The Economist columnist, Johnson, recently wrote about the advantages of pencil and paper over computers for writing and note taking. I totally agreed, and wrote this letter to him/her.
Dear Johnson,
There are four sections I read without fail in the Economist. The Obituary, the bottom right letter to the editor, Lexington, and your column, Johnson.
You recently wrote about the advantages of pencil and paper over a computer. I’m writing to tell you how much I agree, and share some of my experiences.
First, let me say that, I might be reading too much into this, the column you hand wrote on the subject was—I don’t want to say better, the columns are always excellent—but it had a smoother feel to it. It flowed and the words, the turns of phrase, had a gentler more organic? touch.
Crosswords
We (my wife and I) do the New York Times crosswords, but we don’t do them online like many do. We find it much more satisfying to fill in the boxes with a pencil. Now, here is something you might want to note. Pencils are very cheaply made these days, and it’s worth investing in good pencils. I highly recommend Mirado Black Warrior #2 pencils and an electric pencil sharpener. I also put artist quality erasers on the ends to make the writing of answers, and the subsequent erasing of the wrong ones, a pure joy.
For some perverse reason, I save the pencils when they get too short to use. I enclose a picture of our retired pencils and a puzzle.
Accounting
My father was an accountant and one of the things passed on to me on his passing, along with old check stubs and the like, was accounting paper. When (my wife and I) started our own small business, I did all the accounting using a pointy pencil and my dad’s accounting paper. Eventually she said we needed to move to a computerized product, which we did, but it wasn’t the same.
I found I had a much better feel of the business when hand writing in the expenses and the sales, adding up the columns, creating the balance sheets, etc. Something felt disconnected when we had the computer generate those numbers.
Software Development
Software was, back in the day, designed on paper, with boxes and lines and arrows and whatever, and multiple sheets with the different sections spread out across the desk. I was working for a software company that was a pioneer in the development of computerized software design tools. I remember the head of development talking about the work and holding up a pad of paper and a pencil, saying that was the competition.
Using the computer for design work, he pointed out, would be like designing software with blinders on. It’s as if you had a mask held over the desk that would only let you see part of one piece of paper at a time.
Writing
I do some writing as well, and use both paper and pencil and software. Here is a paragraph from the acknowledgements I wrote in my book, “Jazz Chords for Baritone Ukulele”:
“I’d like to acknowledge two excellent software tools I used. Sketch for making it easy to create all the diagrams in the book, and Scrivener for providing beginning-to-end tools for organizing, editing and compiling the manuscript. (However, for working out early ideas and organization, no software tool can compete with 1/4 sized sheets of colored paper and Mirado Black Warrior pencils.)”
And the back cover picture in the book:
Best Regards,
Dennis Merritt
Shelburne Falls, MA, USA
