Handwriting had a good run, many thousands of years isn’t bad for an important human activity.
Now as pens and pencils are becoming obsolete, let’s look at some highlights of writing.
It probably started with cavemen scratching signs in the dirt with their spears. Millenniums passed with people making up marks to match their grunts. Writing was being born.
Then it was discovered that in 8,000 B.C. in France a tribe carved squiggles and stripes onto stone. They invented an alphabet of 210 crude scratches.
Two millenniums passed until 5,500 B.C. in Germany, writing went from cave walls onto movable clay tubes. The first portable writing device, an early cell phone.
In 3,000 B.C. in Sumeria, near Iraq, the first real alphabet was formed. Words were pressed onto wet clay using river reeds, the letters looked like wedges so they called it Cuneiform, meaning wedge-shaped. Time moved along.
In 2,500 B.C. in Egypt, they invented papyrus by pounding reeds into sheets. Today, we do the same thing turning wood into sheets. Papyrus turned into paper.
Then, in 1,500 B.C. There was another crude alphabet found in Greece. All they could decipher was a grocery list telling some early husband to buy some bread at the store. The words were so baffling they just called it Linear B.
Across the world religions, philosophers and schools centered around handwriting. The Bible was written by hand. In 500 A.D. calligraphy filled the pages of great books.
Shakespeare wrote his plays, Leonardo Da Vinci his ideas, all by hand.
The Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address and millions of letters and books were all handwritten. Up to 1795, every word since the beginning was written with sticks or quills, that year a bright Frenchman named Nicolas Conti invented the pencil.
Then in 1888 an American, John Loud invented the ball-point pen.
From pre-historic times until a few short years ago, handwriting was the foundation of civilization but sadly, soon there will be no more writing by hand. Handwriting will no longer be taught in schools. It is over, writing will be erased forever.
Computers are replacing pens and pencils, everything is digital, it’s a tragedy — a real bummer.
In shock, I just read that in America Common Core education standards will no longer allow cursive handwriting to be taught in schools. They say that typing on a keyboard will help students succeed rather than cursive. They will succeed at being illiterate.
It’s too bad when people type rather than write they will eventually forget how to write, and spell. I read that students graduating from high school cannot write their name in cursive. They also can’t read it either. Many teenagers cannot read cursive writing, it’s a foreign language to them.
Those alphabet banners showing capital and small letters stretched out above the blackboards are all coming down. No more writing for kids, it’s off to the computer lab.
Writing is being phased out. We talk of the hard copy of writing as an awkward last resort when we can’t send it digitally.
Even paper is on the way out. The term “paperless” is a good thing — nice and clean without having to use that dirty old piece of paper.
Books, newspapers and magazines are going online. A time may come when you can’t have your cup of coffee and open the morning paper, a time when you can’t curl up with a good book or flip through a magazine and enjoy the flashy photos.
All these pleasures will someday be blips on a computer screen, e-books, e-papers. E-everything.
There’ll be no more handwritten letters to friends, no diaries or personal notes ever again. Writing with a pen will be a thing of the past.
There was a time in history, long, dull centuries, when no one could write, and learning and communication stopped. It was called the Dark Ages.
We could be heading there again.
Dennis Gregory writes a bi-weekly column for West Hawaii Today and welcomes your comments at makewavess@yahoo.com