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has computer typing taken away the art of writing

This question is vague and must be defined to eliminate any obscurity. The "art of writing" refers to both the structure/content of the material being constructed and how that construction appears; ie. neat handwriting. With regard to the appearance and integrity of handwriting, standards have been decreasing steadily in most Western countries over the past 50 years. Of course, it is no surprise that these countries also have the highest rates of computer literacy and Internet access in the entire world. Computers in essence obliterate the need for neat handwriting, or even handwriting at all because they allow the utmost level of editing - including language translation, spell-checking and is legible by everyone capable human. Granted, one must also acknowledge that the way in which handwriting is taught has also changed with the steady uptake of different teaching methods in the 20th and 21st centuries. These new teaching methods have aimed at quickness and clarity over eye-candy. However they have achieved quite the opposite of that with often people having chicken scratch handwriting. In addition, one must also consider the fact that although these teaching methods changed, illegible handwriting has only be truly evident in the past 30 years - ironically the same time personal computers hit big. Hence forth one can logically deduce that bad handwriting has been exacerbated and compounded through the generations as a result of computers degrading the handwriting of the soon-to-be teachers and hence as the aphorism goes - bad habits never die. Therefore it is the amalgamation of both computers and different teaching methods that resulted in the death of neat handwriting; but in truth the usage of computers has corrupted the teaching methods via negatively influencing the teachers and hence computers are solely the issue with illegible handwriting. In terms of structure, yes one can argue that the usage of texting and Internet chat has negatively influenced the vocabulary and structure of people's written works - however, the majority of the work done on computers is properly structured (as is this response) and holds professional purpose.