Longhand was difficult and laborious for me, and I was encouraged by my teachers to worry way too much about good penmanship. As a result, I largely missed that the gist of writing is really the purely mental process of organizing thoughts into coherent sentences and paragraphs. As it happened, I learned touch typing when I was twelve or thirteen. Almost overnight I became a better writer, simply because I was no longer constrained by the tedious, mechanical chore of actually writing the words on the paper.

I read a related article just a few days ago. Somebody had done a study that showed that kids who used cursive handwriting were better writers than those who printed everything using block letters. Their conclusion was that cursive handwriting was the greatest thing since frequent tire rotation, and that computers are evil because they have contributed its decline.

I agree with the study's results that cursive handwriters are probably better writers than block printers, simply becasue cursive handwriting is generally less tedious than block printing.

When I were trained to be a spy (that was when the military stii thought I wanted to stay although I told them otherwise) I learned a VERY FAST method of LEGIBLE "block printing" and that beat writing LEGIBLE cursor every time.

Erik