Writing · Apple Pencil · Research
Handwriting or Typing: Which Is Better for a Diary?
Should you journal by hand or on a keyboard? What the research suggests about writing by hand, and how to get the best of both.
Many people who keep a diary have strong feelings about this. Some cannot imagine a diary that is not handwritten. Others think faster on a keyboard and would never go back. Both are right, for different reasons.
The case for writing by hand
It slows you down. Typing lets you get words down nearly as fast as you think them. Handwriting does not, and that friction is useful in a diary: you choose what matters, you summarise, you notice. In a well-known study, students who took notes by hand tended to process ideas more deeply than students who typed near-verbatim notes (Mueller & Oppenheimer, Psychological Science, 2014). Later replications have been mixed, but the intuition writers have long held, that the pen makes you think, has at least some support.
It engages more of the brain. A 2024 EEG study by Van der Weel and Van der Meer in Frontiers in Psychology found more widespread brain connectivity when participants wrote by hand than when they typed. It is a small study and should not be over-read, but it fits what many diarists feel.
It looks like you. Your handwriting changes with your mood, your tiredness, your hurry. Years later, the shape of the letters tells you as much as the words.
The case for typing
It is faster and longer. On nights with a lot to say, typing lets you empty your head before you fall asleep.
It is easier to read back and search. Typed text is always legible.
It is more accessible. For many people, writing by hand for long is tiring or painful. A diary should never be a test of penmanship.
The best of both
You do not have to choose once and for all. Write by hand on the nights you want to slow down, type on the nights you need to get it all out, and keep them in the same diary.
That is how Virtual Diary works: write with Apple Pencil on iPad in black, blue or sepia, or type on the same page. Handwriting is recognised on your iPad so you can search it, and you can turn ink into text whenever you like. On the Mac, you type, and the ink from your iPad sits right there on the page, exactly as you wrote it.