Becoming a Lefty is the title of my journal entry for this weeks task. I chose a topic related to scripture, chose to write with a pencil and attempted to write one third of my entry in cursive writing, something I haven’t done in over twenty years. I like many others am a full-time typer, on the rare occasion that I do hand write, I tend to print in order to ensure clarity. This task became more challenging for me when I began writing in cursive and having to pay closer attention to each stroke of the pencil.

Very little attention was paid to the artistry of my scripture in this task, unlike the artisans of the middle ages. I do not consider myself an author, my literary imagination is limited. I made several mistakes and rather than using my pinky finger to delete as I would on my MacBook I used the tiny blue eraser at the tip of my pencil. I did not edit my work other then the odd letter here and there, I found I had to pay closer attention to each word as I wrote knowing that editing was going to be more time consuming and perhaps frustrating.

This weeks activities made me realize how refined our sources of print are, this course, books on our shelves, e-books etc…The most significant difference between writing by hand and typing on a computer was that my handcrafted journal entry was more artistic and required considerably more technical skill. But wait, did it?  Typing on keys without looking at them also requires skill and practice, perhaps it takes just as much skill to do both? Typing on a computer requires little consideration compared to ancient methods such as the letter press, now you can waste words, we can now “change our words in an instant”   as said by Paul Collier in the Upside Down, Left To Right: A Letterpress Film. Today, I prefer to type, mostly because of its speed. However, the process of typing on a computer does not have the potential to be therapeutic as can using a letter press or hand writing. Perhaps we’ve sacrificed one type of quality for another?