Pens at the ready! A gen-Z trainee takes on the Guardian's scribbler-in-chief'

"Though perhaps it's the most absurd thing to show off about, like flexing that you know how to desalinate sea water using only two spoons, when you have fresh running water throughout the house. I've been pretending to have shorthand it is so dumb, I even like the slightly archaic have rather than the less affected can do for so long I can't even remember whether it was a boast when I started lying about it."

"One time I was interviewing at an Australian speed-dating night in Alexandra Palace, ran out of paper, ripped some from the hands of a guy who'd just finished snogging and as I walked off, he said but that had her phone number Only I can ever decipher what I've written, which is fine, because only I need to. In that sense, it's a lot like shorthand."

Ofqual is preparing a public consultation on introducing onscreen exams after pupils reported hand fatigue and weak muscles during long handwritten tests. A practical comparison matched a pen-and-paper veteran, Zoe Williams, against a younger journalist, George Francis Lee, to measure how long each could write before cramp. Zoe Williams expresses pride in fast handwriting and admits to pretending to know shorthand. She describes writing under adverse conditions, including kneeling on wet paving outside courts and ripping paper at a speed-dating event. She notes that only she can decipher her own handwriting and likens it to shorthand.

Read at www.theguardian.com