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Mightier than the pen

 

A revised, and revised again, view of the word processor. by William Swanson

 

Five years ago the editors of this magazine asked me to let them set up a word processor in my office. «Learn to work the thing», they urged me, «then write an article about your experience.» I said no. I

said that I was scarcely able to deal with, much less master, a four-slot toaster. As far as writing devices go, I said, I had neither the desire nor the need to abandon my beloved Hermes 3000 manual typewriter. Send your word-processing machine off to one of your high-tech specialists, I commanded the editors, no doubt a

trifle disdainfully.

Then, one evening at a friend's house, I sat down at the keyboard of his brand-new Kaypro computer and actually processed a couple dozen lines of words. I swiftly replaced a middling verb with a muscular

one, effortlessly rearranged and streamlined the structureof a clunky sentence, neatly corrected a spelling error and tidied up my punctuation, and, finally, after all the revisions, called forth and produced, in only a matter of seconds, a lovely, letter-perfect «manuscript.»

           3) I have done my own work on a word processor for almost a year now. I am only too happy, when

20 asked,usually by a word processing colleague, to discuss this or that feature of my machine. To the more general question of how do I write, I respond perhaps a trifle disdainfully, «With an IBM PC, of course. Not that it should matter.»

      4) To a more critical question I would have more difficulty responding. I could not tell you with absolute certainty, that the quality of my work is the better for my great technological leap forward. I think it is, I think it virtually has to be, but I wouldn't want to swear to it. My editors have been non commital on the

quality question, though they've been very generous in their praise of the neatness of my word-processed manuscripts.

 5) As writing tools go, the word processor is, quite honestly, a wonder. In the field of writing and

35 publishing, it has to be the most important technological breakthrough since Gutenberg began moving his type around. The magic of the word processor lies not in this or that individual function, but in its overall enabling capability. Writers generally sit down while they work, and there is not a lot of heavy lifting — but

40 serious writing is nonetheless a wearying business. Simply put, the word processor reduces the drudgery of converting the writer's thoughts to words on paper. It allows him to get down — first on a screen, and only later, if and when he wishes, on paper — great quantities of words, with unprecedented speed and convenience.

     6) This does not, unfortunately, make him a better writer, or insure his readers an unprecedented torrent of unforgettable prose. It may insure them only a torrent. Like any enabling technology, the word processor can result in wretched excess. Some skeptics go so far as to suggest that a word processor allows the words

to flow faster than the thoughts those words are supposed to represent. Here, for example, is the usually concise Russell Baker describing his personal «processing process» in The New York Times:

7)«It is so easy, not to mention so much fun — listen folks, I have just switched right here at the start

 of this very paragraph you are reading — right there I switched from the old typewriter (talk about goose — quill pen days!) to my word processor, which is now clicking away so quietly and causing me so little effort

that I don't think I'll ever want to stop this sentence because — well, why should you want to stop a sentence when you're really well launched into the thing — the sentence, I mean — and it's so easy just to keep her rolling right along and never stop since, anyhow, once you do stop, you are going to have to start another sentence, right? — which means coming up with another idea».

     8) But if the word processor can unleash a mindless (if sometimes hilarious) prolixity, it can also enable the writer to accomplish more in the time he is allowed, and, if he is so inclined, to be infinitely more

particular about his languge. It enables him, with an almost supernatural physical ease, to revise, revise, and revise the work in front of him — revision being, today as in Goethe's day, both the essence and the bane of the serious writer's trade.

There are other claims made for the word processor that may or may not be borne out by fact. The

word processor, some of its boosters argue, actually enhances by virtue of its much discussed «user-friendliness,» the writer's motivation. The word processor, some of its champions insist, reduces the «terror» of writing, since a blank CRT screen is, to some, less terrorizing than a blank sheet of foolscap I'm not.

convinced of all that. Regardless how friendly the tool, writing exacts no small amount of terror from a lot of us: And besides, the point is that the word processor gives the writer the chance not to make his work easier, but to make it better.

From: TWA Ambassador, February 1986

From: The New York Review of Books

 


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