My journal entry
Three types of correction pens I use
I enjoy writing by hand. I keep an old fashion daily planner and a journal too. Growing up and going to school everything was with pen and paper, these days some schools are going almost all digital. When I was in college, I would also send letter to my grandma since she did not use a computer. I do not write as much as before. Most of my work and communication with others are via text and digital documents.
While working on this task, I realized that I was writing pretty slow. I used to be quicker when I was taking down notes in class. It was not difficult, it just took me some time to get my hand used to writing again. It was like riding a bike.
I made some mistakes while writing this task. I just crossed it out. I was not the most aesthetic method, but it was the fastest one. I used loose leaf paper from my binder. I did not have my correction pens with me either, so the best option was to cross out. Should I have written on my real journal, I would definitely have used a correction pen to edit my mistakes. Sometimes I even draw something in order to cover my mistakes.
Mechanical writing is definitely faster and practical. If we need to add sentences or move a paragraph it would be a click a way. Writing by hand would mean starting all over again.
Mechanical or by hand? It depends who the reader is. If I need to hand in a paper or a presentation, I would go for mechanical writing because is fast, clean and practical. However, I still send hand written letters or greeting cards to friends during special occasions. I believe it adds a personal touch. I try to hand write every opportunity I have so as to keep up this tradition that seems to be fading away.
One of the reasons that I keep on hand writing is because my Chinese writing is not as good as before. Unlike English, we do not combine vowels and consonants to form a word. One needs to remember how to write each Chinese character. The more I type in Chinese the more lazy I become in remembering the next character I need to type. The reason is because the app or computer starts “suggesting” the characters that should follow by character usage frequency so. I believe constant hand writing in Chinese might trigger my memory on the characters that I have learnt but have not used for a while.
Another reason is that I love stationery. In order to buy more pens, I need to use them so I need to write more. I have added an additional picture of what I would have used to correct my mistakes. The lollypop one is actually a correction tape, the second one is a crayon/gel where you would paint over the mistake, the last one is a liquid paint. I wonder if the stationery market has become smaller since a lot of us are going digital now. What about books? Most of the books can be acquired digitally, has the books market been drastically affected by the change of mediums (print and digital)?