Writing by hand

1. Writing by hand simplifies the work of organizing ideas into an essay. Compare the tedium of creating an outline in Microsoft Word with the ease of arranging and rearranging on paper, where ideas can be reordered or added or removed with simple arrows and strikethroughs. With index cards, reordering is even easier.

2. Writing by hand serves as a reminder that a draft is a draft, not a finished piece of writing. For many student-writers, writing an essay is a matter of composing at the keyboard, hitting Control-P, and being done. More experienced writers know that an initial draft is usually little more than a starting point. Without the sleek look of word-processed text, there’s no possibility of mistaking a first effort for a finished piece of writing.

3. Writing by hand helps to minimize the scattering of attention that seems almost inevitable at a computer, with e-mail, instant-messaging, and web-browsing always within easy reach. Even without an online connection, a word-processing program itself offers numerous distractions from writing. Writing by hand keeps the emphasis where it needs to be — on getting the words right, not on fonts, margins, or program settings. Writing is not word-processing.

[ Quality ]

Basicly hand writting forces you to stop spewing mindless garbage and write only what is of consequence. Additionaly its less distracting, no need to worry about font/sizes/margins and other shit. Just write.

1 comment:

Karlos said...

I think the point is that you should plan before you write. Be it either in your head or on paper. Theoretically you could do it on the computer too, as long as you treat it as a plan and not the actual peice of work