The Lost Art of Handwriting and the Brain

About 20 years ago I took a copywriting course. The course was about writing ads and sales letter that could elicit a response from a reader.

Either to buy something or take the next step in the sales process. I had some rental properties and wanted to know how to write ads on Craigslist to fill them.

The course started out by asking me to write out several famous sales letters by hand. The theory was this exercise helps you focus on the structure and flow of the letter.

You start to sense patterns that you might miss by reading the letter alone.

• The pacing

• The rhythm

• The diction

They wanted you to write letters out not just once. In some cases they wanted you to write them 10 times.

I can’t tell you definitively that copying other sales letters helped me write better apartment ads. The overall course definitely did.

Turns out there is a lot of science to back up handwriting and the brain.

In January of this year (2024), some researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology looked at the difference between handwriting and typing on a keyboard.

They took 36 university students and had them perform writing exercises with a digital pen and then with a keyboard.

During this exercise they recorded the brain activity of the students.

Their conclusion:

“Handwriting requires fine motor control over the fingers, and it forces students to pay attention to what they are doing. Typing, on the other hand, requires mechanical and repetitive movements that trade awareness for speed. Our results reveal that whenever handwriting movements are included as a learning strategy, more of the brain gets stimulated, resulting in the formation of more complex neural network connectivity. It appears that the movements related to typewriting do not activate these connectivity networks the same way that handwriting does.”

The study also talked about increased theta wave activity in the brain with handwriting:

“It has also been proposed that hippocampal activity is reflected within the theta band (Klimesch et al., 1994), adding further support for the benefits of handwriting in terms of learning and memory formation.”

The hippocampus is involved in memory and often shrinks in people with dementia.

The studies were geared to University students. They wanted kids to build better connections in their developing brains.

At the same time why can’t this be done with older people? Many studies talk about the need to keep brains active to mitigate or avoid cognitive decline.

That’s why we’re working with some of our residents to have them hand write words.

You can start with them writing out the alphabet. Or a letter to their family.

If they have trouble with it, maybe just print out a children’s story. Let them try to copy it on to another piece of paper.

If they’re religious, have them write verses from a religious text.

Trying having them write a little bit each day.

The brain is a muscle. Make it work out!