Love/Hate
The Return of Handwriting
How cursive, which carries social and cognitive benefits, became the latest fetish of the analogue authenticity set
As holiday shoppers browse the handmade notecards out front, a group assembles in the back of a bright, old-fashioned letterpress shop near Harvard University. The dozen strangers, from their 20s to their 50s, drag stools to the edges of two big classroom-style tables, conspicuously put aside their phones, and then — fueled with passionfruit-flavored spring water — start practicing their penmanship.
Organized by a three-year-old company called Sip & Script, this 90-minute class is part of a slow but sure revival of handwritten communication, a resolute response to the impersonal nature of emails, texts, and online holiday messages and birthday greetings. “It has so much more meaning when it comes in handwriting,” says the instructor, a former elementary school teacher named Jessica Glazier, as her charges bend over their tracing paper. “We’re trying to bring that back, a little at a time.”
They’re not the only ones, as yet another discarded relic from a forgotten age is brought back, dusted off, gussied up, and imbued with a newfound sense of purpose. Letter Writers Alliance, a league of letter-writers, now boasts…
