I am not sure that not only my writing but writing in general was better when we had to work on typewriters. One had to put a lot more thought into what one put down or risk having to retype or cut and paste large portions of documents. I now routinely write scores of drafts, if a draft is a version with significant changes, whereas I used to to write two, three if you count the handwritten manuscript. My recent writing, if better, is so because I know more, not because it goes through more drafts, I think.
Btw when I was in grad school in England 30 years ago, everyone handwrote all assignments, generally with fountain pens. You might rent a typewriter for the final draft of a dissertation. My American GF and I rented huge ancient electric office typewriters and wrote everything on them. We were thought rather odd. I suppose they use computers for everything now like everyone here in the former colonies. Well, Illinois wasn't a former colony, but by extension.
Oh, and typewriting made for writing that was much more concise.
Sent from my iPad
On Nov 25, 2012, at 2:54 PM, "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> Jordan Hayes
>>
>>> Student plagiarism has improved, whatever else.
>
> How lame can you get.
>
>> But catching[clip]
>>
>> I wrote a letter to the ACT folks in 1982 telling them that keyboarding
>> was the future and that my essays would be less-than-my-best if I had
>> to write them down with a pen. I asked them if I could use a
>> (self-provided) typewriter during the test. They told me to go to
>> hell. I printed them and got into the schools of my choice.
>
> I know many could compose with a typewriter; I couldn't¸ though it got less
> difficult with a Selectric. But it occurs to me that the earlier claim by
> someone about the technology between the person & the text may be accurate:
> though it explains the superiority rather than the inferiority of the
> computer. Pencil/pen interferes much more between writer & wording than a
> computer does; writing on a computer can restore some of the closeness
> between thought and materialization (in text) than can hand-writing. The pen
> always was a pretty clumsy bit of technology; in _practice_ the computer is
> technology-free, for the technology is invisible: one's fingers move with
> one's thought and presto it's on the screen.
>
> And speech recognition is getting powerful enough so that 'writers' of the
> future will have the same advantages that speakers have now. Some
> 'illiterate' students I had would have been A-students had they been able to
> dictate their papers. The 'superiority' of some writing students was a
> function of their physical dexterity rather than of their better grasp of
> English. Their was less of a temporal gap between thought and fixation in
> text.
>
> Carrol
>
> (I am of course assuming touch-typing; I don't know about those who haven't
> learned the skill.)
>
>
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