Computers and writing

This James Fallows piece from the July 1982 edition of The Atlantic (linked to by Andrew Sullivan) got me thinking about how my own prose style has been shaped by the machine I use to write. Now you'd think that a computer ought to speed up the writing process. For me it's the opposite: I write slower because of MS Word -- much, much slower. While I type faster than I write, it takes me longer to churn out a piece of work on the computer than I'd take if I simply wrote it out by hand. And the word-processed article would be much, much better. This, I realise, isn't only because I'm something of a perfectionist when it comes to my own writing (and frequently, other people's as well), but because Word allows me to indulge my perfectionist habits without having to waste pages and pages of paper.

I am far less finicky when it comes to handwritten work, because I can't bear cancelling and editing my own prose and seeing a page full of cancellations and arrows. That said, my handwritten stuff isn't bad either -- although it tends to be full of semicolons -- because of the many, many exams that I've sat for, and because paying attention to one's typewritten work has spillover effects. I guess being a sensitive (to language) literary type helps as well.

Right, back to next week's work then.
Posted by kungfuzi at 6:18 pm |