Grab a pencil and celebrate

Remember learning how to use cursive? When was the last time you actually practiced? National Handwriting Day, January 23, might be the time to try your hand at it again.

The main focus of National Handwriting Day is not perfecting the way one’s handwriting looks. It’s part of it, but not the main focus.

The big focus of National Handwriting Day is to just get people writing with an actual writing utensil.

According to the National day calendar, National Handwriting Day was established in 1977 by the Writing Instrument Manufacturers Association. It was meant to encourage the consumption of writing tools and paper. Though computers have technically been around for over a century, the ‘70s are when many technological advances really started making waves. Computer Hope states that, in the ‘60s and ‘70s, the first mass market computer was invented and sold to regular consumers. This meant less consumption of more old fashioned writing equipment, and National Handwriting Day is one of the ways writing instrument manufacturers responded to it.

Although this day was started with capitalistic intentions, that doesn’t mean people shouldn’t partake in it. Handwriting is an extremely useful skill. All you need to do to partake in this holiday is simply write using a pen or pencil and a piece of paper.

Handwriting is a basic tool that is still used almost everywhere. It can also be thought of as an art form or a form of stress relief. What you write can be anything. It can be a piece of academic writing, a journal, or a short burst of creative writing.