) - I no longer scribble as many unspoken impressions down as I did with paper (where I had known before, that small writings in the margins on some paper of mine where as save from looking in to, as the insides of my Jeans' pocket watch pocket)

Positive: - I can send PDFs of my notes out within a minute to any email - a lot less to carry around, I just make sure to keep it with me, nearly all the time - organizing notes retrospectively is a big leap forward from paper - I can just select lines of text I wrote and move them around, even shrink them a little (to fit an extra line of text or two on the same page)

So far I haven't gotten used to actually extracting the notes with the Kindle application on my PC, it's always going over Amazon's servers whenever I click "share" to export my notes...

How do you go about having AI conversations with your notes?

No, that's not why.

And it's good for your brain to read the whole article, not just the title:

"Don’t use a gadget"

My big problem with the fountain pens is that the ink evaporates over a few weeks. Like bone dry, needs a refill.

I did some fade tests with several pens and a pencil on a laser print. The pencil and toner were the only things that hadn’t faded in direct sunlight after two years. Even high end pens faded.

To be fair, your notebook probably won’t get light like that, but pencils are pretty archival.

Your brain _is_ getting smoothed by this behavior. Don't use AI for writing or your thinking will suffer.

Of course Claude told you its version would land better, that's what how it is trained, but that doesn't make it true.

Did you use a fountain pen to write and refine the post? ;)

IT VVORKED FOR THE ROMANS I SVPPOSE.

Same.

While writting I think there's a very fine line that separates external storage from memorization. What I mean by this is that sometime we write ideas so we can avoid forgetting and be able to come back them (David Lynch), or as we write and develop a thought or subject, we are actually creating memories.

I think the point of writing stuff down is mainly organization, storage and exploration and not a memory exercise.

Are you left-handed by chance?

Yeah especially for doing math, I've found it's really helpful that I can just select some equations I wrote and shift them down (or insert more space). It helps with adding derivations or additional notes after the fact.

However I'm considering moving back to handwritten notebooks for some things, purely due to the simplicity (no worry about battery life, technical issues, or the difficulty in switching back and forth between my book reader and my notes app).

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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.

When i was in college, we wrote a lot of C code in those blue notebooks. And this is a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, which is probably why I don't totally didn't hate whiteboard coding tests. And when I'm trying to work with a new programming language or tool, I'm usually writing things out by hand (helps with the memory, like the article referenced).

I have been using LLMs for this and they excel and understanding my very poor calligraphy. All I do I take photos of the pages I wrote by hand, and then ask the LLM to convert those notes to markdown and convert any diagrams that I might have to mermaidjs style, and worked wonders for me.

Why would I ride my bicycle anywhere when I have a car?

Rocketbook has some products that promise to help with this here. I've tried them and found them high friction but it might be worth it to you.

There's also the pens that use cameras and special papers like livescribe (I think?) but I didn't love those either.

I just take a photo and let an LLM transcribe it

It's a bummer that Apple Pencil support isn't better in the iPadOS version of Obsidian.

Take a pic of the pages, extract text.

Show me an interesting novel you wrote, then.

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Hi. Retention is a problem not because there is something wrong with our memory but that’s how the brain works. Science shows that we forget 70% of what you read in 24 hours. I have had the same issue and always left me with the feeling that I am not getting the best out of my reading. So I created LearnBetter. It applies learning science principles to help you retain by converting what you read into short exercises. Re-reading, highlighting or writing it yourself by creating then organizing notes won’t give you the results you are looking for. Atleast not to me. Trust me I have done them all. Try out Learnbetter. See if that helps you. It’s free. I am passionate about this problem and I want to help others who are going through what I did. It’s getlearnbetter.ai. It’s in beta so expect some minor issues here and there. Would love to hear what you think if you decide to try.

In my first job, my supervisor gave me a Day Timer binder and set of pages for it and I very dependent on it within a few weeks. That thing was always with me and I was a little terrified that I would leave it somewhere. If I were hit by a bus and they gave that book to my replacement, they would have no problem picking up where I left off.

Then I got a series of Palm Pilot devices and left the paper behind. It worked pretty well for me and the grafitti handwriting system was ingenious. Aside from my contact list being duplicated a few times a year, I didn't really have any negative experiences.

Then smart phones hit and even though they can do everything any electronic organizer ever did for me, I've never been as happy with them.

I'm seriously considering buying a paper planner again. Shared calendars is the only thing blocking me.

I love Obsidian too, but for me it's just a place where I park notes for future reference. I don't actively use it.

Writing by hand has some advantages and writing by keyboard also has some advantages. Using note-taking app or similar software is very convenient and useful in some situations.

Claude is great at that. I have a custom /skill in obsidian which OCRs and then reads and corrects the output. It gets like 95%+ of my notes right, and my handwriting is rather abhorrent

for sure... if your handwriting is good enough.

I had to learn to type early on due to my handwriting, but I can read my own. I definitely process things differently through handwriting. When I write stories, my style changes when I type!

Me too. I love Snow Crash and re-read it recently. I started Cryptonomicon, but didn't even get 1/4th before giving up.

Yes, I've had to learn this one the hard way, too. And more than once, I have to admit.

Hello fellow Anathem reader, there's doesn't seem to be many of us

The rest of that sentence:

> 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.

You've been downvoted to oblivion, but I figured I'll use you as a meat shield since there isn't a single other reply of criticality here AFAICT.

The study talks about connections and frequency, but that seems like a very coarse measure for something as complex as the brain.

> Increased connectivity within the theta (3.5–7.5 Hz) and alpha (8–12.5 Hz) frequency bands has been linked to mechanisms underlying sensorimotor integration (). As increased connectivity in the brain was observed only when writing by hand and not when simply pressing keys on the keyboard, our findings can be taken as evidence that handwriting promotes learning.

Can you? The linked paper appears to be stating association, not causation.

The alternative hypothesis is that the brain activates more because writing by hand is harder, and that by writing by hand you just get better at writing by hand.

My thought is, write in whichever medium you feel you work best in. Maybe try them both. And if you're not productive maybe don't use that medium.

This feels like a lot of grasping to try to justify some retroism (why does it need justification?).

I think the article offers some good advice, at least advice that the author believes in, and from my own anecdotal experience it seems to hold water. Writing by hand, on physical paper, does indeed seem to offer some advantages over typing or using a tablet/stylus.

It exists I think, they just require you to score a certain amount of points before you obtain the privilege

Sort of. For most letters, my print strokes are the same motion as cursive (except r and s) but lifting up the pen between letters/strokes. Even when I was practiced in cursive, I never felt like it added any time to lift and lower the pen, any more than the time it already took to move the pen to the right, but doing so improved legibility. Its not like I'm consciously thinking about each letter, unlike caligraphy or drafting block print.

I connect letters that are easy to connect and pick up my pen on others. Anything that flows into the next, cursive. Anything where you have to contort and lead in or out with fiddly little bits and then just write the letter anyhow, I just skip all that and write it plain.

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

Yes. When I write cursive and want to be able to read after myself I need to write very slowly and deliberately.

All my childhood I optimized my cursive writing for speed. Most teachers I had only valued note taking, not thinking about what is written.

Ummm, yes. Especially for those of us who may have had less than ideal schooling.