By Yvette Reinfor, Founder of More Handwriting
Children today grow up surrounded by keyboards, tablets and touchscreens. Some schools are introducing typing from Reception. So it is reasonable to ask: does handwriting still matter?
The research says yes. And not for nostalgic reasons.
What happens in the brain when children write by hand
A study published in Frontiers in Psychology recorded brain activity in university students as they wrote words by hand and typed them on a keyboard. When writing by hand, the researchers found far more extensive connectivity across brain regions involved in movement, sensory processing and memory. Typing produced minimal activity in the same areas.
This matters because the brain connectivity patterns observed during handwriting are associated with memory formation and learning. The physical act of forming each letter — controlling the pen, shaping each stroke — engages the brain in ways that pressing a key simply does not.
Handwriting and reading are connected
The link between handwriting and reading is well established. A 2025 study published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology found that five-year-old children who practised writing letters by hand — whether copying or tracing — outperformed children who typed the same material on a keyboard. The handwriting groups were better at naming letters, writing them from memory and reading words made from those letters.
The researchers concluded that the physical act of writing strengthens the connections between letter shapes and their sounds — a foundation for reading. Replacing handwriting with typing during the years when children are learning to read may weaken that foundation.
The automaticity question
There is another reason handwriting matters, and it is one that parents of older children and secondary school teachers will recognise immediately.
When handwriting is automatic — when a child can form letters without thinking about it — the brain’s resources are free for the work of writing: choosing words, building sentences, organising ideas. Research calls this “cognitive load.” When handwriting is not automatic, the child is using so much focus on the mechanics that their composition suffers. They write less. The quality drops.
Studies show that handwriting automaticity uniquely predicts the quality and quantity of children’s written work, and that this effect continues well beyond primary school. One study found that handwriting is only just becoming automatic in Year 5 (ages 9–10) and is not largely automatic until around Year 9 (ages 13–14).
For secondary school teachers, this has real implications. A student who is still thinking about letter formation in Year 8 is at a disadvantage in every subject that requires written work — which is most of them.
Typing is not a replacement
Typing has clear advantages: it is faster for long texts, easier to edit and produces neat output. Nobody is suggesting that children should not learn to type. But typing does not build the same neural pathways. It does not support reading development in the same way. And it does not develop the automatic motor patterns that free the brain for higher-level thinking.
Handwriting and typing are complementary skills. Children need both. But the evidence suggests that handwriting should come first, and that it should be practised and supported throughout primary and into secondary school.
What you can do
For parents of young children: keep the crayons, pencils and paper accessible. Let children see you writing by hand. The early mark-making experiences build the cognitive and motor foundations for everything that follows.
For parents of school-age children: if handwriting seems to be holding your child back – if they avoid writing, if their work does not reflect what they can say aloud, if they are slow to finish written tasks – it is worth finding out what is going on. Our Handwriting Scan and Handwriting MOT are designed for exactly this, from age seven.
For teachers: the research is clear that handwriting instruction and practice should not stop once children can form letters. Fluency and automaticity take years to develop, and they underpin everything children are asked to do in writing.
More Handwriting creates tools for parents and schools that are grounded in developmental research. Visit our homepage to learn more.
