In our modern digital world, we spend a lot of our time creating and reading content from emails, online news articles, blogs, social media, and work memos. As a manual and seemingly non-digital form of content creation, a handwritten note might seem out-of-place in our modern digital world. However, new apps and devices have already brought back handwritten notes. Our current digital handwriting just needs some old-world cursive to add a special touch.

Here are a few examples of handwriting notes entering our digital world.

• Apple Pencil
• reMarkable Paper Tablet
• Wacom Bamboo Slate Smartpad
• Rocketbook Everlast Reusable Notebook
• Elfinbook Everlast Smart Notebook 2.0
• Wacom Bamboo Folio Smartpad Digital Notebook
• Repaper graphic tablet
• Moleskine Smart Writing System
• NewYes Smart Notebook
• SyncPen2 – NEWYES 2nd Generation Smart Pen
• Livescribe digital pens
• PDF Annotation
• LiquidText – PDF and document annotation and organization.
• MarginNote – PDF and multiple document mapping and notation.
• Adobe Acrobat – PDF annotations
• OCR – Optical Character Recognition for translating handwritten notes.

Even Apple has adapted handwriting notes into their messaging app. Using the Apple Pencil on an iPad, messages can be sent as handwritten notes. Apple advertises the feature as allowing users to handwrite or draw doodles as part of the message content using the Apple Pencil. Samsung has also heavily advertised its own version, the S Pen.  The S Pen has the ability to handwrite annotations anywhere on the Samsung Android tablets.

In fact, Apple has doubled down a few times with its Apple Pencil.  Recently, they introduced their flagship Apple Pencil, aptly named Apple Pencil Pro.  This new edition features a haptic feedback engine that enhances its functionality even further.

Handwritten notes are also considerably faster at document annotations and note-taking than typing. Apps like Adobe Acrobat DC, MarginNote, and LiquidText are built on the concept that quick notes and annotations are much faster when handwritten. Apps like Notes Plus, MyScript Nebo, GoodNotes 5 are built with handwriting recognition. The handwriting recognition feature enables the app to automatically translate handwritten notes for enhanced document search capabilities.

Special PDF annotation apps, such as LiquidText, have been powerfull features based around the premise that handwriting is still the best form of digital annotation.  LiquidText has augmented handwriting to new heights with the app’s ability to allow freeform annotations that create powerful document content linking.

So, handwriting is far from obsolete. In fact, it has proven particularly useful in our digital world. However, to be useful, handwriting still needs to be legible and neat.