The Benefits of Analogue Bleeding Back into Digital

After a year of exclusively using fountain pens and paper for my handwriting needs and foregoing any sort of digital tablet, I got an iPad Pro again a few days ago, with the intent to use it mostly for reading comics, academic papers, and the New York Times. Today, I found myself using it to take notes during an impromptu meeting. While I am alarmed at how easily, and usefully, the digital tool slotted itself back into my workflow, I was pleasantly surprised to see that my handwriting, which I spent months diligently practicing last year because I wanted to learn cursive again, was much more fluid on the tablet than it used to be—and more easily recognized and parsed by the software because of this, too. (Also, wondrously, I wrote this very post by hand, with the Apple Pencil, right into WordPress’s text editor.)