If writing remains one of our most cherished modes of communication, then it is because we associate the effort of transcribing words onto paper with a genuine desire for clarity and contact. Often of course, a person's handwriting is ungainly or crabbed, yet we still attribute purpose to its markings. Messages matter to us, and we are seldom blasé when we trip over a phrase in a loved one's postcard and struggle to disentangle the scrawl letter by letter. What we cannot decipher, we gawp at in bemusement.