Five mutually dependent theses about handwriting versus typewriting (and some related questions) inspire my research:

thesis one, handwriting is directly produced by the hand while typewriting is produced by a technological device (what is a quill or pen? what role plays the cumbersome training of the hands?);

thesis two, a handwritten text is a unique and authentic trace of an individual at a specific moment in time while a typed text is iterable and reproducible and can at best be traced back to a unique device but not to an individual (Derrida points to the paradoxical nature of the signature which is supposed to be singular and unique but necessarily has to be reproducible at any time);

thesis three, we communicate our own thoughts, ideas, and representations. Handwriting does so in a direct, immediate way while typed writing always leaves some doubts about the authenticity of the content (the forensics of handwriting analysis, for example, implies that an identified author is responsible for a document’s content while digital forensics often refers to the ‘integrity’ of a text as representing its authenticity);

thesis four, reproducing handwriting equals forgery but reproducing typewriting equals the creation of another original or another copy of something that always was a copy to begin with (medieval manuscripts, however, were often intentionally written in a way that made them easy to duplicate);

thesis five, handwriting implies at least the presence of the author while typing only implies absence, that of the addressee and of the author (at the moment of reception, however, the author of the handwritten text is as absent as the typist; in both cases, Derrida writes of a ‘break in presence’ rather than absence).