Scientists Show Why Writing By Hand is Better than Typing

No matter our age, putting pen to paper provides significant benefits that typing just can't compete with

Hiya!

During group projects in fourth grade, we voted to bestow the honor of writing on the poster board to the person with the best handwriting — a position I coveted more than anything. I wanted it so much that I started keeping a daily diary, reporting everything I did. I thought my handwriting would improve over time, and I’d finally be selected to write on the poster board. Unfortunately, it didn’t pan out, but the journaling habit stuck.

I’ve played with the idea of shifting my journaling from pen and paper to digital, partly because I can type faster than I can write by hand, but I can’t bring myself to do it. There’s something about physically writing my thoughts that’s just better. And now researchers know why. Writing by hand is demonstrably and scientifically better than typing, especially when we’re learning.

Previous Research

In 2014, researchers Pam A. Mueller of Princeton University and Daniel M. Oppenheimer of the University of California, Los Angeles, published a foundational study demonstrating that students who take their notes on paper learn more than those who type them.

The Study

Mueller and Oppenheimer designed three experiments in which students took notes in a classroom setting. Half of the students took notes using a laptop, while the other half wrote them by hand.

Afterward, the researchers tested the students’ conceptual understanding, memory of factual details, and ability to generalize or summarize the material they’d just learned.

The Results

Unsurprisingly, the researchers found that students took more notes using a laptop than writing by hand. This coincides with other studies that show students can type significantly faster than they can write.

However, even though the laptop notetakers wrote more, across all three experiments, the researchers found that the students who wrote their notes by hand were more successful in integrating and applying the material they learned and had a stronger conceptual understanding.

The researchers believed the difference in result was that laptop students were writing what their professors said word for word rather than thinking about what they were saying. Meanwhile, copying the professor verbatim is often impossible when taking notes by hand.

Writing notes out with pen and paper requires students to actively pay attention to the information, process it, prioritize it, consolidate it, and relate it to previous learning. These extra steps help students who use longhand to remember more, develop a deeper understanding of the material, and make it easier to maintain engagement and grasp new ideas.

Mueller and Oppenheimer’s 2014 study wasn’t perfect, but it sparked broad interest and paved the way for future research to investigate further.