Intro
For this assignment, I decided to write a short diary entry about the building I live in with 5 other friends. Please view my entry in the gallery below:
After completing this entry and taking notes along the way, I used the following questions to prompt a reflection on producing manual scripts vs. digital ones.
- Do you normally write by hand or type? Did you find this task difficult or easy? Explain.
- What did you do when you made a mistake or wanted to change your writing? How did you edit your work? Did your choice of media play a part in how you edited your work?
- What do you feel is the most significant difference between writing by hand and using mechanized forms of writing? Which do you prefer and why?
Reflection
Even from the very beginning of this assignment, I was made brutally aware of why I never write manually. I spent about 10 minutes scouring the house for lined paper, and even though I live with a grade school teacher for a roommate, I had to settle for using an old notebook. This was the first reminder to me that, in fact, my entire life is organized around productivity in a digital environment.
Since the beginning of my undergrad, I have almost wholly switched to digital writing, only writing by hand for quick notes around the house or the odd academic exam. I prefer writing by computer for many reasons. Firstly, writing by hand is an inconvenience in today’s world where files are shared so instantaneously. In many cases, writing by hand would be an additional step, as I may have to convert whatever it is to a digital format. For instance, if I were to take notes during a work meeting by hand, I may need to retype them to have a digital copy. Secondly, I personally have always had very bad handwriting, so I try to avoid writing by hand in a professional/academic setting if I can. Thirdly, the ability to easily edit digital writing is a huge plus for me. As can be seen in the writing entry I produced, many words or short phrases were crossed out, as I made small errors here and there. In a digital space, these are easy to correct.
The overall process of organizing ideas when writing by hand is the largest difference for me and my biggest influence to write by computer. When I am writing manually, I am likely to make mistakes, or change my mind about how I want to organize the content of the piece, so the result can be messy. See, for instance on p.3-4 where I made an annotation to move a chunk of text from one page to the other. That being said, I make more of an effort to produce a well formulated piece, if I know that I will have to write it in one go from start to finish. It forces me to reflect before putting pen to paper. Still, for producing a professional piece of writing, I would always chose to write digitally to have the control to edit draft versions and produce a cleaner overall document.