this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2025
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I disagree that writing by hand is magically improving information absorbtion/retention. Source: I've been doing it through all of my school and all of my uni. Being half-asleep, pondering something completely irrelevant, and in general course material flying completely over my head while I write it down was a norm most of the time. And lecturers dictating their stuff at high speeds didn't help either. Maybe there is some temporary novelty effect after you switch from one way of writing to another, but I wouldn't expect that last long.
The more muscles and senses you engage in learning the better you will retain the information.
One method is not necessarily the best for everyone, but studies show that writing notes by javd does improve retention.
I've found typing works extremely well for everything but math. I type everything out as they speak, but horribly, with zero respect to grammar or spelling, just get the information down. Then, I go back afterwards and fix it all, and in doing so, reinforcing my learning. Its hard to do, because it had to be written well enough for me to be able to understand my chicken scratch later, but damn, it helps.
If you're going back and fixing it, you're getting that absorption the article is referring to. If you're not referring to your notes ever again, handwriting is better because it forces that absorption to happen (i.e. you need to summarize). If you want all of the content, just watch the recording.
No one that has looked at this in a serious way agrees with you.
From the abstract:
“These results suggest that the movements involved in handwriting allow a greater memorization of new words. The advantage of handwriting over typing might also be caused by a more positive mood during learning. Finally, our results show that handwriting with a digital pen and tablet can increase the ability to learn compared with keyboard typing once the individuals are accustomed to it.”
Handwriting helps retention better than typing.
I don't buy it. I think the method they used worked, but I don't think the blanket statement is fair. My handwriting sucks, and writing quickly for more than a few minutes hurts my hands.
Handwriting sucking is irrelevant. You don't need to read it afterward to get the benefits the study is talking about. The point of handwriting is that you need to process and summarize the information.
If you review the information later, the difference between the two will be negligible.
I personally almost never review lecture notes and instead go to the textbook. Professors can make mistakes, books are usually more accurate, but a lecture is more interactive so both have value. But I definitely prefer the text over my notes regardless.
What we did in school and uni never required processing and summarizing anything. Teacher/lecturer would simply dictate and we had to write down anything that what explicitly preceded by "write this down". I'd agree processing and summarizing helps with learning, but that's totally irrelevant and doesn't have anything to do with writing,
Really? That sounds like way too much hand-holding for a college course. I certainly had times when the teacher told us things that would definitely be on the test, but they didn't do that for anywhere near the majority of the test content, only when rattling off a bunch of trivia and noting which of that was actually necessary to remember (i.e. remember start and end dates of WW2, but not the date of every battle).
Tests should be more about concepts rather than trivia, so "write this down" shouldn't be a very common thing.
But it's not. Studies have shown that handwritten notes improve absorption of material. You can obviously get the same results by improving other study methods (i.e. reviewing and editing digital notes later), but if we're strictly talking about note-taking itself (i.e. if you discard the notes afterward), handwritten notes are superior. So if you're in a situation where you have audio (or better yet, transcribed) lectures, handwritten notes can improve your mastery of the content. You'll get much more value from recording lectures and hand-writing notes during class than typing notes into a computer.
I'm pretty sure that writing something down has been proven to be helpful for retaining the information.
But that study is probably 50 years old, and people learn and retain information differently.
So I wouldn't be surprised if using a computer to take notes is just as effective as writing it, especially for younger generations.
See my comment to OP for a recentish publication that shows the same thing all studies previously have shown. You are quite correct.
I switched from using paper notebooks to take lecture notes to using a computer for most classes around 2nd year of college and it was about the same. I mostly used the notes for spaced repetition when going over the material again a week or so after the lecture and helped keep my focus on the material during the lectures. It's also easier to share notes with a study group if they're already digital.
Your review process is making the difference here. Handwriting vs computer notes is looking at the difference without reviewing the notes afterward.