Handwriting today is less formal than it was in the past. What are the causes of this change? Is this a positive or negative development?
Handwriting is the activity of writing by hand. In the current times, writing by hand has become more informal than it was in the yesteryears. It is a negative development and the reasons behind this trend will be discussed in the upcoming stanzas.
To commence with, people nowadays have begun to write informally which is much more relaxed and casual than formal writing. It contains broken syntax, slang, figures of speech, informal or colloquial words and so on. It has a personal touch and it appears as if the writer is speaking directly to the audience. It is greatly due to the impact of technology as people nowadays have stopped writing letters and usually write emails. The systems come equipped with inbuilt software which fix the grammar and spelling errors by default. Also, people usually chat over social media using abbreviated and informal words which has greatly affected their writing skills in real life as well.
It is undoubtedly a negative development because handwriting is an important skill as it has a vital effect on cognitive development. For instance, cursive writing has proven to be extremely helpful to the dyslexic adults as well as children. It is one of the skills that differentiates us from other animals. People nowadays do not understand the real essence of writing and use emojis to express feelings instead of using proper structured sentences which has deteriorated their writing skills. Moreover, many standardized tests are still paper-based. IELTS and CELPIP are excellent illustrations of this. An individual with bad penmanship aptitudes will certainly find it hard accomplishing a decent band score in this test. In the event that handwriting isn’t clear or decipherable, the analyst won’t have the option to discover what the examiner has written. This will result in terrible scores.
To sum up, being excessively dependent on computers or other gadgets is the root cause of decline in formal writing skills. It can have an adverse effect on the career and academic performance of masses, thus they need to learn rhetorical and literary forms of writing.
