Once an essential life skill, writing by hand is now saved for special occasions like wedding invitations. Sometimes, we do it when we need to scribble down a quick note.

As we observed generational differences in handwriting, we wondered what led to these differences and the future of writing by hand.

Did the way we learn to write change? Did our handwriting become less legible as we write less and type more? Is handwriting still meaningful when we mostly call and text our loved ones?

To begin answering these questions, we analysed handwriting samples we collected from our participants to see how they differ across generations.

Preserving historical documents is essential for understanding our past, but accessing their contents isn’t always easy, as many of these records are handwritten. OCR converts handwriting into machine-readable text, allowing users to search for keywords instead of reading through multiple images.

While OCR works well for recent handwriting and printed documents, it often struggles with historical materials. Older scripts are full of flourishes and stylistic quirks that confuse automated systems.

“When you’re writing with a flourish, ‘f’ looks like ‘l’, ‘m’ looks like ‘w’, ‘e’ looks like ‘a’,” says Mrs Vandana Aggarwal, 63, who has transcribed more than 14,000 handwritten pages for the National Archives of Singapore.

In addition to handwriting, there are other factors that make transcribing documents a challenge. Pages and ink might have faded. With no spellcheck, there might be irregularities in spelling.