The Cult of the Handwritten Note

Is handwriting sexy?

The most popular religion in St Andrews originated in the Middle East. A tide of followers issued out from the desert, spreading their practices throughout the world from their monumental temples. It all began under the shade of a pillar 4000 years ago, when a scribe noting taxes was exposed to this seductive rite. Millennia later, when walking into a lecture, I feel an immense pressure to join in on this ritual. I reckon it has seduced you too. I am of course talking about the overly-embellished handwritten note: the laptop’s sexier alternative.

Those not persuaded are resigned to the cold steel carapace of a laptop, an arriviste on the note-taking scene, disturbing a 4000-year-old tradition. A tradition which embellishes itself with supple ‘S’s, plump ‘P’s and tender ‘T’s. Much sexier than Times New Roman. Only a few years in, you have to wonder whether the laptop is our organisational Messiah, or a false prophet, soon to be scribbled out by the age-old pencil. 

For many, physical notes are supposedly a practical measure. Studies tout how the pencil can magically improve the memorising of material, overshadowing the keyboard. This argument is undeniable: the act of writing forces our brain to process the information we hear onto the page through the deliberate strokes of our pencil, internalising the information more thoroughly. But this is all deceit. I see through the lies of Big Notebook, and know the real reason why we love to hand-write notes.

We strut into Younger Hall, students transformed into peacocks, jotting down our cursive notes with feathered quills. Through the pen, we can impress both our papers with ink and our lecture crushes with beautiful (illegible) handwriting. The flow of our cursive swings in time with our colourful crest of feathers, flaunting our wealth of character through our notes.

This expression reminds me of another rebellion in the long story of appropriating grandiose pomp for theatrical self-expression: the Dandy. Seducing with silk scarves instead of swirling ‘S’s, Dandyism originated in nineteenth-century Europe as a subculture that encouraged middle-class men to dress theatrically as a statement against both class divides and the standardisation of clothing brought about by the Industrial Revolution. Snatched waists and collars that drowned one’s face usurped the drabness of the dark-coloured suits we associate with the nineteenth century. A very forward and explicit expression of one’s identity replaced an otherwise monotonous image of personal style.

Just as many close their laptops in lieu of a more personalised alternative, so too did the dandies rip off their greys and blacks for greens and blues. So, proponents of the illegible cursive mess that they call notes are drawn to the same thing as beaus of 200 years ago: a rejection of mechanical order, and the adoption of a style which conversely focuses on individualistic extravagance.

Unsurprisingly, the pursuit of nothing but raw beauty has its drawbacks. Of course the laptop is more practical; satisfyingly ordered columns of pixel-perfect summaries of hour-long lectures always prove more useful when we inevitably lock in during exam period. But perhaps there is something tragically beautiful in the selfish decadence of an ostentatious note on your course’s most mundane facts. 

Like a firework, our hands explode into a colourful frenzy of illegible lines, whose usefulness inevitably vanishes moments after their production: ‘L’s mistaken for ‘I’s, ‘O’s mistaken for ‘A’s. We write these notes for the sake of momentary beauty, knowing how little use they will prove for our future selves. But practicality is the antithesis of rebellions against conformity.

Image from Wikimedia Commons