You may not have noticed, but some people are starting to complain that we’re losing the art of handwriting. Claire Suddath wrote a piece for Time, in which she said that people aren’t just dropping the use of cursive, but typing and text messaging are beating out even longhand as acceptable forms of communication. Of course, that’s fine until your carpal tunnel kicks in and you’re wearing wrist braces and contemplating surgery.

Lest you think I’m making fun of people, my arms go numb when I sleep sometimes, so I’m speaking from experience. Sometimes I’ve considered writing things out on paper, hoping it’ll make my arms stop hurting. It at least saves one of them, right? And of course text-to-speech software is essential for people who can’t physically type at all.

Another option would be for me to use something like Dragon NaturallySpeaking or MacSpeech Dictate, both of which are speech-to-text programs.