Because Handwriting Matters
To celebrate the age old act of putting pen to paper, online retailer and gift hub Pen Heaven present their Handwriting Matters campaign – launched to proliferate the art of handwriting and promote the many benefits associated with writing by hand.
According to studies, just a few minutes of handwriting a day can be an effective way of relieving stress and helping you unwind. Whether you are scribbling a love note to someone special or simply writing a shopping list, writing by hand gets the creative juices flowing and helps your brain remember key facts and information. Stimulating your mind by writing, as opposed to using technology, can also help you organise your mind, whilst striking off tasks from a physical to-do-list may give a more gratifying feeling than simply deleting them on your computer.*
Keith Cole, Pen Heaven’s CEO, said: “Putting pen to paper is great for spontaneity and creativity, and can also be therapeutic. Keeping notes and writing action points into a notebook is often cited by people in positions of responsibility and leadership as helping their success.”
An ancient skill, people are thought to have started writing by hand more than 6,000 years ago in Mesopotamia. However, with the popularity of computers, smartphones and tablets fewer people now pick up a pen as part of their daily lives. Research commissioned by Docmail claimed the average person in the UK hadn’t written by hand for 41 days. And a third of the 2,000 people who took part in the survey had not handwritten anything properly for more than six months. **
More than half the people quizzed by Docmail admitted their handwriting had become progressively worse over time. And there is a danger that if society doesn’t place more importance on putting pen to paper, younger generations may lack the ability to write by hand altogether.
Schools in Finland are getting ready to drop cursive handwriting from the curriculum completely. From 2016, children in the Scandinavian country will learn to type instead. And the US education system stopped considering handwriting as a compulsory skill in 2013, leaving individual states free to decide whether to teach it in the classroom or not.
Writing by hand is a vital life skill but the less we do it, the harder it becomes. Through the Handwriting Matters campaign, Pen Heaven are urging people to ‘use it or lose it’ and are supporting the education of handwriting by offering students FREE writing essentials through donations to charitable causes.
To further mark the occasion and get people talking about writing, Pen Heaven asked a variety of authors, artists, journalists, teachers and celebrities to gather their thoughts and tell us why writing by hand mattered to them. ***
Why not join our debate and help us keep handwriting memorable!
Providing a plethora of writing instruments to suits all styles and levels, Pen Heaven also offer the ergonomic Yoropen, designed for comfort with an adjustable grip and finger support to help you practice your finest script. Expert advice, along with journals, jotters and notebooks are also available, including an in-house personalization service.
