Today’s NaBloPoMo prompt is, “When you’re writing, do you prefer to use a pen or a computer?”. Sad to say, I don’t use pens to write much at all nowadays, and my handwriting has suffered as a result! I used to write most things by hand, in the olden days (!). Even at university, where I had access to computers for the first time, I wrote my essays out by hand first, at least until I’d worked out my patent system of essay writing. I remember writing out my A Level revision notes over and over again until I could reduce them to little one-word bullet points and keep them in my head. But that was a long time ago. I still write plenty by hand, but nothing lengthly, just little notes and jottings. The only time I write longer ramblings by hand is probably on the train, when I might write a rough draft of a blog post or just try to sort out my feelings by writing them down.
I used to have nice handwriting, but it’s got worse and worse, until it’s now quite often unreadable to anyone apart from me. Now I have sympathy with my mum, whose handwriting causes people to groan and pull faces when they’re trying to read it. I think my former job is partly to blame for this, as I had to sign a lot of things, and I really couldn’t be bothered by the end of a great pile of forms (e.g. SCONUL Access), so my signature would be a sort of curl with a line on it, and I developed the habit of writing too quickly for it to be neat. I suppose I just don’t take the trouble to write neatly anymore, because I don’t really need to. I used to fill in application forms by hand, and they were works of art, but I wouldn’t want to have to fill them in by hand now!
Computers are wonderful inventions, but I think they have contributed to my increasing laziness.
Anyway, to answer the question, I prefer to use a computer. I think it gives more flexibity – you can move the text around -, more readability – no one has to try and decipher my handwriting -, and it’s easier to correct errors, which is always a good thing.
I think that generally speaking I prefer to use a computer now too.
It didn’t used to be like this – I found I couldn’t think things out properly unless I wrote them out by hand first and then typed them. But as I got used to computers (and my typing skills improved) I found it easier and easier to just type everything straight off.
There are occasions when I resort to writing by hand – maybe some sorts of creative writing such as poetry (not that I do a lot of poetry composing!). My handwriting also used to be very neat but it is not so good now unless I make a special effort