First, I’d like to say that I actually subscribe and pay for Good Magazine. But I do understand why people expect to read the New York Times for free, I am one of those people, and I get why institutions like the NYTimes offer their content for free — because there’s always another place like the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journalst, etc. Therefore, borrowing from Zach’s observation that the internet is much like broadcast, why not offer a similarly analogous cable-like subscription service for a conglomerate of newspapers and magazines? You pay a montly subscription fee and have access to dozens, or hundreds, of websites. (sorry, forgot to sign in before)

Although I do not have pictures to add to my submission, I can think of quite a lot of professions that are becoming a lost art. My dad was a pressman at a printshop, you know one of the guys who set the plates, measured the ink and supervised the printing. With the advent of scanners, digital printers and Kinko’s, this profession is quickly vanishing. As soap operas disappear, so do their writers. Another vanishing profession. Another lost art.As Julie Gaines, co-founder of Fish’s Eddy, laments, there are fewer and fewer producers of the sturdier American made china that she sells in her store. She once bragged of the craftsmanship of American dinnerware, saying that a stack of American-made plates were as stout as any stool. She often used them to stand on.But sadly, that’s a reoccuring story across the country, manufacturing jobs, skilled labor, evaporating at a breakneck pace. The truth is that the demise of these arts, crafts, professions, are not as insular as one might think. They are all around us.

Did you mean to say “predicts”?

I agree. It’s the same reason I sometimes search for hours to find the right place to sit down and write; the energy, ambience, comfort of the seats, lighting, music must collude for me to feel inspired or moved. Likewise, a book has to wow me on first impression. Publishers should take as much care to package the book as the author did to write it, and take as much care to invest in it as I will.

I think an interesting exercise would be to alternate hand-written and emailed letters to a friend for two months, one letter a week, and see if that person notices a difference in style and content, to determine which, if any, is more expressive.

I appreciate the article, but I don’t agree completely with the thesis. Absolutely, more time should be spent actually informing students, teaching the complexities of world and our role in it, instead of hammering on outmoded methods designed to educate children on how to pass a test instead of thrive in our culture. But this emphasizes the problem with standardized tests, and that’s an entirely different story.Handwriting, however, is not outmoded, although not as prominent as keyboarding, but an art and an important process of communication. I am not romanticizing handwriting; to do so would undermine its significance. I’m certain that Mrs. Trubek uses this skill — and it is a skill — for more than just signing credit card receipts. It’s difficult to imagine that handwriting doesn’t find its way into her job as a professor, maybe in the form of correcting papers, taking notes, or writing on a blackboard. It’s a key instrument in many jobs and should be more important in a few professions as evidenced by a case in Texas where a jury awarded $450,000 to the family of a man who died after a pharmacist misread a doctor’s hand-written prescription. Suzanne Swadener, an occupational therapist and a presenter for Handwriting Without Tears, argues that handwriting is more than just practical, it also provides a sense of independence. In a story posted on EducationWorld.com Swadner says, “Remember, not every family in the country has a computer. I do believe that when [children are] not taught handwriting skills, they have lost a link in the world of language. I have seen children become so dependent on keyboards that their world shuts down if the computer shuts down.”  This passage from Nicholas Carr’s Atlantic article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” may be the best example of how handwriting impacts the form and quality of the way we communicate: “Sometime in 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche bought a typewriter—a Malling-Hansen Writing Ball, to be precise. His vision was failing, and keeping his eyes focused on a page had become exhausting and painful, often bringing on crushing headaches. He had been forced to curtail his writing, and he feared that he would soon have to give it up. The typewriter rescued him, at least for a time. Once he had mastered touch-typing, he was able to write with his eyes closed, using only the tips of his fingers. Words could once again flow from his mind to the page.
But the machine had a subtler effect on his work. One of Nietzsche’s friends, a composer, noticed a change in the style of his writing. His already terse prose had become even tighter, more telegraphic. “Perhaps you will through this instrument even take to a new idiom,” the friend wrote in a letter, noting that, in his own work, his “‘thoughts’ in music and language often depend on the quality of pen and paper.”
 

This is a respectable list. One HUGE omission: Harper’s!

First, I’d like to say that I actually subscribe and pay for Good Magazine. But I do understand why people expect to read the New York Times for free, I am one of those people, and I get why institutions like the NYTimes offer their content for free — because there’s always another place like the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journalst, etc. Therefore, borrowing from Zach’s observation that the internet is much like broadcast, why not offer a similarly analogous cable-like subscription service for a conglomerate of newspapers and magazines? You pay a montly subscription fee and have access to dozens, or hundreds, of websites. (sorry, forgot to sign in before)

Although I do not have pictures to add to my submission, I can think of quite a lot of professions that are becoming a lost art. My dad was a pressman at a printshop, you know one of the guys who set the plates, measured the ink and supervised the printing. With the advent of scanners, digital printers and Kinko’s, this profession is quickly vanishing. As soap operas disappear, so do their writers. Another vanishing profession. Another lost art.As Julie Gaines, co-founder of Fish’s Eddy, laments, there are fewer and fewer producers of the sturdier American made china that she sells in her store. She once bragged of the craftsmanship of American dinnerware, saying that a stack of American-made plates were as stout as any stool. She often used them to stand on.But sadly, that’s a reoccuring story across the country, manufacturing jobs, skilled labor, evaporating at a breakneck pace. The truth is that the demise of these arts, crafts, professions, are not as insular as one might think. They are all around us.

Did you mean to say “predicts”?

I agree. It’s the same reason I sometimes search for hours to find the right place to sit down and write; the energy, ambience, comfort of the seats, lighting, music must collude for me to feel inspired or moved. Likewise, a book has to wow me on first impression. Publishers should take as much care to package the book as the author did to write it, and take as much care to invest in it as I will.

I think an interesting exercise would be to alternate hand-written and emailed letters to a friend for two months, one letter a week, and see if that person notices a difference in style and content, to determine which, if any, is more expressive.

I appreciate the article, but I don’t agree completely with the thesis. Absolutely, more time should be spent actually informing students, teaching the complexities of world and our role in it, instead of hammering on outmoded methods designed to educate children on how to pass a test instead of thrive in our culture. But this emphasizes the problem with standardized tests, and that’s an entirely different story.Handwriting, however, is not outmoded, although not as prominent as keyboarding, but an art and an important process of communication. I am not romanticizing handwriting; to do so would undermine its significance. I’m certain that Mrs. Trubek uses this skill — and it is a skill — for more than just signing credit card receipts. It’s difficult to imagine that handwriting doesn’t find its way into her job as a professor, maybe in the form of correcting papers, taking notes, or writing on a blackboard. It’s a key instrument in many jobs and should be more important in a few professions as evidenced by a case in Texas where a jury awarded $450,000 to the family of a man who died after a pharmacist misread a doctor’s hand-written prescription. Suzanne Swadener, an occupational therapist and a presenter for Handwriting Without Tears, argues that handwriting is more than just practical, it also provides a sense of independence. In a story posted on EducationWorld.com Swadner says, “Remember, not every family in the country has a computer. I do believe that when [children are] not taught handwriting skills, they have lost a link in the world of language. I have seen children become so dependent on keyboards that their world shuts down if the computer shuts down.”  This passage from Nicholas Carr’s Atlantic article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” may be the best example of how handwriting impacts the form and quality of the way we communicate: “Sometime in 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche bought a typewriter—a Malling-Hansen Writing Ball, to be precise. His vision was failing, and keeping his eyes focused on a page had become exhausting and painful, often bringing on crushing headaches. He had been forced to curtail his writing, and he feared that he would soon have to give it up. The typewriter rescued him, at least for a time. Once he had mastered touch-typing, he was able to write with his eyes closed, using only the tips of his fingers. Words could once again flow from his mind to the page.
But the machine had a subtler effect on his work. One of Nietzsche’s friends, a composer, noticed a change in the style of his writing. His already terse prose had become even tighter, more telegraphic. “Perhaps you will through this instrument even take to a new idiom,” the friend wrote in a letter, noting that, in his own work, his “‘thoughts’ in music and language often depend on the quality of pen and paper.”
 

This is a respectable list. One HUGE omission: Harper’s!