Yes, because it takes time to draw a letter correctly. It takes no time to write something down.
When I try to explain the difference to people its like this:
Writing, or Handwriting is automatic, whether print or cursive script – you don’t think about each character, you write it down. Any number of factors can influence what it looks like, personal style, how fast thoughts are coming to you, sleepy or tired - its as varied as speech.
Lettering is not automatic - it is deliberate. When you are Lettering you are drawing, or more properly drafting an idealized letter form - you are not writing words, you are drafting letters, each one an individual drawing of an idealized letter.
Architects writing initially shows the evidence of that disciplined lettering as it invades your handwriting. Over time it crosses back into Lettering with more stylized letter forms. However you must understand that this is still Lettering, as there is still an idealized letter form that Architects follow. There is a collective effort in a drafting room to unify the notations so the drawings do not telegraph the work of many hands. And so you have an informally standardized letter style of which the Ching books are a very good representation of.
Early in digital typography and CAD there were several fonts that also attempted to capture this architectural writing. Adobe made Tecton, there was a digitization of Ching’s printing as well, and even Charles Schultz’s Peanuts comic text was turned into a digital font at one point.
