Thank-you notes suffer from being categorized as old-fashioned and passe, but expressing gratitude never goes out of style.

That’s why I still take notes in a notebook even though I can hardly read my chicken scratch. Yet earlier this month, the same academic journal published a scathing rebuttal to the handwriting study.

The collected thank-you notes are sort of like a timeline of my interests (and handwriting) throughout the years. I’ve been writing letters to my family for many years, and I feel as though they ...