Not only does it make consumption a lot more engaging, it makes a revisit of that book extremely rewarding.
Don’t get caught up trying to figure out the right notation or highlighter color for a line. Just mark them up and later it’ll make sense.
Edit: I think the broader point that some of you may be missing is that I’m not prescribing a particular form of notetaking. I’m saying that reading is made more rewarding with active engagement. How you best engage is up to you.
since u can always create copies of documents. u can make it up as many times as u want.
or the old school way - using a photocopy for the pages u want to markup / print 2-4 pages in a sheet of what you want to read. & throw away.
"Cross out stuff you disagree with" actually makes me sick.
It also seems useless for understanding and retention, since highlighting is almost always misleading and margin notes are almost always empty. If you want to write notes, get a notebook, which gives you space to write real thoughts down. I use a trapper-keeper.
There is also nothing wrong with donating such books with clearly written disclaimer on the front page about the condition of the book.
Repackaging as 99% likenew and selling them should be a crime though.
different strokes. if you want to ensure you don't get sick from a line being crossed out, buy new.
You can buy unmarked used books. Just check. (And if you're buying online the state of the book is expected to be in the description.)
Another way of saying it is discussing a book with some people will be really rewarding. But others you will rather prefer not to. This is just an instance of a more generalizable rule: people develop preferences regarding who they want to spend their time with.
> and it's a shallow way of taking notes to begin with
Are we really going to speak down to how someone uses a bunch of paper bound together? That's how they wanted to use it, which is cool, it's just not how you like it.
It is very frustrating the number of people who say "it's their property, they can do whatever they want" and similar comments, all of which are missing the point. Yes. It is legal to write on your own property. I know thay. It's my opinion that they're doing something that is guaranteed to harm overall human knowledge: whoever purchases/inherits/digitzes the book has to deal with it. And it almost certainly harms their own understanding of the book.
If by that you meant to suggest that for formal study, some kind of self-review process combined with cold written practice/rehearsal sustained under interleaved spacing, then that is likely the gold standard for comprehension and memorization. But most people don't even know that, either.
But the main premise is we should not assume all book reading is for rigorous self study. Margin notes can be useful for other purposes than direct understanding/retention (I admittedly don't know the psychology evidence for it but many academics routinely write margin notes here and there on (poorly written/edited) papers for purposes of idea generation, scientific criticism, etc. Presumably the Edison example mentioned above would have been more like that.).
A book with notes is a guarantee that the book didn't spend its life sitting on a bookshelf not being read. If people are reading it is a net positive for overall human knowledge.
Lastly, your usage of Socratic teachings is a hollow appeal to authority. Socrates is dead and a modest library in an elementary school would surely have brought him to tears had he known how far we've come as a species, much less the remainder of books currently available.
And not that it matters, but "cross out" doesn't imply "destroy beyond recognition." A simple strike-through is sufficient to keep the text legible (so you remember what it is you disagree with).
if it doesn't clarify in the description, ask or don't buy.
Very often when I write in margins it's to question or argue against what's written (e.g. "really? what about ...", or "no, contradicts ...") which, to me, seems in line with the dialectic process Socrates promoted. Multiple sides, truth-seeking.
Sure, having a spacious notebook on the side is even better. But it's the same goal, isn't it? Engage more deeply with a text and encourage questioning as you read it, while it's still fresh.
Amazon's used prices are usually set by booksellers that base their prices on stuff like this for some books... When you get to like old cheap paperback romances though, or that .01 plus shipping, you might or might not.
I would be pissed if I expected a clean, un-scribbled-on book I wanted and it was represented as such, but got that.
That's like, elite literary territory though. Let's stick to the discussion on books.
also if you're buying used books, expect them to be used!
I would expect them to be in the condition they were graded as. I'll avoid poor or fair condition books that have lots of marking in them. Good books that have minimal marking should be fine to me.
No one is forcing you to buy used books with writing in them.
That doesn't mean scribbling in your own book is wrong.
As I say elsewhere, it depends on the edition or book, and how common they are.
A tiny glimpse into a stranger's thinking as they processed the same pages I just did.
Thoughts they may never have shared anywhere else, that may not have made sense to anyone anywhere else. A secret code only for people who just read the last few pages. Shockingly intimate.
https://www.themarginalian.org/
Highest possible recommendation for its thoughtful, intelligent, entirely human, poetic writing about various interconnected topics. Maria Popova is a treasure.
These were fun to find in college bookstores every semester. Not a fan of "highlight it all" but the occasional enlightened soul with a scientific bent.
This is actually the biggest reason I own a Remarkable 2/Kindle Scribe, let's me "destroy" the book while also not having to worry about losing my notes.
I love my Kobo. I highlight stuff with it. But for anything really important, I then go to my computer, go through each highlight, and make notes in my org file.
(I probably should automate it - I know tools exist to extract all that metadata from the Kobo).
Well... I'm mostly back to paper after losing most of the notes I had taken on my own Remarkable 2.
When I return the book to the library etc., I take all my record cards out and put them in a little perspex index box.
Sometimes I use the record cards to then start some more detailed notes in a notebook; sometimes the record cards refer to a page in my notebooks where I've attempted a derivation etc.
Who actually has time to go back and look at that?
It’s like taking photos of fireworks
This is eminently true for me. I rarely revisit notes, but if I take notes I have a much better recall and understanding than if I just consume the content.
There used to be bins where you could toss them all in, but those have disappeared.
Marking up books didn't come naturally to me, but I did it for a while. Paper books are just decaying bundles of plant fiber — and the ideas within them are likewise ephemeral. The illusion of permanence must be confronted and reckoned with.
But for the last 15-20 years, I have been taking notes in text files that are saved to version control, which I find suits me better.
* Notes are not space-constrained by the space of the page margins, nor by the initial form they take on the paper page.
* Notes can be revised at will without requiring complete duplication to maintain optimal appearance and organization. There is no reason to resist revising notes — the history is completely preserved in old versions, so nothing will ever be destroyed even if deleted. Even though those old versions will almost certainly never be revisited, knowing that they exist frees the mind.
* I can indulge my perfectionism and write math notes in LaTeX, music notes in Lilypond, diagrams using SVG... The act of typesetting is itself a form of active engagement the source material, although it does not have all the advantages of hand-copying and can be time-consuming.
* Digital notes take up no physical space, compatible with a minimalist lifestyle. They can expand infinitely without needing to be stored or carted around.
* Digital notes don't need to be defended against physical threats such as fire, flood, or vermin. However digital notes still require precautions to preserve them in the form of a backup regime, so this is something of a wash.
* Ultimately, I don't expect anyone but me to be interested in my notes, and I don't owe anyone my notes. When I'm gone, the notes will vanish into nothingness — and since they are not constrained by being part of a legacy for heirs to pick through, they can take whatever form suits me best during my life.
When I draw something I can remember the shapes better than if I simply sit there and stare at it. Something with the hand-eye coordination triggers the brain into remembering.
Typing in contrast, one is not tracing the shapes of the letters (the thing to remember), but pushing buttons that are not physically related.
It’s the same thing as if you can touch and hold an object it becomes much more real than if you can see it in a picture or on a screen. Remembering is connected better to touch.
The primary activity of note-taking is forming words and grappling with ideas, though — it's not like all benefits are lost when using a keyboard. To a certain extent other activities like typesetting achieve similar ends.
My brother writes novels longhand, and I've thought hard about this topic. Ultimately, certain personality quirks held me back and I never felt carefree when hand-writing notes. Version control liberated me.
Enjoy notes the way you want!
But when I re-read a book I’ve previously annotated, I get a rush of the time and place it happened, 20 years later. It’s crazy.
We are tactile beings who exist and connect in 3D space and brains remember ideas in locations.
I love files. But I think strong entities are trying to rip control away, with stupid consequences like making .txt obsolete.
Books have a good chance outlast a)mediums and b)formats. They have a good track record. Check back in 5000 years.
A bit of irony, going through old stuff I found a copy of Neal Stephenson's In the Beginning... was the Command Line on top of handwritten running logs from sr yr of college. In that book, there was a ticket stub from the time I was 86ed from an amusement park. (I did not eat enough after training that morning.) I was escorted on a golf cart back to our car where I finished Neal's now charmingly quaint essay with the plastic handle listening to Nirvana.
This was August 2001 and Mac OS X had barely come out. Maybe AI rhymes where Chinese free open-models clean up but someone proprietary figures it out. Which is sad as someone dominant in the ecosystem right now is the equivalent of Gary Kildall.
Since this morning I happened to grab Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia by DeLeuze & Guattari and inside (17 years ago, with a Pilot v5) i wrote:
"I have a feeling this needs to be revisited after another 30 years of production, process and consumption"
well, that time is now and AI is the body without organs du jour
(i am a weirdo really enjoying this thread of conversation right now)
Of course a lot of kids would then personalize their books with artwork and stickers. I guess it was that generation's equivalent of covering a laptop with stickers.
I do all that, all the time these days... :-) I thoroughly enjoy it! Sometimes I feel like having discussions (disagreeing or agreeing) with the author and will write entire pro/cons examples and/or arguments.
What's annoying are people who want other people to find their notes in books (and even sell them for the ego aspect).
Offloading things into a centralized store according to a system not only causes me anxiety but it doesn’t have the same spatial kick.
That’s definitely a design principle that’s been long since lost.
A few books I've taken enough notes to collect them in a folder. I put section tabs in the book and tabbed dividers into the folder with matching colors. I note the page numbers for each note. Then I shelve that folder to the right of the book it was noting.
Not library books though.
Every so often I get one with stuff underlined with pen or highlighter, and it's one of things that really makes me angry. (Lightly in pencil I'm okay with.)
The first time it felt like a crime.
Digitizing paper books and writing on them with digital ink is 100% the best way to have marginalia. I've tried special dotcode pens, portable scanners...writing digitally with a stylus is the best. Yes, it destroys the paper book, but it more than makes up for it with the freedom, flexibility, and durability of the digital copy.
[1]: https://www.davisr.me/projects/books/ [2]: https://www.davisr.me/projects/rcu/
A less rare book in a mass market edition would be another thing.
I hate it when people do this. Please don't. If you must, do it sparingly and for the love of all that's good please do not cross out words or sentences.
The only thing I can forgive is people who quote a particular paragraph they liked about the book in one of the first pages where there's enough blank space. It's a personal touch that doesn't taint the rest of the book.
Some mark that this belonged to someone, maybe from decades ago, can be charming; but please, do not ruin the book for me by scribbling all over it.
It all boils down to this: if it's a personal book that I don't intend to share with anyone ever, then I'll scribble all I want¹.
If I think it could be read by others in the future or it's obviously meant to be read by others (library loan) then don't.
And instead take notes on the side, with page reference if you really want to refer back to a specific page at some point.
---
¹ There's always a risk that a nosy kid finds my scribbled advanced-potion-making book in the future, but what's the worst that could happen?
I always assume someone will inherit my books, either when I die, or because I gave them away as gifts or exchanged them for other books at a used books shop.
This is my stance by default, but let's say there's a book I love which I never intend to part with, even then I would feel bad about crossing words out. After all, if I love the book, what's this "violent" disagreement/scribbling about?
How would someone writing in their copy of a book impact your ability to enjoy your own copy? Relax, it's their property and it's not criminal, so let them do what they want instead of trying to dictate rules.
If it's from a book shop, you can thumb through it and choose to not buy it. If it's inherited or a gift, then what's the harm? Just discard it if it's been "ruined" or shelve it if there's some sentimental reason to keep it, and get a clean copy to read.
> It's obvious from context I'm speaking of books that ended up with me,
I doubt any of my books will end up with you nor will the books of the vast majority of HN readers and commenters, so why should any of us care about your peculiarities and avoid doing something that works for us and that we want to do?
Sometimes you can thumb through and discover flaws, sometimes you cannot. Sometimes you can get that exact edition in better conditions, sometimes you cannot. Sometimes you buy a lot of used books, and cannot check every one of them. It's always a disappointment to find a book with pages all scribbled over.
> I doubt any of my books will end up with you
You're being too literal here.
If you don't care about my "peculiarities", just don't engage with me. Someone mentioned their attitude towards scribbling, and I cared enough to offer a counterargument on why I dislike it.
That may be true, but it's not like you can't just re-acclimate to the experience of writing on an iPad. Most people don't handwrite much, period, so if they start handwriting again they're going to have to have an adjustment period either way.
I personally would think that the the benefits of digital writing (searchability, portability, infinite canvas, handwriting cleanup, digitization) would outweigh his friction quibbles. I personally don't find it to be tiring to write on an iPad, even without a screen protector (which some people use to increase friction). Also, e-paper devices tend to have more friction-y feedback, but he doesn't address this at all when dismissing all "gadgets" outright.
It's so frustrating to be so pregnant with an idea, to open ones iPad, and to find out the battery is low, Procreate isn't working, the Notes app is confusing to navigate, oh no you're writing but your palm has slid on the screen, etc.
I've spent a lot of time searching for a digital alternative, but IMO we're at least a decade away from digital handwriting being even close to on-par with paper, even ignoring friction and feel.
That critique doesn't apply to Remarkables or Kindle Scribes though.
> Brain electrical activity was recorded in 36 university students as they were handwriting visually presented words using a digital pen and typewriting the words on a keyboard
kinda funny.
It's also not clear from this study that there is actually any benefit to "more brain activity". Of course doing more complex motor tasks requires more brain activity but nobody guarantees that this helps with remembering things.
i still feel writing something down helps with memory formation, in part because i remember the act of writing it down. cocktail napkins and whiteboards way better than ipads also
i remain obsessed with Pilot v5 rolling ball extra fine; i would say Pilot g2s are for proles but the outcome if you leave it in the dryer is far less severe
The pen itself also produces gigantic strokes.
It's also that I'll often not have my entire notepad on the desk, I might not have room, might only have the top corner on it, or just quickly jotting something down. An ipad, that's too precarious and unstable, no a notepad, it just works.
I often have like an inch of the notepad hanging off of my desk, when my arm is across it, the notepad just flexes and it's fine, if I do that to an ipad, it's cutting into my arm.
It's not just the ipad, I've also tried a remarkable and a kindle scribe and they all suffer from the same issue. Notepads are just more flexible, both literally and figuratively.
Try to "dot i-s" in a long word and see for yourself. It's just awkward. So people compensate by using thicker strokes that hide that "floating" effect.
I'm studying Chinese, and writing the characters is pretty much the only way to learn them. So far, the only device that semi-worked for me was a reMarkable 2 tablet. But its software is too shitty to be useful.
So I just switched to paper completely.
For example, if I asked you to code FizzBuzz while riding a unicycle, I'm pretty sure you would show more brain activity than if you were just sitting at a desk. This does not mean it's an efficient way to program, nor that coding on a unicycle is better for learning.
I know lots of people do say they learn better when handwriting, just like some people say they learn better while going for a walk. This does not translate into a universal theory of learning.
When I hand write, I am generally forced to either slow down and repeat what I am listening/watching (if an option), or actually think about what is being said, and choose the important parts to write down, or rephrase it in a more efficient-to-write way.
I am taking a course right now and I find repeatedly that I understand the concepts from taking down the notes (many aha moments), and then I remember. I rarely if ever actually look at the notes I take - they are objectively inferior as a product compared to the official course notes or the textbook.
Maybe typing would be efficient for learning if I was bad it - could be an interesting hypothesis to test.
If lots of people said they code better while riding a unicycle, I'm not sure I'd just dismiss it off hand.
If you can replicate that mental engagement while typing, you'd probably get similar results.
This makes a lot of sense to me in light of what we know about how learning happens. I have never seen any research on brain activity though, and my tutor didn't cite any.
This doesn't really refute the theory—maybe touch typing is worse—but it doesn't match my logical intuition at all.
Wish I had a definitive answer. I do know from personal experience that when I'm touch typing notes while reading a book or listening to a lecture, my thoughts drift fairly often. (I'm a fairly fast touch typist though, 140+ wpm.) I'm also more likely to be thinking, "damn, that's a lot of notes!" rather than about the material, lol. Whereas while handwriting, I'm heavily engaged with the material, to the point where I lose sight of the fact that I'm in the middle of taking notes.
Oh and because it's so easy to make quick edits while typing, I find it hard to resist the impulse to correct a typo or add an extra word here and there, which further distracts me from the material.
Also, I can touch type for long stretches without the slightest mental fatigue, but I need a tiny mental break after 30-60 seconds of handwritten note taking.
Since you can change all of this on computers (or it happens automatically), you don't have to give it thought before writing it down.
the thing it's doing when writing with your hand is fine motor control, one of the most important and distinguishing abilities that humans have.
I tutor in a makerspace and one thing I've observed it's that it's now easier to teach old people how to solder than younger kids, and that in my experience has never been the case before. Due to growing up on impoverished digital interfaces I see lack of dexterity that I've never seen in young people before. Same reason I suspect you see a decline in people picking up tactile musical instruments like the guitar or violin.
Forcing people to handwrite both makes writing more laborious and takes away from what is actually important in writing, which is forming your thoughts. At minimum, when handwriting you can't go back and insert words or rearrange sentences to try out different ideas.
I do still think kids should learn how to write by hand, because it's culturally important. However, I think it could be emphasized somewhat less, and I don't think schools should teach cursive (which, anecdotally, I think is actually having a small resurgence in many schools).
All other exercises would need more expensive tools and after inventing a sufficient number of different patterns for other activities, that would be practically equivalent with writing a different alphabet on another medium than paper, e.g. carving wood or stone, etc.
I did not like to use handwriting for things like taking notes at school or at the university, and I switched to typewriting as soon as I could afford a computer. For work purposes I now use only typewriting.
Despite this, I am very grateful that in the first years of school I was forced to practice handwriting, even if I have abandoned decades ago the style of handwriting that I was taught.
The reason is exactly what the previous poster has said, that this practice of handwriting as a child was essential for developing the motor control that I needed later as an electronics engineer for soldering or for assembling and disassembling various miniature devices.
for one it's not clear to that this is what is actually important in writing or unrelated. That's just a bias in a culture that systematically neglects embodied practice.
In Japan there's an increasing phenomenon of Kanji-illiteracy among the young. Turns out there is a close connection between writing them out, the order of strokes and the physical activity and the memorizing of meaning of the Kanji, just passive observation or digital input can't replicate. There's a reason calligraphy is such an important tradition. There's an inherent connection from your hand, to your working memory to the processing of symbolic meaning.
This mirrors the discourse you see in math. "Rote memorization, writing equations, isn't important, you need to be able to think" turns out it really isn't and countries that teach traditionally excel at math. We live in an educational culture of thinking-pilled people who disregard the physical world and practice with abysmal results.
...this is very much not my understanding of the literature on math education, I'm not sure what you're referencing.
Do you know that is how simplistic these studies actually are?
A lot of education research is shockingly bad. (And, to be clear, a lot of it is also really good!)
Didn't know he is a lefty too! Fountain pens + lefty is a tough combo; we had to use fountain pens in the 1st grade and my wrist was always stained on the side. Agree with the rollerball angle, Pilot V5 is my go to now...
Switched to a 36 key ergo split with a tweaked alpha-thumb layout (R is on my left thumb, Space is on the right, base layout is Hands Down Vibranium V). Started learning Pitman shorthand (again) then switched to Noory Simplex and stuck with it. Became fascinated with Zaner's Method of cursive where the writing is done entirely through arm movement and using the rhythm of the muscle movement instead of by conscious control over the pen position. At the moment I can write at about 100wpm on a keyboard, 70wpm in shorthand, and 26wpm longhand.
I believe that the improved ability to learn comes from the need to focus on a concept for longer while writing and not on the motion of the writing itself. My ability to retain is better in cursive than in shorthand and I don't notice a significant difference in retention between keyboard and shorthand.
Do most left-handers learn to hold their pen/pencil like that? If not I imagine it would be quite a transition to adapt to as all the motions are rotated - the portion of the stroke previously done by moving fingers in and out would instead be done by moving side to side, and vice-versa.
Edit: Or from trying it, I guess you could just write as normal and end up with everything italic/slanted.
I totally buy that this is the case for him. I wonder how much is just what he's used to vs what's actually better. I feel like I write so slow compared to how fast I type that I struggle to put the words together on the paper. I can spurt out something with a keyboard 10x as fast, and then re-review and re-organize and all that.
Whatever the process it is, long as his books may be, it works.
Give his earlier works a try and you may find he used to be able to write well (ie. he used to actually edit his work), before he stopped caring and just wrote 1000 pages of unfiltered garbage.
https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2017/10/02/how-ben-franklin...
EDIT: maybe the term I was looking for is: copywork?
I agree with this but for a different reason than what the author gives.
When you write in a notebook you can see where what you are writing is within the notebook (e.g. ~1/3 of the way through, etc). That seems like a small thing but I think it really helps with anchoring the memory when writing, as well as with referencing it later. And of course you can also add all sorts of tabs and page markers to help even more.
The same is true when reading a book.
The author dismisses all pencils because he has to press down hard to use them, but I don't press down any more than I would with a fountain pen.
Being able to erase is also a bonus. Not to mention the ASMR sound!
1. I don’t believe iPad doesn’t offer the same benefits of writing with pen on paper. I mean iPad writing can be made to be almost as realistic as pen on paper with good accessories. It can be slow, doesn’t waste papers, you can edit, color code it, annotate in a way that’s backed up. I definitely like writing on paper, but I don’t see too much of a difference with iPad.
2. I absolutely love using Pilot V5 RT pens, and haven’t found something that is as smooth and satisfying when put on paper. What are your favorite pens? Are they available on JetPens for trying? Thanks!
Sometimes I'll skip whole letters in a word without thinking and need to go back fill it in. Sometimes my baselines will drift as I write a sentence despite the paper _being lined_. Cursive is nearly impossible for me without extraordinary effort, despite me thinking it beautiful and wishing to improve my abilities there.
Dysgraphia for me makes it difficult to write for extended periods of time, and results in very poor handwriting. In fact, the reason I first got a computer as a little kid was so that I could type school assignments, and this was in elementary school in the 90s when everything was still handwritten where I grew up. I even typed my math homework with awkward notation in College (my professors hated me).
All of that said, I still find that I agree with the sentiment of this post, and I do keep notebook. It's laborious for me to write, but I still find that the intentionality and forethought that it demands produces (think about it, you're committing something immutable in the real world with ink and paper) something we're losing: deeper introspection. I know this might sound silly or pretentious like hipsters and vinyl records, but I think there's something in physical writing worth keeping despite its inconveniences.
It also allows you to make more mistakes, which can lead to surprising directions.
And the team who makes the most mistakes usually *wins*!
See also:
The Hand - How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture By Frank R. Wilson
Drawing on the Right Side of The Brain by Betty Edwards
Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court by John Wood
You Matter More Than You Think by Karen O’Brien with illustrations by Tone Bjordam
The only problem I have is doing it comfortably. My desk is cluttered with a keyboard, laptop, and monitor. There’s barely any room to write with proper posture, and shuffling things around every time just isn’t practical
It wasn't until I got a nice notebook from Leuchtturm 1917, though, that the ensemble came together and I started looking for excuses to get my kit out and write things down. Since then, I've moved onto notebooks from de Kempen, but the point stands
I actually like using pencils, with a thick lead because I tend to have a pretty heavy hand when writing and I will continually break a thin lead.
About a decade ago I went back to writing with fountain pens after a nearly two decade hiatus. Oh, the joy!
But very sad he has no (real) tips on dealing with hand fatigue - other than to write in cursive. I always had hand fatigue for writing long stretches of prose - even back in my school days. A few years ago, I simply had to change how I grip the pen to reduce the pain, but I still can't write many pages without significant pain and the need for breaks. I can't imagine writing a whole novel that way.
Also, I wish he told us how he gets that handwritten stuff into digital form. Does he just mail handwritten stuff to the publishers?
In the past, I'd write twice: Once by hand, and then I'd type up anything worth saving to get it in digital form. A royal pain!
Then with Whisper and LLMs, life got a lot better. I would simply read what I'd handwritten, and get an LLM to clean it up. I only occasionally needed to fix it up after that.
Now LLMs are so good at it that I simply take a picture and send it to the LLM for transcribing.
I don't care how much people hate AI - for me it has quite literally reduced physical pain in my life.
I also spent a good amount of time in academia (math & physics), wrote everything by hand (dozens of pages per day), and I, too, suffered from serious hand fatigue & RSI for years, even when using a fountain pen. My recommendations:
- Use as light and as thick a fountain pen as possible. Also, very thin & hard pen tips may be nice but in my experience they make it harder to write.
- Work on your posture (if you don't do that already). Work out your neck and your back in particular to compensate for sitting all day every day. A stiff neck (even if you don't feel that it is stiff) can seriously impact the nerves in your arms & hands and, thus, muscle tension & recovery.
My first was the Pilot Metropolitan. Still a solid pen I recommend.
My next favorite was/is a PenBBS - perhaps the 309 - I don't have it on me at the moment. I replaced the nib with a Goulet nib, and somehow made it extremely smooth. I've not been able to make any other Goulet nib that smooth - somehow got lucky.
These days I'm heavily using a Platinum Plaisir which is also surprisingly smooth (no modifications).
Every time I've paid more than $50 for a pen, it hasn't been worth it. I can't get the ink in my Opus 88 pen to flow consistently. I'm sick of it.
I'm partial to Faber Castell nibs, but the pen I bought had a grip that I didn't like, and I don't want to spend the money to try their other pens.
I think what happens in these types of threads is that the people who like handwritten notes, perhaps even obsessively so, all pour in. But that population of handwriting fans isn't necessarily representative of the population overall.
So I have this massive stack of notes that I glimpse at before shredding or whatever. Nothing of permanent value, nothing that I look at even 24 hours after it is written. But the sheer volume of the writing like that I do surprises me ever time I clean it out. It's like a novella sized stack of paper with server names, sketchy diagrams, peoples names, dates, commit hashes, debug messages. Lots and lots of lists. Things underlined, circled, stars, strike through, arrows, etc.
It is such an ingrained habit that its almost a compulsion, like someone is tying my hand behind my back if I don't have access. It is like my brain needs reassurance that some detail I just noticed won't be lost, at least it will be on the paper if I need it in the next 5 minutes. Like an extension of my short-term memory.
I have also kept a journal for 20+ years, mostly on paper. I often use a fountain pen (Lamy 2000) and notebooks with high-quality paper, but I am not super picky about it. I've used the cheapest school notebooks to the finest Japanese boutique papers. I'm a fan of the Pilot G2 and pens that have a similar feel. I'll also journal in Google Docs, Apple notes, or text docs in VS Code.
It is hard for me to disentangle the supposed benefits from the sheer weight of habit. It is just something I do, part of who I am.
Most of which includes the author's favorite mental task, food, or exercise.
I've incorporated back writing by hand some time ago but find as models get smarter and I throw more at them they have also been taking longer.
In these moments even a notebook can register as something of a distraction. I already aim to keep my phone far away but I'm curious about trying to commit to meditating between prompts. Part of me feels like it would be a little silly. But maybe not.
Doodling in a notebook feels preferable in these moments but also feels like a context switch when the agent is done. Then again perhaps I need to just refine my process so notebook planning can feel like it is working more in parallel with the LLM rather than us blocking each other...
If I am in a lecture and I am writing down everything I hear as fast as possible in one ear, on paper, out the other style I don't think writing is any different than typing the same way.
If I am in lecture and I am trying to stay deliberately between the lines of paper, then I have to take the info in, process it in a way where I analyze and summarize it, and then put it on paper neatly. I have to do that for brevity and to keep up with the lecture. Its not the act of just writing, its the analyzation that occurs before the words hit the paper. This can be achieved with typing as well if you deliberately style your notes.
I think sometimes we correlate this in too simple of terms to use pen = better, the pen forces the deliberate action of analysis easier than typing does.
I watched a video recently from someone, from memory the creator behind the youtube channel vsauce. Very briefly, he lost some notes to water. His words, thoughts and ideas vanished. His solution was switching to pencil.
I found the interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfY2JACiDGU
I'm addicted to people talking about pens and pencils. Adam Savage also has done a few videos on his favourite mechanical pencil.
Apparently Stephenson loves fountain pens and reluctantly gel pens. In general, those are water based inks and will wash away with water. There are one or two fountain pen inks designed to be more permanent and won't wash away with water.
Just something to keep in mind if you're currently writing or want to start.
To be fair, your notebook probably won’t get light like that, but pencils are pretty archival.
I saw another video about someone's favourite pen and he gave the reason as check fraud. Apparently the uniball 207 is pigment based ink and doesn't wash away in acetone.
I just searched then on youtube for acetone pen check fraud and it looks like there's a 13 year old video about it, and a million copycats. Either copycats are lazy, or the 207 is still $2 13 years later.
I’m sure, as the author says, it’s not as good as the real deal of writing with an actual pen, but I need it to be digital text eventually and don’t want to waste a lot of paper. I have found that I’m more creative and enjoy writing more.
I went back to school at 25, and that moment made me realize why school felt strangely more difficult, and then I remembered that we wrote down everything back then.
- whose gonna tell it to em?
- dont worry, the long term studies are going to pick this up big time 5 years from now
I'm dealing all day with developers incapable of thinking about anything else than "queries", "classes", "structs" and "early returns are bad". Semantics, ontologies, interfaces, abstraction boundaries, problem decomposition: ain't got no time for that.
We got structs to initialize, copy constructors to worry about and header definitions in bloody C++ to deal with! Oh look, you forgot to use Yoda-speak in your conditional, also you initialized two variables instead of one in this completely transient, temporary piece of code that is only run once every two months. Let's talk about this all morning! Because code hygiene is so extraordinarily important. You should definitely worry about each and every line of code. I hear it's "good for the brain".
To others: The book is called "The Artists Way", and is an excellent guide to become more creative and expressive.
I do partly agree, though. When I am studying a new concept or reviewing old ones, I tend to scribble my thoughts down. I have not been able to replicate brainstorming while scribbling and doodling on an electronic device. The friction of my pen on paper seems to actually wire the pathways in my brain.
I have a Lamy 2000 (well, more than one...) that I adore for writing anything with any actual length. But I still scatter those G2s around.
Not that I'm that price sensitive, it is kind of nice: Sarasa ($2+ each, if you can find it), G2 (~1.25 each), Cristal ($0.10-$0.25 each)
This. Don't use pencil or normal ballpoint bell with thick ink. Good gel pens are really good and not that much more expensive.
To this day, if I'm trying to learn something new, I will sometimes "type" on an invisible keyboard if I don't have a pen/paper or a smartphone I can write down specifics on. It doesn't work as well for things like memorizing phone numbers or like support ticket ID numbers, but I've found it helps me ingest knowledge even if it doesn't help as much with raw information the way writing by hand does.
Now all of that said, I have also found, like Neal Stephenson, that a high quality, low friction pen on notebook paper tends to feel the best and produce the least cramping. To this day, when I absolutely need to take handwritten notes, I use a Sharpie Rollerball 0.5 black pen with a small notebook, primarily for D&D (and other TTRPG) prep-work, so that I can recall specifics off the top of my head better while improvising.
I completely agree! Perhaps it's simply for one reason: slowness.
Writing by hand slows down and the brain "breathes", calms down, and the waves of thought flow at their proper pace.
We aren't made to rush always: by slowing down, our brain also has time to better process thoughts and information, one at a time, and each one is given the "time it deserves."
Our brain works best when it's relaxed and has time to make all its connections.
Thinking is, first and foremost, an exercise in slowness.
(ps: I'm also left-handed, I wonder if this also affects the functioning of the brain...).
I like to handwrite, but my right hand gets tired very fast, especially as I got older. I write almost a shorthand style, and it is hard to read, but I value speed of writing things down versus the neatness or readability afterward. The author recommends fountain pen or gel rollerball pen, which I have both tried.
Does anyone have any other advice for preventing fatigue? I've also tried to learn to use my left hand, so I can switch hand when my hand gets tired. But even after months (or years?) of trying, I could never get it to write, or atleast to my satisfaction.
I write a daily journal - in this calm relaxed mode, I write linearly (on dotted paper).
When I'm in a business meeting, or taking notes where time is fleeting (a speech / seminar), I use bubble notes - which is effective for quickly getting the thoughts down, and connecting them.
Give it a try!
(I've noticed this with students I support. In the UK the public exams known as GCSEs and GCEs are written papers, and some adult students who need to take them have similar fatigue problems).
Edit: another poster has mentioned grip
I've pretty much given up on handwriting, it's embarrassing to either try to write, or have someone else write stuff for me. I ask my wife to fill stuff out for me all the time, but people probably think that's weird when they see it.
Versus a fountain pen, a liquid-ink rollerball pen has the advantage of being insensitive to orientation (which may be difficult to control if you tire easily) and it is also much more unlikely to dry up when unused.
I do not write so much by hand as to become tired, so for myself I prefer a Japanese fountain pen with a nib that allows variable-width lines, for less boring letter forms, but if the criterion for choosing is the maximum possible comfort then I recommend a liquid-ink rollerball pen, and I have experimented with all kinds of writing implements known to mankind.
Except for using the most comfortable writing tool, there is nothing else to do besides changing the style in which you write, to simplify the hand movements.
Perhaps you should alternate between 2 different styles of handwriting, because they might stress different hand muscles.
I have no idea what style of handwriting you use, but I am not convinced that the kinds of "cursive" handwriting that were taught in many schools are really the least tiring, despite their emphasis on minimizing the number of times when the pen is raised from the paper. Many years ago I have abandoned the kind of writing that I was taught as a child and I have switched to one of the variants of the so-called "Italic" handwriting, which are now promoted in many places and which are a revival of the Aldine letters from the Italy of the 16th century, which have also been the base from which the so-called "Italic" style of the printed typefaces (fonts) had been developed. Such a handwriting has improved readability, but how fast and comfortable it is felt, can vary a lot between people. It works for me, but that does not mean that it would also be the best for others. There are books and on-line tutorials about this.
Perhaps you should just write slower, to avoid fatigue.
I buy nice notebooks and nice pens that are satisfying to use. I practice my handwriting, so the finished work is satisfying to look at. I think it gives me a bit of dopamine boost.
after getting flagged I found the original, reposted, and it is actually so much better. not polished, not a masterpiece, I'm nowhere close to a professional writer. But it's like a human story with the marks of human care.
i fear my brain's getting smoothed down by reading all the generation and I need to drop the AI crutch for a while, at least for copy/writing.
Of course Claude told you its version would land better, that's what how it is trained, but that doesn't make it true.
I just needed to re-read the better notes 1 or 2 times and I could already recall the information, even at distance of time.
I like sketching and outlining with pencil and paper, but my handwritten notes are often illegible and disorganized. I know it's partly process and my poor penmanship, but digital surfaces compensate for this with built-in organization, searchability, and easier integration into projects and knowledge bases.
I think it’s important to have that friction between the stylus and the screen. And if you have that, I am pretty happy with notes on either my iPad or paper.
As for disorganization, that's kind of the nature of early notes. There are ways to kind of organize them. One technique I use is writing them on notecards or notecard-sized paper, which I can later shuffle and organize.
Typing forces you to think linearly, it feels constrained. That's not how the brain works.
I see this style of informational writing all over the place now.
Well since I've never written with a fountain pen, and the type of paper I write on with the fountain pen matters, I'm probably better off picking up the habit with an ipad or the like.
From the source paper:
> Existing literature indicates that connectivity patterns in these brain areas and at such frequencies are crucial for memory formation and for encoding new information and, therefore, are beneficial for learning
I would also be interested in whether the parts lighting up are actually contributing to learning the task at hand. The 2024 paper quoted above didn't mention a test for comprehension. The prior Stanford experiment also reasoned that writing helped with comprehension because students were forced to summarize.
I'd like to see an experiment that forces both groups, typing and writing, to summarize while their brains are scanned. I'd also like to see results from tests for comprehension for each group. I feel like that would make a stronger case for whether the benefit from writing is actually worth it.
For exams in my intro programming classes, I allow students to bring a handwritten notes sheet if they wish. I get anything from a few sentences to a sheet so full of writing it almost looks gray. From what I can tell, students who really put effort into their notes sheet look at it less frequently but tend to score higher. This tracks with the studies I've seen on handwritten notes.
Moleskine notebooks are beautiful, but I always felt they were far too expensive. Would love to learn where they can be bought in bulk for a more reasonable price.
"I write all my notes and letters by hand and I started writing them like 2 months ago when I was researching on something and found out the benefits of writing by hand. My post went mega viral on X (@ihteshamali) you will see it here on X and it got like 120k likes and people really loved it. And most people said they will now turn back to writing by hand which is nice."
To streamline this process I wrote an iOS app that does exactly this. I used it to digitize my handwritten diaries, but it works for any handwritten paper.
"Paper Website" seems appealing, but I haven't tried it yet: https://paperwebsite.com/
my technique for memorizing things involves a handwritten spatiotemporal reproduction from memory (put everything in the same place on the page in the same order) with spaced repetition that exploits sleep cycles. took me forever to figure it out, but once i did things like exams that build on toolboxes of rote memorization became a lot easier!
i guess i should also mention that i have long had an interest in reproducing the causal nature of handwriting for composing text on the computer. things like write only editors that attempt to encourage that same sort of causal flow.
It does feel like a post stating things that are obvious, were someone not blinded by technology.
Curious if others have noticed a trend of going back to "old school" methods, once there is research etc around it. Seems like you can have just not used the new flashy thing.
(/s if not obvious!)
I find digital handwriting quite pleasant and almost better than writing on paper. Friction is indeed an issue, but you can just buy a dedicated screen protector to address this problem.
However I'm considering moving back to handwritten notebooks for some things, purely due to the simplicity (no worry about battery life, technical issues, or the difficulty in switching back and forth between my book reader and my notes app).
I was sad, of course, but at the same time, it made me think if their brain is just being shaped differently. Could it be that this sort of thesis "writing = good" applies to us because we belong to a generation that had our formative memories shaped through that activity?
Is there something inherent to writing that makes it good or is it just a consequence because we did things that way?
As a lefty, I would rather never write another word then twist my hand the way he's doing (above the current line) to avoid the smudges.
Having the brain making more connexions and using more resources to do the same thing could be seen, from one point of view, as waste ?
Not that I disagree with the article, of course. Test results speak for themselves, but for example, when I am writing stories, do I need to "better remember" them, or do I need to go faster through my first draft ? (3 years and counting at the moment...wish me luck !)
I still use Apple Notes, but more as a place to store copy/paste info I want to save or checklists. But for meeting or game design notes? Writing those down 100%.
My iPad is 13" and having a a display about the same size as a sheet of A4/letter paper is nice. It's so nice to have a full size display for marking up pdfs.
Now that I've gotten used to the iPad with Goodnotes, I'm not sure I'd get a 13" Remarkable. I'd probably buy one, but I suspect their notes app would be enough of a downgrade that I would probably return it.
Really made me think hard.
I'm afraid this one's close to going down the replication crisis whirlpool. According to Sol:
"Direct replications found no reliable learning advantage, while a 2024 meta-analysis found only a *small* handwriting benefit but a far larger typing advantage in information captured."
Typed Versus Handwritten Lecture Notes and College Student Achievement: A Meta-Analysis” by Abraham E. Flanigan and colleagues, published in Educational Psychology Review on July 12, 2024
There's also the pens that use cameras and special papers like livescribe (I think?) but I didn't love those either.
It seemed preposterous to put notes in something I can't back up or "CTRL+F" search, but I've found that yes, sometimes I spend two minutes looking for a note, but when I do I generally never have to look up that information again... as opposed to things I'd search Obsidian for constantly that seemed to never get stored in my brain.
Then I got a series of Palm Pilot devices and left the paper behind. It worked pretty well for me and the grafitti handwriting system was ingenious. Aside from my contact list being duplicated a few times a year, I didn't really have any negative experiences.
Then smart phones hit and even though they can do everything any electronic organizer ever did for me, I've never been as happy with them.
I'm seriously considering buying a paper planner again. Shared calendars is the only thing blocking me.
I love Obsidian too, but for me it's just a place where I park notes for future reference. I don't actively use it.
Neal, if you're reading this, will you ever visit Germany on a book signing tour?
But my 1st grade teacher and my 1st to 12st year classes variously agreed on how atrocious my handwriting was. Famously, my 1st grade teacher told my parents, "there's no hope". She was right. And, four decades later, it irks me to no end that every time I grab a pen and start writing, the ghosts come to look over my shoulder and judge. "Look at it, he's at it again. That 'f' looks like anything but... That's not a proper uppercase 'I'... you could summon a demon with it, but it would be a pitiful one. That 'g' is vicious. Is that a '1', a '3' or a '7'? Didn't we fail you enough times in basic arithmetic for that? Also, that line of text is sagging as much as your sitting, boy..."
But Cryptonomicon started to go in the wrong direction (though it was still good), and after that he completely lost me by writing 1000 page books that require you to learn half of an entirely new language he made up! His success seems to have made him completely lose the magic (of writing well) that he once had.
As such, I'd take any advice he gives with a mountain of salt. It's like getting advice from a "has been" former athlete: it might be good advice from their glory days, or it might just be junk they spew in their obsolescence.
Once he got popular I imagine he was like "I'm popular, screw that editing stuff, I'm just publishing every word I write" ... and that is not how you make a good book.
Sorry, but no. I trust that "the Old Way is just Better in an invisible, unproven way" about as much as I trust any other "appeal to tradition".
I like Neal Stephenson's writing, but I wouldn't take this advice seriously.
Also, if you want your text to be published online or printed, it needs to be digitized somehow. Which is a good OCR tool for handwriting, especially if it's not very legible? Just feed scans into Gemini perhaps?
But maybe it's different for me, since I write nonfiction?
For paper it also helps even more than digitally to outline the logical structure of a text before you actually write down full sentences.
He used to write a ton and edit it down to a normal-sized book, but once he got popular he just decided to (seemingly) publish everything he wrote, without editing.
Finally! this was one of those things that bothered me for many years, but not enough to spend time to research :) . Thank you!!
I just couldn't seem to hold a pen or pencil the right way and would always fall behind following along with the rest of the class. I was forced to spend hours at home with worksheets tracing over letters. I was led to believe that if I couldn't write properly I would be a complete failure.
It turns out being able to use a computer and type quickly was a more useful skill.
I would consider this: maybe useful, do it if you find it entertaining.
Stephenson was my literally my favorite author, but when I got to Anathem I was like fuck this pompous asshat and his made up language BS: I'm sticking to authors who write in English.
Aaaaaand time to tune out.
> I can say that, when writing by hand, one is continually solving a series of small problems having to do with the spacing of words, how letters are connected, the crossing of the letter t (sometimes more than one in the same word) and the dotting of the letters i and j, and how to accomplish all of those things through coordinated movements not just of the fingers but of the whole arm.
Do you think he needs to be a neuroscientist to make this claim?
The study talks about connections and frequency, but that seems like a very coarse measure for something as complex as the brain.
> Increased connectivity within the theta (3.5–7.5 Hz) and alpha (8–12.5 Hz) frequency bands has been linked to mechanisms underlying sensorimotor integration (). As increased connectivity in the brain was observed only when writing by hand and not when simply pressing keys on the keyboard, our findings can be taken as evidence that handwriting promotes learning.
Can you? The linked paper appears to be stating association, not causation.
The alternative hypothesis is that the brain activates more because writing by hand is harder, and that by writing by hand you just get better at writing by hand.
My thought is, write in whichever medium you feel you work best in. Maybe try them both. And if you're not productive maybe don't use that medium.
This feels like a lot of grasping to try to justify some retroism (why does it need justification?).
There are a lot of citations in the paper backing up the idea that handwriting promotes learning, though (or at least spelling, memory, recall, and letter recognition/understanding). It reads to me like an attempt to explain an observed phenomenon: "given that handwriting appears to promote learning, what could be a mechanism for that?" It isn't in a vacuum just claiming that "these brain signals clearly prove that learning is happening".
The "general discussion" section also covers why the specific connectivity they looked at might be related to learning.
More to your point: calling "appeal to authority" does not license argument from ignorance. Furthermore, appeal to authority only refers to an authority who is not authoritative in the domain in question.
I would hazard a guess it falls below knowing Spanish but above folding origami cranes.
I have used it before when I've lost a phone etc, or if I had no way of contacting someone otherwise. I can think of more dramatic situations too. Technology can be helpful but if you're overreliant on it then that is a potential weakness.
All my childhood I optimized my cursive writing for speed. Most teachers I had only valued note taking, not thinking about what is written.