Quote of the day

"We have surrendered our handwriting for something more mechanical, less distinctively human, less telling about ourselves and less present in our moments of the highest happiness and the deepest emotion. Ink runs in our veins, and shows the world what we are like. The shaping of thought and written language by a pen, moved by a hand to register marks of ink on paper, has for centuries, millennia, been regarded as key to our existence as human beings. In the past, handwriting has been regarded as almost the most powerful sign of our individuality."

Part of Philip Hensher's love letter to the nearly lost art of handwriting, extracted from his new book The Missing Ink in the Observer. A little overstated, perhaps, but he does have a point, I think (even though there's no mention in the extract, at least, of the fact that students are still expected to handwrite their exam answers).

The article reminded me of the pleasure of using a fountain pen (a lost one - must rectify that), but I'm probably not the best advert for the art of handwriting, given that many people complain about the (un)readability of my scrawl and indeed I myself struggle to decipher it sometimes - one reason why some festival write-ups on here are a bit sketchy...