Phillip Hensher’s highly readable book, The Missing Ink, manages to inspire a revival of handwriting. His is an eloquent tale and a journey through a fading world that with technology may be about to disappear forever.

What prompted Hensher to write his book was the realization that he had no idea what the handwriting looked like from a friend, whom he had known for more than a decade. Although the friend had emailed and texted Hensher, he had never sent him a handwritten letter. Life goes on like this and relationships can last forever and people hardly realize there is no need to write by hand anymore. It indicates that handwriting is no longer a

essential intermediary between people.

Will any part of our humanity be lost, Hensher asks, apart from the habit of writing with a pen on paper? With brilliant prose, Hensher delves into the history of handwriting – the pioneers who were masters of handwriting. Look at the different styles. See what handwriting has meant to humanity. He cites eccentric conclusions about personality, illness, psychosis, and even suitability for employment that students of the pseudoscience of graphology have drawn from close scrutiny of writing.

He reflects on his early life at school learning to write by hand, the conjoined adult-style graduation, the callus on his right hand where the pen used to rest, and the school boy’s penchant for using the pen as a missile. Remember the ink spilling on the shirt and its constant crunch of the pen until it left indelible teeth marks.

Hensher repeatedly asks if we should care that handwriting is disappearing, since the internet and its keyboard have replaced everything. After all, bad handwriting has cost companies and governments a fortune. Millions of letters could not be delivered due to poor handwriting. In 1994, Kodak said that “400,000 rolls of film could not be returned because the names and addresses were illegible.”

So in the age of computer terminals, who cares if the writing disappears? Hensher cleverly lists a few reasons driving declines in handwriting skills. With the dawn of the digital age, the curriculum in many Western countries is spending increasingly little time teaching handwriting. Less than half of British primary schools spend time teaching handwriting.

Some teachers are beginning to see teaching writing as a chore rather than developing a skill. Some education departments encourage “just mastery of the keyboard.” Some authorities have even recommended that children only be taught to sign with their names, and that the time previously spent teaching handwriting be devoted to learning to type and type on the keyboard.

Hensher makes a strong case for the preservation of handwriting. Far from being an expression of education or class or involving us in any way with the written word, it magnificently conveys the role it has yet to play in our lives. Cites research showing that improving writing skills doesn’t just shape the building

it blocks written language and improves memory, but it also made the subjects better learners who enjoyed learning. He also mentions a case in Texas in which a man died after a pharmacist misread a doctor’s handwritten prescription.

In another case, a nurse’s handwriting was so dire that a colleague misread the instruction to administer only four units of insulin out of forty, with fatal consequences.

In his sublime conclusion, Hensher writes: “ Although it would not make sense to give up the clarity and authority of print that is available to anyone with a keyboard, to continue to diminish the place of handwriting in our lives is to diminish by small but real way, our humanity.

In all sorts of areas of our life, we improve the quality of our life by opting for the slow option, the path that requires a bit of effort. Sometimes we don’t spend a night watching Km Kardashian fall on YouTube: we read a book. Sometimes we don’t just put a prepared meal in the oven and take it out later. We chop and prepare vegetables; we follow a

recipe or some procedure that we remember from our family kitchens and we make dinner from scratch, with pleasure.

We often do this because we love people and think they are worth our effort from time to time. Sometimes we don’t get in the car and get to where we need to go as soon as possible. Sometimes we open the front doors and take a walk in the spring sun. We may not get very far in two or three hours on foot, where in three hours by mechanical means you can reach Yorkshire (by car) or Paris (by train) or Istanbul (by plane). But on the other hand, you have had a nice walk in the spring sun for very little money and you feel better.

Perhaps that is the way to recover handwriting in our lives, as something that is a pleasure, that is good for us and that is human in a way that not all communication systems manage to be ”.