Sam Radford

June 23, 2021

Why we need to keep writing by hand

My friend, Geoffrey, sent me a link to a delightful article about hand-writing last week. I loved this paragraph in particular: 

I believe that handwriting still serves a deep purpose in our lives and that letting it fade away will be a loss to our spirit. Precisely because it is no longer essential for communication, handwriting can now be free to express its true nature as an embodied practice of creative expression, a synchronization of mind and body. Handwriting need not fold up and die. It can rise again as the original artistic act, unique to each of us, available to all, and really close at hand.

I've written previously about my re-establishing a journalling habit and writing by hand with fountain pens. 

Every single day for the last seven months, using my fountain pen, I've written in my notebook. It’s an engrained habit now and I don’t see myself ever going back. 

Those of you who know me though know that I’m no luddite! Quite the opposite. I work in technology and have spent my whole life enjoying it. But even as a lover of technology, I can recognise there are powerful benefits to things like writing by hand, holding a physical book, and more. So, as the article author, Barbara Bash, writes, this isn’t about rejecting technology:

What I am proposing is that handwriting can become a contemplative practice, a generator of insight, a deepening down activity that counterbalances the vast, rapidly moving electronic world we’re bathed in. Handwriting is a powerfully simple way to bring natural creativity and connection back into our lives. It is an act of wholeness. 

An act of wholeness. I like that. 

–Sam

Got some thoughts on this? I’d love to hear from you – do hit reply or drop me a note.

@samradford | samradford.com

About Sam Radford

Husband, father, lover of books, writer, tech geek, sports fan, and pragmatic idealist from Sheffield, England.