On one hand (heh) there’s apparently evidence to suggest that handwriting activates parts of the brain which aren’t typically activated by just typing something out. I can see how that would be the case and why it could sometimes be useful.
On the other, the idea of carrying a little notebook around to jot things down when I have a phone in my pocket, or using a fountain pen for longform text (trust me it would actually help you avoid hand cramps, aside from being less wasteful) all comes across as… intentionally inefficient? I struggle to see intentional inefficiency as anything but pretension. Like it’s all just fetishizing living a more analogue life.
It actually makes the techbro in me think there’s something to companies like Supernote and Boox and ReMarkable making e-ink tables that exist mainly so that what you do choose to write by hand can be digitized, stored and made searchable.
I suppose that’s actually exactly why people tend to journal in physical notebooks? Because what you put down in there will just disappear unless you crack open that notebook again.
…Meanwhile I’m pretty sure a lot of people feel that writing things by hand gets their creative juices flowing. That’s sort of interesting to me, because personally, by the time I’m finished writing a single sentence whatever I was thinking about is halfway gone. If I don’t get it down real quick my thoughts will drift to something else entirely, so when I had to handwrite essays in primary school I’d get completely stuck in a way I never do just typing things.
TL;DR someone who’s bad at empathy talks about handwriting as if everyone else experiences the world exactly the same way, please knock him off of his stupid pedestal
I do handwritten notes for anything fast paced where I also have to respond in real time, because handwriting is a less mentally demanding task for me than typing. I can star, I can draw, I can make up any word I want without squiggly lines, lists are instantaneous. I do design work, and noting a design change through typing is a nightmare when I can just squiggle the layout and put an arrow, cross out, annotate, whatever. I also find I remember handwritten notes better. The notes are a incoherent, illegible, squiggly mess, and I usually know exactly what they mean at a glance.
I actually have a reMarkable and love it. I don’t really use the notes to text or cloud functionality often, but the few times I have, it’s been really helpful. I like it better than a notebook because I don’t feel like I’m wasting paper, so I take notes a bit more freely as a result. It’s also helpful in situations where it’s impractical for me to use a keyboard. For example, I teach, and when I’m grading a presentation or explaining a concept to a student who already has their own laptop in front of them, I don’t want to muck with trying to make sure they can see my screen and it’s the proper size when it’s faster for me to sketch out the concept.
I’m also trying to learn Japanese, and having a way to freely practice writing as many times as I need to without having to print over and over again is really useful.
That said, I can’t think of a reason I would ever write anything with actual grammar or sentence structure involved longform. If it’s just me and the computer, no other interruptions and I can focus on my inner voice, typing is much faster and more natural. I’m able to type closer to the speed I can think than I can write, but that’s because I’m used to typing like I think - in full sentences. Trying to type shorthand is like sludge for me the same way trying to write longhand is like sludge. I use both because they serve different purposes for me :)