As a follow up to my previous post, I noticed my own handwriting has been improving. I take sermon notes in a paper journal (I know, paper, how old school) at church. I had been getting sloppier, but I had not noticed how much so until I went through some old school notebooks in a bookshelf move. I hadn’t handwritten anything of length for years until I started keeping a journal for church again about two years ago. Sure, I write lesson notes for students, but that consists of a few words at a time on a chart, not long form writing of complete sentences. I had also been taking sermon notes on my little Viliv S5 for a while. I do like having my notes in Evernote (which reminds me, I have some transcribing to do), and that little device was unobtrusive enough to be used without distracting those around me. However, the resistive touchscreen and Evernote’s less that stellar inking didn’t do anything to improve my writing.
Now that I have some experience with tablets with active Wacom digitizers and I’m using them to write more (I hardly ever attached the keyboard to the tc1100, I did a lot of note-taking at institutes this summer, and all my reviews have been done in ink in OneNote first), I think my handwriting is getting better. Now this could be a product of seeing what my handwriting used to look like and paying more attention, but I think it’s also due to practice. I can mean to write more clearly all I want, but without the opportunity to actually do it, nothing would change. I think the recent experience with the increased accuracy of the Lenovo x201t and now an HP 2730p, I’m paying even more attention and getting even better. While the TC1100 is significantly more accurate and smooth than the resistive screens I used to use, the HP 2730p is another level up from that.
I’m considering an attempt at a full on ink-blog style post ala Sumocat or Stevieblue. I find it much more interesting to write by hand than to type out at the keyboard. It’s good to feel the pen and form the letters. And how much opportunity do we get to write things by hand anymore in this world of computers?
Glad you're looking into the ink blog format, violajack. While I limited myself to the format almost exclusively starting out, pretty much everyone else who's dabbled with it went part-time. As long as the blog format works for text and ink, there's no reason you can't do both.
ReplyDeleteAs for improving handwriting, it's the same as getting to Carnegie Hall. :)