Comment on Despite tech-savvy reputation, Gen Z falls behind in keyboard typing skills
areyouevenreal@lemm.ee 1 week agoKey chording has always been faster than conventional single letter typing, and that tech has been around for a long time now in the form of stenography machines. Yet most people learn on a conventional keyboard because it’s simpler and more ubiquitous. This is true even now that chording has been adapted to programming and similar tasks.
You have to remember we live in a world where most people don’t even know how to write properly, even those who do it as part of their job like doctors. If you draw letters by moving your fingers, you’re doing it wrong by the way. The actual proper technique involves using your shoulder, elbow, and wrist to do most of the work. We’ve known about this for centuries, and these techniques were designed with dip pens, quils, brush, and fountain pens in mind. The cheap ballpoint pen along with rather bad instructions from teachers has led to proper handwriting technique being forgotten, and causes problems like RSI in people who handwrite regularly.
barsoap@lemm.ee 1 week ago
Oh ball point pens. Last I heard one of the thing they do preserve in primary school over here is the good ole progression from pencil to fountain pen and sticking for that for the whole four years. Pencil because if you use too much force you break the thing without breaking it, it’s just annoying, and that’s the point, once they switch to fountain pens they’re not going to bend them.
I am quite partial to ink rollers nowadays but still can’t stand ordinary ball points. They feel wrong.
areyouevenreal@lemm.ee 1 week ago
Forcing children to do cursive was not really the point I am trying to make. Yes it’s technically more efficient to write that way, but it’s also considerably more complicated. Forcing children with disabilities to do it leads to all kinds of problems, and makes their writing less legible. I am more talking about techniques that avoid issues like RSI. If we are making children do things we should be teaching them the correct way to do it, not half assing it. While I think we should still teach cursive, I don’t think it should be mandatory. In fact I actually want to see more keyboard use with proper ten finger technique, as that is useful for the real world. Typing technique is also something schools love to neglect. It’s also better to give kids that option as even with better handwriting instruction some just do not have the required motor skills through no fault of their own. People like me were forced to do handwriting practice despite having significant coordination issues, and never being taught the right technique. Eventually I had to dog through obscure corners of the Internet to find out the right way. Situations like that should never be allowed to continue for as long as it did in my case. Either by actually teaching the right technique in the first place, or in cases where that doesn’t work by switching to typing instead.
barsoap@lemm.ee 1 week ago
…which includes cursive. Also for disabled folks, as far as possible: At that point you’re teaching fine motor mechanics first and foremost, secondly writing. How quickly they write is of no great consequence (or we’d be teaching shorthand), how well their motor skills develop is. The usual approach here is that you get a set cursive with a couple of options and alternative glyph shapes for the first four years, then you can develop from there as you wish. Some kids arguably should get more hand-holding in the “develop for yourself” part.
That you didn’t learn it the right way is a thing you can blame on your teachers, but not cursive. Like, I mentioned pencils and fountain pens, ball-point pens are outlawed in schools here: It’s so that kids don’t use pressure, which makes them not tense up and cramp, which makes developing proper technique way easier.
areyouevenreal@lemm.ee 1 week ago
Maybe I haven’t explained this but with regards things like handwriting and special education my country isn’t that well put together. They hand kids ballpoint pens for the most part unless you are in private school. Some schools force kids to use pencil even.
Cursive is fundamentally less legible and harder work for most students to learn. It should be taught yes, but not as the only way. Schools often force people to use cursive even when that person doesn’t have that skill, and the school isn’t willing to give them proper lessons on it or the lessons they give aren’t of good quality. It was a whole thing in my primary school.
I have actual clinical issues in several different areas of development, not just coordination. You can’t remove all issues before primary school starts, I am entitled to some help even now as a 23 year old PhD student and still have issues. I wouldn’t even have been accepted into primary school if my parents hadn’t gone out of their way to get me tested by psychologists as I had issues the school weren’t willing to get me tested for that were picked up on in preschool.
I can write pretty well now including cursive. It’s not clear to me how much of the problems I had were because I was younger and at a lesser stage of brain development or how much was bad teaching. Maybe if you know more developmental psychology than I do you could answer that question, but I suspect that answer will be different on a case by case basis.
areyouevenreal@lemm.ee 1 week ago
I too think ball point pens are horrible. Fountain pens are not that expensive, last a lot longer as they are refillable, and just write better. There are some rather bad fountain pens out there though lol. Platinum Preppy is pretty much the gold standard for cheap pens under £10 or $10. Platinum plasir is a little more expensive but has a more durable body and cap made of metal using the same nib and feed as the preppy. You can also get disposable fountain pens now that aren’t half bad.
Liquid ink roller balls are a good product too and are a nice middle ground between ball point and fountain pen. Although to be fair I wouldn’t be against a return to good old fashioned dip pens as these are the best for calligraphy and honestly look cool as heck in my opinion.
barsoap@lemm.ee 1 week ago
The trouble with fountain pens is that they don’t really expect you to not write for a month or two. The ones with built-in tank would be less annoying there as you can easily uncrust everything by pulling in some ink through the feather (is that what the tip is called in English? I have no idea), but their great downside is that when they make a mess, they make a real mess. Ink rollers you can put in a pocket without worrying and they don’t really dry out. Mostly though you don’t have to ram them into the paper to write.
Also, clutch pencils. Those mechanical ones that take leads that are as thick as usual wood-encased ones, and that you sharpen. If you ever have like 10 bucks burning a hole in your pocket get yourself some koh-i-noor clutch pencils and collection of leads (usual is HB but I’d suggest trying out 2B for writing), suitable sharpener (pencils come with an emergency one but it’s not too nice), as well as two tombow erasers: The ordinary one, and the dust catch one. Life’s too precious to waste nerves on shoddy leads and erasers. Also a Faber-Castel kneadable eraser: Even if you don’t draw it’s occasionally useful to be able to have a fine eraser tip. koh-i-noor leads are reportedly good enough for both artists and engineers and, truth be told, what could be a more perfect combination of endorsements. And, as said, like 10 bucks total.
areyouevenreal@lemm.ee 1 week ago
Feathers are the things birds have that are part of their wing and help them fly. Pens were made from feathers at sorme points in history. I think the term you are looking for is nib, if you mean the metal part of a pen that touches the paper.
You have pens like the platinum Preppy and platinum plasir which have double seals around the nib. I left my preppy for an entire year and it still didn’t dry out. They aren’t the only brand to use tricks like this, my TWSBI Eco was also left for a year and was a-okay. It’s always good before buying a pen to check the reviews and see what their cap seals are like. Rollerballs do require less maintenance though you are correct. If you do leave a fountain pen and it gets clogged there are ways to fix it, as I had to do with two more of my pens that did clog when they were left with the others.
I’ve used cheap mechanical pencils before but not expensive ones. How much better are more expensive mechanical pencils?