By Karen Alava | Staff Writer
There’s such a romantic aspect to handwriting.
I remember being in elementary school and getting handwritten love letters, or even just little notes from my friends. They felt so personal. Their misspellings, the little drawings in the margins and the way they decorated the page made each one feel completely their own. There was something special about knowing that someone had taken the time to sit down, write something just for you and leave a little piece of themselves on the page.
Then they all discovered they could type and print letters, and suddenly everything started to change.
Obviously, their spelling was still pretty bad since autocorrect wasn’t exactly a huge thing back then. But where were the drawings? Where was the calligraphy?
If I received a love letter like that, forget it. I would immediately reject them. As for my friends…I’d still be thankful.
Nowadays, the modern version of a handwritten, or printed, love letter is sadly a guy liking your Instagram story.
I think that is part of what makes handwriting so special. It is human. It is imperfect. It is a form of art and a way of expressing yourself that cannot be completely separated from the person doing the writing.
No two people have exactly the same handwriting. Even our own handwriting changes depending on our mood, how quickly we are writing or simply how much space we have left on the page. You can tell when someone is rushing, when they are trying to make something look nice, or when they have run out of room and suddenly their words become smaller and smaller.
And I think that matters more now because so much of our writing has moved onto screens.
We spend years in school learning how to write, revising our work and checking it over and over for spelling and grammar mistakes. We are taught to make our writing as clear and polished as possible. Yet now, with AI becoming part of everyday life, there is a strange new pressure to make our writing look “human” enough.
There’s something strange about courses trying to determine whether students used AI by using AI themselves. After years of being told to eliminate mistakes from our writing, we are suddenly worried that writing too perfectly might make us suspicious.
Handwriting certainly isn’t a solution to the larger conversation about AI and education. But it does remind us of something we seem to be losing: writing is not only about producing a perfect final product. It is also about the process of getting there.
That is probably why journaling has become so meaningful to me.
Whenever something is bothering me, the first thing I think about is opening my journal and writing about my frustrations, thoughts and desires. There’s no notification popping up, no temptation to delete the entire paragraph because it doesn’t sound good enough and no pressure to make my thoughts presentable. I simply write.
Handwriting gives those feelings somewhere to go. More importantly, it nurtures my creativity.
When I write by hand, I can experiment with my words, my handwriting, my style and the way I put my thoughts on paper. I can figure out what works for me and what doesn’t without worrying about whether it looks polished enough for someone else.
Maybe that is the magic of handwriting. It doesn’t have to be perfect. In fact, the imperfections are part of what makes it yours.
Maybe this is why I’m still holding on to handwriting in the first place.
I’ll admit, I might be a hopeless romantic. Maybe that explains why I care so much about writing that feels sincere and personal. I even own a postcard that I bought specifically for the person I’ll someday fall completely in love with. No person in mind, no relationship pending, just a postcard.
So far, it’s been sitting there unused.
Still, I’m saving it. And when I finally have someone worth writing to, I know exactly how to send it. By hand.
DISCLAIMER:
The opinions presented on this page do not represent the views of the PantherNOW Editorial Board. These views are separate from editorials and reflect the perspectives of contributing writers and/or university community members.
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