I love it when a personal bias or gut feeling gets confirmed by some real evidence.

But it isn’t just the tactile sensation of writing that makes this kind of thinking pleasant.  My thinking and composition is more effective.  My writing is smoother, less wordy, more logical.  So at some point, when something inside my brain says that I’ve got a good idea of how the piece should go, I sit down at the keyboard and start typing.  Most of the time (but by no means always) the piece flows out and into place. For a long time I’ve noticed that I seem to do better writing when at least some fraction of the work is done on paper with a pen or pencil.  I particularly like using a nice rollerball pen or, better still, a fountain pen.  Even the cheap ones you can buy at Daiso stores for a buck and a half can be quite pleasant to use.

In addition, I personally feel that I learn more and more quickly when I write things down with a pen or pencil instead of a keyboard.  Things stick in my head faster and more completely.  When I have time to engage in scholarship, I still like to use 3×5 cards.  Tools like Evernote are wonderful, but they don’t have the same positive effect on the old brain circuitry. Cards are wonderful for sifting and winnowing ideas, forming connections, etc.  I have yet to find a computer tool that is as effective as a stack of notes on cards and a nice, clean desk or table to spread them out and push them around like some mad tarot spread.

Now, thanks to this item from Lifehacker.com, we find that writing with a pen, on paper is apparently better for the learning process and assimilating information.

There may also be a scientific basis for the pen’s superiority over the keyboard when it comes to writing development and cognitive functions. Dr. Virginia Berniger, who studies reading and writing systems and their relationship to learning processes, found that children’s writing ability was consistently better (they wrote more, faster, and more complete sentences) when they used a pen rather than a keyboard; these are, of course, subjects without a penchant for using either tool. We also previously covered the WSJ article that connected handwriting and cognitive abilities; in one of the studies cited, adults learned new symbols and graphic shapes better when they reproduced them with pen-and-paper instead of typing them.

I’ve been thinking for some time that I would like to do a study in which two sets of students write a short research paper, but one group is only allowed “old school” methods: note cards, typewriter, pen, paper, researching in books.  My suspicion has been that they would do every bit as well as their more wired counterparts.  So next time you want to learn something, take notes the old fashioned way and see if you get more accomplished.