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Show TYPEWRITERS' LITERARY STYLE. Ease and Eipreastveneas Marred by Machine Ma-chine Writing, Boston Transcript. A young woman, who frankly confess s that she has literary ambitious, writes to the Listener to ask if, in his opinion, the use of tho typewriter has an injurious injuri-ous effect upon the writer's literary style,- The question can only answered inaquallied way. The Listener, after a good deal of observation, is quite sure that the typewriter is a bad thing for literary style, but of course he could not pretend that the literary stylo of every author who uses it is injuriously affected by writing with a machine. The diction of certain writers might even be improved im-proved by it. The Listener is convinced that as a general thiugthe typewriter produces a sort of staccato, disconnected, jerky style; to change the metaphor, a tlesh-less tlesh-less and bony slyle.and awkward withal. What is written with the machine seldom has tho ease and expressiveness that the same author's handwriting might have possessed. The special word by word planning that goes with it, be it ever of slight und even uncon-spicious, uncon-spicious, does get in the way of free expression; ex-pression; and there is a tendency iu the writer to think out his sentences less thoroughly, and even to uso stereotyped stereo-typed expressions, which fall in more conveniently with one's practice. In spite of all that may be said by operators about the process becoming "instinctive" after a time, it could not possibly become as completely instinctive instinct-ive as handwriting is unless everybody wrote from childhood with the tpye-writer tpye-writer and nothing but the typewriter? And even if everybody did it might require re-quire generations before the operation could become as instiuctive with civilized civ-ilized people as handwriting is. The Listener, is quite aware that many authors- who have taken to writing with tho machine think that their style has not been affected by it; but are they sure that their friends always agree with them? In one sense the typewriter is a blessing bless-ing to editors. It makes a page that is easily read, 'if the machine is operated at all well. Hut in another sense it is not a blessing tb them, for the reason that the Listener has stated it may produce poverty of expression where there might be something better, and it is always a matter of grief to an editor edi-tor to have anyone write not as well as he might. It seems, moreover, that the diffuse writers, whoso style in the process pro-cess (be it ever so rapid) of punching out one's words rather than writing, would seem to make more compact and expressive, are not helped at all by it, but. on tho contrary, are made still more diffuse. The ideal way of pro-paring pro-paring one's manuscripts for the press is to write them with a pen, revise them carefully, still with the pen, of course, aud then have then copied out in typewriter type-writer by an operator who is familiar with the hand-writing. |