• laborious process of tracing out our thoughts, letter by letter, on the page is becoming a relic of the past in our screen-dominated world, where text messages and thumb-typed grocery lists have replaced handwritten letters and sticky notes
• giving up this slower, more tactile way of expressing ourselves may come at a significant cost, according to a growing body of research that's uncovering the surprising cognitive benefits of taking pen to paper, or even stylus to iPad
• tracing out ABCs, as opposed to typing them, leads to better and longer-lasting recognition and understanding of letters.
• Writing by hand also improves memory and recall of words, laying down the foundations of literacy and learning
• taking notes by hand during a lecture, instead of typing, can lead to better conceptual understanding of material
• It has important cognitive benefits."
• for instance, many authors, including Jennifer Egan and Neil Gaiman, draft their stories by hand to stoke creativity
• This seems to more deeply engage the brain in ways that support learning.
• Handwriting is probably among the most complex motor skills that the brain is capable of," says Marieke Longcamp
• Your fingers have to each do something different to produce a recognizable letter," says Sophia Vinci-Booher
• when students write by hand, brain areas involved in motor and visual information processing "sync up" with areas crucial to memory formation, firing at frequencies associated with learning
• Letter recognition in early childhood is actually one of the best predictors of later reading and math attainment," says Vinci-Booher
• Research suggests kids learn to recognize letters better when seeing variable handwritten examples, compared with uniform typed examples.

• road.

  "If young children are not receiving any handwriting training, which is very good brain stimulation, then their brains simply won't reach their full potential," says van der Meer
• slow down
• given our long history of using our hands to mark meaning in the world

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