#handwriting — Public Fediverse posts

What Do Students Lose When They Stop Writing?

Educators are worried that many students can no longer write essays without #AI . And it’s costing more than just grammar skills.

By Dana Goldstein
Aug. 17, 2026

Excerpt: "A growing number of educators are alarmed, and insist that students should write without A.I. These teachers are returning to #handwriting, #BlueBooks and proctored, in-class essay tests — all attempts to prevent students from outsourcing their writing to #chatbots.

"This is baffling to tech industry leaders, who see A.I. rejection as a form of educational malpractice. They point out that writing is already the leading use of A.I. in the workplace, and argue there is no need to continue suffering through the task without help. After all, they say, chatbots now exceed the ability of most human beings to produce fluent prose.

"All this points to some questions about writing itself: Why work so hard to learn it? And what do students stand to lose when they stop facing down a blank page, alone with their thoughts?"

Read more:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/17/us/student-writing-essays-ai.html

Archived version:
https://archive.ph/TGoVV

#CriticalThinkingSkills #TheBlankPage #AISucks #DumbingUsDown #Enshittification #Proctoring #InClassEssays

Nothing beats writing by hand ✍🏼

"Writing by hand is a human endeavour."

"Because my pen cannot keep up with the speed of my thoughts, especially after a few espressos, every sentence is weighed and measured before it goes down."

"Handwriting is an extension of the self."

https://spectator.com/article/nothing-beats-writing-by-hand/?edition=us

#CrossPens #Handwriting #Writing #Marginalia #JamesDixon #TheSpectator

ティモシー・スナイダー「暴政」の５．職業倫理を忘れるな、より。
#今日の抜書き #万年筆 #fountainpen #handwriting #photography

Excerpt from Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons form the Twentieth Century

My book of essays – Lessons Learned on Life’s Rocky Trail

https://essaysbydan.org/2026/08/15/my-book-of-essays/

✍️👌🏽👇🏽:

“Writing By Hand Is Good For Your Brain – Here’s How To Do It”, Neal Stephenson (https://nealstephenson.substack.com/p/writing-by-hand-is-good-for-your).

Via HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49022152

#Writing #Handwriting #Penmanship #Cursive #Pen #FountainPen #Ink #Paper #Authors #Tips

The Blue Screen of Death

An overreliance on technology means that invariably a writer will be left hanging when said technology breaks. I have become so used to the screen that I spent the last several days moping around, unable to work on my latest novel.

My plethora of notebooks is a testament to how I used to write. Why is it so difficult for me to write without technology now? Pencils break, but there is always a pencil sharpener.

And another pencil.

Ink pens run out of ink, but I have plenty more in reserve. Paper never breaks. It can brown or get damaged, but I’ve had these notebooks for a LONG time.

So it is a reminder to me that while technology is a helpful tool, it can also be a handicap.

I put pen to paper.

Lesson learned.

Maybe.

August 13, 2015

From the always entertaining Tim Steiner, AKA Hemingway Jones: The Rebellion of Writing by Hand in a World of Screens
#FountainPen #handwriting #journaling

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5Sw6XzVmF4

PENS
From the excitement of getting my first pen to finally writing with one until the ink ran out

A childhood memory about pens, my father's briefcase, school, smartphones, and finding my way back to handwriting with my left hand.

Article link below.

https://medium.com/@dianabasieseme_60028/pens-60afc5a7e96b?sk=c88bd8e95ccf5096f25f45b1b1617146

Visual created with AI.

#Writing #Childhood #Nostalgia #Handwriting

I remember being passionate about writing instruments since the early days of school.

Writing with a fountain pen was mandatory in Romania and we even took calligraphy courses, using specially designed notebooks to keep our letters and slants uniform. I didn't quite love it, but handwriting became my passion. I changed my handwriting style countless times, and even today, more than three decades after those lessons, I still find myself looking critically at my letter forms.

My maternal grandfather, who was a mailman all his life, was inseparable from his fountain pen and ink bottle. My mother used a Chinese clone of the Parker 51, widely popular and easy to find for as cheap as $1. But hers had a gold nib and a gorgeous racing green body. How happy I was to have it entrusted to me and how devastated after bending its tines in an accidental drop!

Now I'm quite deep in this rabbit hole and enjoying it. I own about forty fountain pens and about the same amount of ink bottles. I know that's noob level for some, so I proudly present myself as “a user, not a collector”. Don't we all?

Learning about reading and writing habits of people I appreciate is something I'm deeply invested in. But my interest goes beyond their schedule and routines and I'm really excited to learn what pens they use, what inks they prefer, what paper, and why. And if I happen to find a mathematician that I follow to be a fountain pen user, a wide grin appears on my face. It's almost a reflex.

In The Gradient, I've collected a few examples of researchers using fountain pens, along with a small introduction on writing instruments in general. I'm sure I've missed many and obviously I speculated at times, but it's been a fun process.

https://www.thegradient.xyz/lives-well-inked-researchers-fountain-pens/

Oh, and here's my currently inked:
- Montblanc 149 + Montblanc Toffee Brown
- Montblanc 146 + Montblanc Rudyard Kiplin
- Pelikan M101n + Pelikan 4001 Royal Blue
- Caran d'Ache Le Man + CdA Infinite Grey
- Pilot 823 + Iroshizuku Yama Guri

Are you a fountain pen user? What's your lineup?

#fountainpens #handwriting #ink #blog #newsletter

i feel like i only use a small sub-set of words every day (in english, in romanian, in my occasional bouts of french or dutch)

so i've gone back to the manual & slow process of looking up words i come across in my reading and don't already know, or can't explain. then, i copy the entire dictionary entry by hand in a notebook

here's hoping it stirs the pot of stale soup that my vocabulary has become

#fuckai #learning #handwriting

https://nealstephenson.substack.com/p/writing-by-hand-is-good-for-your

#writing #handwriting

RE: https://mastodon.world/@paulschoe/116988493296051513

I think, I should get into practice of writing a diary/art journaling manually and scheduling reading a book into my weekly routines... AI studies show we loose abilities we don't practice.

So this is not just good habits and practice for youngsters but for any age.

#books #handwriting #artJournals

@lproven 👍

… and it's one hundred percent human-written, according to Pangram 3.3.2 – <https://www.pangram.com/history/3d90f0d6-4c85-4787-980f-6062bf07df6d> – although I know that Pangram can make mistakes.

#AI #Pangram #handwriting #brain

Cc @oscarjiminy https://aus.social/@oscarjiminy/116977723987499502

Well, I'm at the point where I often think the word and not the individual letters when I try "writing at speed" with my left hand (sloppy "at speed" still, though). Neater when I'm carefully practicing, of course.

#ambidexterous #ambiTraining #handwriting

🤦‍♂️ Ah, Karl Muller, the tech-luddite philosopher, suggests we ditch computers because they lack the soul and imperfections of a human's shaky #handwriting. 🖋️ Apparently, the pristine esthetics of a digital screen are just too much for his artisanal sensibilities. 🌿 #AnalogForever
https://karlvmuller.com/posts/why-i-am-not-going-to-buy-a-computer/ #TechLuddite #DigitalVsAnalog #Philosophy #ArtisanLife #TechDebate #HackerNews #ngated

Anyone good on identifying handwriting?
Here's a letter known to be from Beatrice Elvery (© National Library of Ireland) and another (the two-page one) that I think might be from her - is this the same handwriting?
#handwriting

RE: https://justinpot.com/16021-2/

📝 "Cursive isn’t faster than handwriting": maybe not, but one advantage for cursive is found in copious note-taking: try print handwriting vs. cursive. Writing in cursive is less fatiguing than print.

This is also the first I've seen the term "manuscript handwriting" in place of "print handwriting". Is that a Canadian term?

#Handwriting #Penmanship #Cursive #Manuscript #Print

University of Regina: In Her Own Hand: The Gladys Arnold Project. “We have partnered with Zooniverse to provide an exciting online crowd-sourced project. The University of Regina Archives has many primary sources about Gladys Arnold, a prize-winning Saskatchewan journalist. We request volunteers to transcribe her writings. In Her Own Hand: The Gladys Arnold Project consists of 4 […]

KUER: UVU helped digitize America’s birth certificate, bringing its drafting to life. “Given today’s technology, the idea of writing the Declaration of Independence with quill pens on parchment paper seems daunting. But that’s what the scribe charged with the task had at his disposal in 1776. It’s also why a collaboration between Utah Valley University and Pembroke College at Oxford […]

Well, OK. Now I write like Harry Harrison. Ever since I started writing the first drafts longhand, I've been getting varied and unexpected results. Maybe my mind feels more free and more experimental when I write longhand?

#IWriteLike #AmWriting #shortstory #handwriting #draft #mind

I kinda cooked with this one

#FountainPens #handwriting

Journal entry for 3-day-corporate event.

Written with my beloved but troublesome Waterman Ideal 12 ❤️

#FountainPens #handwriting

I switched back to pen and paper for notes this week. Watching my handwriting settle into a rhythm across the page — starting tight, loosening up, finding its flow — is oddly satisfying. Digital is faster, but analog leaves a different kind of trail. #Handwriting

All the custom colours of fountain pen ink KWZ has made for the St Louis Pen show on one page. I seem to like every other one of these, and this year's MoBot (Missouri Botanical Gardens) colour wasn't a fave but it sold out on day 1 of a 3 day show.
#FountainPen #Ink #Handwriting

Robin Linacre: Letterpaths – free software for teaching cursive writing. “I have developed a free and open source library called letterpaths, to help my kids with their handwriting. I noticed a lack of free, high quality tools that follow the UK curriculum and I wanted something flexible that could be used both in games and for worksheet generation.”

Well, what do you know. The first digital rewrite of the handwritten draft obliterated Daniel Defoe from the results. The subsequent tweaking and polishing washed my boat up on the ever familiar shore -- Ursula K. Le Guin. I guess this is the writing gait of my mind.

#writing #draft #editing #handwriting #IWriteLike

🤔 Ah, yes, because nothing screams #innovation like using a $500 3D printer to replace the age-old skill of #handwriting postcards! ✍️😂 Who knew the future would be full of pen-stabbed printer beds and the clunky charm of OpenSCAD? 🖨️📬
https://severinbucher.com/posts/writing-postcards-with-a-3d-printer/ #3Dprinting #postcards #OpenSCAD #humor #HackerNews #ngated

Halfway bent.... Well, maybe a little less than half. The colors are the intense colors I am after though. I think I could use a little less powder in my phosphor coating, but they are nice.

I added mercury, tipped off the trap, and dipped it in blockout paint masking off the "N". It took me a little longer, one of these days I will learn that when the patterns are chunky and look like graffiti, they are tricky and will take longer. I did have fun making it.

Next time, I am gonna tell my tube pulling glassblower buddies to pull them thinner. I kept having to stretch certain colors so they would be thin enough to air cool (like the brown arrow up top).

Tomorrow I will come in when the paint is dry and turn on the 60ma aging transformer so it becomes uniformly bright.

#neon #residency #NYC #drawing #handwriting #color #glass #light #public #engagement #brooklyn #text