THE pen, they used to say, was mightier than the sword. But are the keyboard and the touch screen now mightier than the pen?

Are we rearing this generation and the next who won’t know how to write their names unless on a computer? Who will look at a fountain pen in wonder as something that should be housed in a museum? Who never send a birthday card but prefer to send a congratulatory text because they can’t wield a pen, let alone write with one?

American congresswoman Pat Hurley, from North Carolina, has sponsored a ‘back to basics’ bill that instructs all the state’s elementary schools to teach children cursive hand-writing, after she received notes from students who wrote in print.

She was floored to discover that the teaching of cursive writing in North Carolina is an optional extra – and many schools were dropping it from the curriculum because they didn’t have time to teach it.

And where they are teaching it – wait for it – kids are learning how to handwrite on classroom iPads, which seems a real contradiction in terms, but there you go.

It’s a far cry from the days when 50 or more of us would be squashed in a classroom dipping our wooden quill and nib pen into the desk inkwell and with tongue-out painstakingness, writing row upon row of Marion Richardson-style joined-up writing.

Having a neat hand was the ‘in thing’ with teachers back then. And actually, this ‘in thing’ wasn’t a bad thing at all.

Having a good hand with a pen in it is the stuff of individuality these days. Call me old-fashioned, but demonstrating the personal touch with a hand-written note, card or letter shows you care much more than dashing off an email of thanks or greeting.

It also, somewhat comfortingly, takes us back to basics in an increasingly complex world where you’re considered a Philistine if you can’t work technological magic with a keyboard beyond sending an email or composing a Word document.

You’d think, wouldn’t you, that because we’re all so obsessed with texting, key-stroking and screen swiping, that the fountain pen is dead.

Well, it’s not consigned to a glass case in a museum just yet.

Over the decades the fountain pen has had to deal with the advent of the typewriter, the ballpoint, tungsten tip, rollerball and gel pen, not to mention the general threat to handwriting imposed by electronic messaging and nattering.

But the nib is still going strong, representing as it does a bit of simple sanity in a brutally technological world. And sales of them are actually on the rise, with a resurgence in the last five years or so. For what’s stemmed the tide is a steadfast affection among a hardcore of hand scripting devotees.

And as a result handwriting is becoming more exclusive and personal. People who put pen to paper rather than finger to keyboard are seen as individualistic. A Mont Blanc in your top pocket is something to be cherished, a silver Parker in your bag an item to be treasured.

Business leaders use them to show an air of intent and seriousness about what they do. Lawyers, doctors and some teachers use them to bestow an air of gravitas and respectability on whatever documents they scratch their nib.

Even so, fountain pens are now seen as more of accessory than a work tool, a tangible demonstration that you’re someone a bit different who wants to make a statement about themselves.

And let’s face it, you wouldn’t see presidents and prime ministers signing treaties with a Biro, would you?

• JUST a thought… So George Osborne had tears streaming down his face during Thatcher’s funeral did he, so grief-stricken was he over the death of his heroine. Bet he doesn’t cry over people losing their jobs or home carers struggling to cope with the impact of the bedroom tax...