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posted by cmn32480 on Thursday July 09 2015, @10:02AM   Printer-friendly
from the where's-my-pencil dept.

From a recent issue of Wired:

Study after study shows we remember things better when we write them—our brain stores the letter-writing motion, which is much more memorable than just the mashing of a key that feels like every other key. We think in fragments, too, in shapes and colors and ideas that just don't come through on a keyboard. "Think about how many things that are built start as a drawing," Bathiche says. "Most things, right? Everything you're wearing probably started as a drawing."

You can't type out the folds of a dress, or the gentle curves of a skyscraper. Drawing with your stubby finger on a touchscreen isn't much better. Humans are tool-based creatures: Our fingers can do amazingly intricate things with a pen, a brush, or a scalpel, that we can't replicate with a mouse or the pads of our fingers. Our computers are giving back that kind of detailed control. In turn, the pen is opening up new ways of digital expression, new tools for communication, new ways to interact with our tech.

My wife's cousin's husband is a cartoonist for the New Yorker. He uses a high-end Wacom digitizer. Hasn't the problem of the high tech pen been solved?


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 09 2015, @12:41PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 09 2015, @12:41PM (#206945)

    Wasn't anyone else forced to write "I will not ____" when they did something wrong as a child? I grew up to hate and fear writing, typing is no problem, but writing is pain.

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  • (Score: 2) by Marand on Thursday July 09 2015, @09:00PM

    by Marand (1081) on Thursday July 09 2015, @09:00PM (#207124) Journal

    Wasn't anyone else forced to write "I will not ____" when they did something wrong as a child? I grew up to hate and fear writing, typing is no problem, but writing is pain.

    You can also tell people aren't left-handed, too. Writing was one of the worst things about school for me growing up because, as a lefty that only had right-handed teachers, I never learned a good way to hold a pen or pencil to prevent smearing over what I wrote. It was literally painful to write in school because of the way I held them, to the point that I ended every school day with massive pain in my hand and wrist from writing. This also meant that my handwriting was terrible and I took any shortcut possible to write less. The whole thing was so bad that, when I got a computer, I started typing and printing my homework out just to avoid some writing.

    I actually write better on tablet computers and pen displays these days because I had to adjust to the differences, which made me unlearn some bad writing habits. Plus the whole smearing thing isn't a problem...