Taking handwritten notes on digital devices

Posted by Dr Andus
Nov 20, 2018 at 12:10 PM

Hugh wrote:
>One advantage of handwriting that I think (I may be mistaken) has not
>been mentioned so far in this thread is that recent American
>neurological research is reported to suggest that writing by hand
>engages deeper levels of the brain than typing does. So (it has been
>suggested) even if handwriting loses you speed, but it may improve
>understanding and articulacy.

From my own experience I do feel that writing by hand is different from typing and yet again different from dictation (in terms of the quality of the required cognitive engagement), and I wouldn’t be surprised if one day someone would prove that it affects the resulting quality of the text.

E.g. I find dictation more mentally exhausting (and won’t do it when I’m tired) because I need to compose the text in my head before saying it, as opposed to just allowing the sentence to be formed as I’m handwriting it or typing it.

But I think my problem with Nebo was that it actually distracted me from the process of thinking, as I focused too much on the tool and getting the words spelled right etc. So it’s a bit similar to the dictation problem, in the sense that it might be better suited for transforming a previously composed text into typed format, rather than writing from scratch.