2023-06-01 12:02:57
When was the last time you wrote a letter by hand? Or scribbled down your shopping list in a notebook? It may go back… Because a minority of people still prefer grab a pen rather than a keyboard. The figures show it: 78% of those questioned during an Ifop poll for Otypo (specialized in printing and engraving) published this Thursday and in particular relayed by Le Figaro – conducted with a sample of 1,003 people aged 18 and over – claim write less by hand than ten years ago.
Unsurprisingly, 55% of French people rather use their keyboard to write on a daily basis. More strikingly, less than one in two French people wrote a handwritten letter during the past 12 months. Still, a certain fringe (32%) still sends postcards, greeting cards (31%) or words of love (28%).
The keyboard dominates the exchanges
Only a minority of French people (11%) “written today more often on paper than by means of a keyboard”. And the two combined? Only 25% claim to use both a notebook and a keyboard, depending on usage. Born with the Internet, younger generations are more used to writing digitally than by hand. Only 11% (compared to 14% in 2016) of them say they use a pencil or a numeric keypad more often.
Differences are also notable socially: handwriting is still used more (14%) among “the French with few qualifications”, notes the survey. For their part, the upper classes are more than 9% to take the pen rather than the keyboard. Thus, the decline in handwriting is “more pronounced among executives (85%) than among workers (70%)”, underlines Ifop.
If the keyboard dominates the exchanges, the attachment for the paper resists. Ifop recalls the “benefits” of handwriting “in terms of concentration, learning, or quite simply for the pleasure that writing by hand provides”. Curious observation: most French people type their messages more digitally. However, they are more than a quarter (26%) to “prefer to write on paper than with a keyboard”. A trend that is growing even among young people: 31% of them “prefer to write on paper today while they favored the keyboard in 2016”, specifies the survey.
An interest in inclusive writing
Another observation, despite the criticisms it may have suffered, inclusive writing would arouse growing interest among the French. And this, even if the opinions are extremely divergent on the question. The women interviewed are more in favor of it than the men “in view of the progress it represents in terms of gender equality”. French women would particularly welcome the use of the midpoint in the official documents of public bodies (59% against 42% of men) as well as in professional exchanges (56% against 42%).
#Handwriting #increasingly #shunned #French #attachment #paper