A few weeks ago the Guardian newspaper published an extract from Philip Hensher’s book The Lost Art Of Handwriting (and Why It Still Matters). It’s a fascinating read, and the irony of the piece’s presentation was rather delicious: An article lamenting the slow disappearance of penmanship at the hand of the computer, published in a printed newspaper that represents an industry sitting beneath the same technological Damoclean sword.

It ignited a debate in our virtual offices, and among our Twitter followers–so many of whom, when questioned, couldn’t remember the last time they’d put pen to paper to write anything more sizable than a quick Post-it note or a signature. A recent survey by Docmail in the U.K. found the average person hadn’t handwritten anything for 41 days and a third hadn’t written in six months.

But Parker, one of the world’s best-known brands in pen making, sees it differently. Elizabeth Ubell, the vice president of marketing at Newell Rubbermaid, which bought Parker and Waterman in 1999, told Fast Company that she doesn’t see handwriting as a declining art. Instead Parker’s “latest market reports are still showing it as a growing category in almost all regions of the world. People still use fine writing instruments around the world.” You can argue that Parker has to believe that, since its core business is making pens of all sorts, even while it’s a brand whose heritage is most intertwined with fountain pens (according to Ubell, Parker is globally the “number one premium/luxury writing brand”).

And Parker is in fact innovating its way through the current change in writing styles. Earlier this year it introduced a whole new innovative paradigm in pen design, that’s based on what Parker sees as the four classics: Fountain pen, ball point, roller ball, and the mechanical pencil. Parker’s even called it the fifth generation of pen. It combines the metallic, flexible tip of a fountain pen (responsible for giving writers a very definite sensation of contact with paper) and the refills of a roller ball pen–a move that’s very much aimed at improving convenience for a generation of people who are used to instant-on iDevices. And also who’ve probably never been ink-spattered by a leaky cartridge in a fountain pen.

Ubell explained that this is the product of Parker’s business planning process, which focuses on “excellence in performance, design, and innovation at the point of decision and we are continuously innovating against all these dimensions while remaining true to our brand promise and heritage.” Translation: Remember the past, but do whatever it takes to move forward and develop new technologies. She continues to say that innovation is “not viewed exclusively around product but around all category relevant elements of the marketing mix.” That means Parker is also adopting technological solutions that influence, as Ubell notes, “how we partner with our customers to how we engage consumers from digital marketing to product innovation.”

And it turns out that the death of handwriting is an oft-made lament, as this 2006 article points out. But there’s good anecdotal evidence that students’ handwriting is much less legible now than before, and data that suggests British children (at least) are failing more in their handwriting assignments than in other subjects like reading and math.