My handwriting skills peaked sometime in my 12th year, shortly after I took a summer typing class. A few months later my parents bought a personal computer. Before long my writing life migrated to the keyboard, and my handwriting began its steady decline to the pained, barely legible scrawl that it is today.
A penmanship expert would look at that sorry trend and say, "What a disaster! The adoption of the personal computer has led to a marked deterioration of an important communication skill." But that assessment would be meaningless without factoring in all the benefits I've enjoyed from switching to...