Writing system

“ Typewriting is carried on by habits. The habit of writing most naturally formed is that known as the sight system. Recently, attempts have been successfully made to enable the operators to form the habit of writing by touch rather than by sight. ”

“ IV. The number and variety of the copies secure attention, and prevent the pupils copying their own writing, as in books with single head-lines.
V. The system insures the progress of the learner, and greatly lightens the labours of the teacher. ”

“ It is an interesting fact that the Vai have a system of writing which has been invented by themselves; it is widely known among them and they are fond of writing letters and making records in their own script. ”

“ Writing is a system of conventional forms with established meanings, corresponding to and reflecting the structure of the spoken language; some picture elements whose value as such has remained either wholly or partly present in the minds of those who use them, are not inconsistent with genuine writing; when present they add vividness to the writing, and emphasize its ideographic character. A combination of picture forms only, may be used as means of communication to a certain degree, but can never constitute writing ”

“ I must have my paper and pen or pencil before me to set my thoughts flowing in such form that they can be written continuously. There have been lawyers who could think out their whole argument in connected order without a single note. There are authors,—and I think there are many,—who can compose and finish off a poem or a story without writing a word of it until, when the proper time comes, they copy what they carry in their heads. ”

“ It is one thing to write a letter, manuscript, or business plan with a pencil, quite another to do the same on a typewriter, and even more different to use a word processor for these purposes, or to rely on the Internet. The cognitive implications of the experience-what kinds of processes take place in the mind-cause the output to be different in each case. No medium is passive. In each medium, previous experiences and patterns of interaction are accumulated. The more interaction there is to a process, and sometimes to a collaborative effort, the more the condition of writing itself changes. ”

“ As a Manual of Letter-Writing and Composition, is far superior to the common "Letter-Writers." It teaches the inexperienced how to write Business Letters, Family Letters, Friendly Letters, Love Letters, Notes and Cards, and Newspaper Articles, and how to Correct Proof for the Press. ”

“ They were not generally made by the men who did the copying or writing of the text, but by a class of specially trained men who were called illuminators.
15Clearly the shortcomings of the manuscript books are very evident. First and foremost must be placed the absolute impossibility of making by the laborious process of writing out by hand anything like the number of books required to meet the demand. Either some new method of making books must be devised or the new learning and the new civilization were to be strangled at birth. ”

“ To understand the principles on which an expert in handwriting bases his work, consider for a moment how a person's style of writing is developed. He begins by copying the forms set for him by a teacher. ”

“ To take a commonplace example—can it be held that the difference between using a typewriter and "writing by hand" is purely and simply a matter of degree—that the machine serves the same purpose and accomplishes the same kind of result as the pen, but simply does the work more easily, rapidly, and neatly? ”

“ When the student has come to have a clear idea of what is to be sought in composition, he naturally goes on to inquire by what means a writer can gain the ends desired. It has been shown that there are certain principles which govern the mechanical structure of language, and also that there are as well principles which have to do with the quality of what is written. ”

“ In the statute under consideration, the word 'writing' is used as one of a group or class of words, book, pamphlet, picture, paper, writing, print,-each of which is ordinarily and prima facie understood to be a publication ”

“ It supplements the formal treatises on good English, grammar, sentence structure, paragraphing, manuscript arrangement, punctuation, spelling, essay writing, and letter writing, and renders the general teaching of such books effective in detail and in practice. Students are taught not only that certain practices violate good usage, but also are shown exactly how to correct their errors and conform to established practice. ”

“ When an entire document or page is forged, the ornamentation, flourishes, or the capitals at its head will often be seen to be out of keeping, either with its nature or with the supposed author's habits in similar cases. In a writing all must agree, place, day, year, handwriting, superscription or heading, signature, and material carrying the writing, especially paper, both as to constitution and color and ink. ”

“ The students have to take notes of lectures, and, in order to secure the largest amount of information, they write so rapidly that their manuscript can hardly be legible. Through this practice, rapid and almost formless writing becomes habitual. ”

“ As the proportion borne by things reprinted from the ‘Standard’ will seem small to those who know during how many years I have been permitted to contribute to its columns the expression of opinion on many of those arts which have been both my delight and my laborious study, let me just simply say that every line that I have written in that paper has been written with a single eye to the needs of the occasion and the moment, and the more expressly any writing is designed for a particular need and place, the less, I think, is it adapted for transplanting. ”

“ The pupil is then taught to make lines in a certain direction, and to copy characters so large that they have no resemblance to writing at all; and to care particularly about up-strokes and down-strokes, and all manner of minutia?, which, if they are of any value at all, will soon come of themselves. So strong, in spite of centuries of experience, is the belief in this method, that machines for controlling the fingers while writing have repeatedly been invented; and the author of a book before us, a professional, is inclined to tie them up in some fashion with ribbon. ”

“ It is impossible that they should [212] show themselves at once, for technical study will cramp and constrain you until you have gained some real facility in writing in accordance with the canons of art. That is true of all arts, of course. No tool can be used properly without practice. ”

“ A parallel case to Automatic Writing is the action of the speech centres, resulting in the production of all kinds of utterances from trance speeches in the ordinary language of the speaker to mere unintelligible babblings. ”

“ The most important use of letters is in the making of books, and the foundations of typography and book decoration may be mastered—as they were laid—by the planning, writing, and illuminating of MSS. in book form. Of this a modern printer (see also p. 368) says ”

“ Again, the foundation of scientific Academies has given facilities both for communicating and for correcting new discoveries; the art of printing provides a means for diffusing them; and, finally, the habit of writing in the vulgar tongue makes them accessible. ”

“ If the mere manual labour of writing was so great, we cannot wonder that all superfluous particles or other words that could be dispensed with were ruthlessly cut away. So it came about that all the old classical works were composed in the tersest of language, as remote as can be imagined from the speech of the people. ”

“ There are also bound books, with copies at the top of the pages that were really written with some show of muscular movement and afterward photo-engraved, but the copy-book principles are involved in the publication of such books—principles which preclude the teaching of good writing through their use. The mental attitude of pupils who see before them the immaculate page upon which they must make reproductions, as nearly facsimile as possible of the copies at the top, is wholly unfavorable to the process. ”

“ We now come to the mental phenomena, of which the following are the chief:
1. Automatic Writing.—The medium writes involuntarily; often matter which he is not thinking about, does not expect, and does not like. Occasionally definite and correct information is given of facts of which the medium has not, nor ever had, any knowledge. Sometimes future events are accurately predicted. The writing takes place either by the hand or 48through a planchette. Often the handwriting changes. Sometimes it is written backwards; sometimes in languages the medium does not understand. ”

“ The ideal of the great novel was an ideal of a monument in literacy. Despite the technology for writing, such as word processing machines and the hypertext programs for interactive, collaborative authoring, writing the great novel is not only impossible, but irrelevant. ”

“ That they be not onely taught to Write according to our Common Way, but also to Write Swiftly and in Reall Characters, as likewise the dextrous use of the Instruments for Writing many Copies of the same thing at once. ”

“ To discuss these subjects adequately would require more space than a handbook on reporting and editing permits.
It is assumed throughout this book that the student of journalism is familiar with the elementary principles of grammar and rhetoric, and has had sufficient training in composition to be able to express ideas in simple, correct English. Faults in such rudimentary matters as grammar, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization are not considered at all. No attention is given to diction or questions of good usage. ”

“ The minimum is to read well, to spell properly, to write with both hands, to copy simple objects, so that one learns picture writing just as alphabet writing. This skill is quite different from artistic gifts. ”

“ PREFACE An attempt has been made in this book to trace briefly the story of the book from the earliest attempts made by mankind to convey a message by marks on some substance down to the invention of movable types. The development of writing is rapidly traced from the earliest known pictures and sign marks to the present day. The discussion covers the subjects of writing materials and how they were made; the evolution of the book; the conditions of manufacture, distribution, and preservation of books before printing, and the conditions out of which sprang the invention of typographic printing. ”

“ After the student has had a good amount of practice in writing in this manner he will begin to feel his way and be able to mass and arrange the letters and words properly. It is only when he becomes master over the pen, so that he can write quickly and easily, that he is able to mass the letters into words with facility. ”

“ In the early part of the fifteenth century, when writing was the only agency used for making books, the demand for playing cards and sacred pictures necessitated a method of reproduction more rapid than the old ”

“ It was stated many times that writing and the settlement of human beings are related. So are writing and the exchange of goods, as well as what will become known as labor division. While the use of verbal language makes possible the differentiation of human praxis, the use of written language requires the division between physical and non-physical work. Writing requires skills, such as those needed for using a stylus to engrave in wax or clay, quill on parchment, later the art of calligraphy. It implies knowledge of language and of its rules of grammar and spelling. ”

“ Suppose half-a-dozen works going through the press at the same time, embracing three styles of orthography, and four or five styles in cap­i­tal­i­za­tion; one style which requires turned commas at the beginning only, of a quotation, and one which requires them at the beginning of every line of an extract,—you see at once that a proof-reader, so beset, must needs have his wits about him. ”

“ An understanding adaptation of means to ends is impossible unless the writer has a definite purpose fixed in mind from the first moment of execution. And in writing on technique it is necessary to assume the natural order of the total artistic or creative process, whether the actual practice of any writer coincides with it or not. Therefore the body of conceptive technique first calls for treatment. Strict executive technique and also the technique of construction—which is both conceptive and executive—will be taken up after dealing with the matter of story types and the matter of plot. ”

“ MECHANICAL AND ARTIFICIAL DEVICES OF LITERATURE The universal divisions of modern literary productions into books, chapters, sections, paragraphs, sentences, and members of sentences, together with capitalization and the system of punctuation, are so important and so enthralled with modern composition and rhetoric that we could hardly appreciate or understand literature apart from them. ”

“ Though Sloping Writing be encompassed with well-intentioned and carefully thought out regulations as to the position of the copy-book and the posture in writing which must be maintained, it will never be possible to attain a certainty or even any probability that the children will remember these precepts when writing without supervision. ”

“ The days of leisure are passed, and a busier age demands quicker methods. In answer to this demand the writing-machines have appeared. These marvelous labor-saving inventions have already wrought a revolution in our commercial life, and they bid fair to put an end to letter-writing in all branches of commerce and in clerical professions generally. Yet, as long as the world lasts letter writing will hold an important place; indeed, it will always be a part of our best life. ”

“ There should be no margin at the right. The device of 297 writing incomplete lines, or of making each sentence a paragraph, is sometimes adopted by young persons in the hope of deceiving the teacher as to the length of the composition. Remember that pages do not count for literature any more than yards of hideous advertising boards count as art. ”