What’s Wrong with Writing by Hand?
April 8th, 2008After hearing about the kerfuffle around Sarah Lacy’s interview of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerburg (I read about it first on Tom’s blog), I finally watched some of the interview yesterday. Interviewing is an important skill for technical communicators, who spend much of their time gathering information, so that is the approach Tom took.
Lacy did talk too much, I think, but one of the things that jumped out at me in the interview is that she teased Zuckerburg for writing ideas down by hand in books. I do that myself, so I don’t know why someone who likes and uses computers can’t do things the old-fashioned way sometimes. For me, writing things down by hand helps the ideas feel more personal because they’re in my handwriting. I feel more connected to my ideas.
On the other hand, I tend to do that more for creative pursuits, not for technical writing projects, where handwriting equates to inefficiency.
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April 9th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
I have the worst handwriting ever, but I like taking notes by hand because I can draw arrows and scrawl cryptic interpretations of what I’m hearing. I almost always take a notebook to meetings because someone may say something remarkable and I’ll jot it down. I agree: UP WITH PENCILS!
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April 11th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
I agree with Ben that I prefer handwriting when I’m being creative, but I work better on the computer when I’m trying to produce something professional. One advantage to notebooks is that they’re a lot more portable than a computer, and a lot lighter than a laptop!
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April 21st, 2008 at 7:53 am
I agree that taking notes by hand is best when I’m trying to capture the bones of an idea before it slips my mind and evaporates into the ether forever. When I am taken by an intial burst of creativity, I am usually not conveniently sitting at a keyboard.
I have learned to quickly scribble things down coherently enough to grab the essentials of the idea. Then I let it percolate for a bit. Sometimes I forget about it completely for awhile. When I come back to it, I realize it is either a good idea worth persuing or a crappy idea that I discard.
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