Why Handwriting?
Handwriting is a process of writing done by hand. Once ubiquitous, now it acquires specificity. Handwriting is not something done by all writers, as some of them reserved to typing of the text. Some still employ handwriting from time to time. And then some, possibly the least populous group, do not start typing until they have their drafts in handwriting. I know at least one writer who belongs to this group, perhaps increasingly rare. The ground to think that the group will diminish further are plenty: there comes, in many places of the Earth, a state of technological advances that almost equates with the experiences of typing acquired earlier in life or with a more certainty than handwriting. When my child in a good public school found himself struggling with handwriting, I was told that perhaps he does not need this skill after all. now that one could always type on someone's device. It surprised me, of course--but if a teacher in the elementary school suggests this to a parent, it is possible that handwriting is at the beginning of its extinction. I'll refrain from the alarmist proclamations, which are plenty without me adding my voice to the chorus, but at that moment I was slightly alarmed. If pertained to my child, after all. There was a palpable opportunity, at least in the teacher's imagination, of not teaching children handwriting at all.
But, my interest to handwriting is not dictated by a desire to preserve handwriting as such -- it is going to be just fine and will not fall into oblivion in the observable future. But handwriting possesses a plasticity that typed writing does not. For that reason, and several more reasons that I mentioned during my presentation at the American Anthropological Association in 2017, handwriting is a good ethnographic tool.
But, my interest to handwriting is not dictated by a desire to preserve handwriting as such -- it is going to be just fine and will not fall into oblivion in the observable future. But handwriting possesses a plasticity that typed writing does not. For that reason, and several more reasons that I mentioned during my presentation at the American Anthropological Association in 2017, handwriting is a good ethnographic tool.