The Scots Law Student

Straight across the internet you will find no shortage of people who want to tell you how to write your blog. A lot of them look at it from a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or copywriting perspective which is fine if you like that sort of thing. It’s not the only way to write, though.

I came across this link as an advert on Digg.com. On a personal note I dislike their advertising. It’s designed to fit into the socially recommended links so it’s a wee bit like someone pretending to be your friend to sell you stuff. I think the “no one knows you’re a dog” problem is bad enough online without advertisers taking advantage of it.

The post says:

“What works best for me is to see if a post has an ordered (1, 2, 3) or bulleted (*) list; if it does, it’s probably worth reading.”

In fact, it says, writing which isn’t set out in a list is probably written by someone called Kevin. I-am-not-making-this-up. He also suggests that you should highlight the keywords using HTML formatting.

I find it a little sad. That’s not nearly all that makes a piece of writing good. All it suggests is that the writer knows their SEO principles. Good typesetting is an important thing in writing but it’s just the cherry on top.

Some kind of structure is a desperately important thing for your writing to have and picking out the “important words” in bold does mean that people can skim your writing like nobody’s business. It’s just a bit sad that this guy thinks you must put it in a list for people to read your stuff. I’m yet to see a newspaper, essay, novel, or so on that was set out as a list of bullet points with the keywords in bold despite these often being excellent pieces of writing.

You shouldn’t make your writing needlessly obscure but please don’t write for the lowest common denominator either. It hurts us all.

I am now the owner of a 1972 Olympia Sg3. This is a gigantic, desk bound typewriter hailing from West Germany. It’s good for sitting at and looking at the words you have typed after the fact but feels exactly like typing in the way that anyone would today associate with a computer, with one notable exception. The backspace key exists on my typewriter but it is not the same as a backspace key on a computer – the carriage moves back one space but the letter does. NOT go away. The general way that I correct my text on this (I’m using the typewriter)is backspacing through the mistake and replacing them with hard typed x’s which serve to delete the mark and then to take a half line gap upwards and retype the particular word.

It produces text which, although completely legible, is also immutable, your notes are written exactly as typed them. My particular model won’t exceed 10pt but that is more than enough for my purposes. The real power of the typewriter, as I’m finding it, is genuinely being able to take the typed page out of the typewriter and to edit it and, then once you start to redraft to actually type the entire page out again, thereby exposing yourself to the words and arguments you’re put¬ting across without being able to cheat (as I often do) and reusing the typing of earlier versions. The fact that each draft is completely new is a useful step to forcing me to actually think about what I’m trying to submit.

It’s possibly a little hopeful to see this as a panacea as far as producing quality work but it is a tool which a) I’m going to want to use and b) one which by nature of its very construction a device that will require each draft to be thoughtfully produced, instead of simply recycled. I hope that will produce a better finished product than simply copy and pasting into different shapes.

Few older technologies get quite as much notice and affection as the humble typewriter and it’s become my latest Ebay browsing fascination, that is if I can see an opportunity to pick up a cheap model I think I’m going to dip my toe in these retro waters.

Believe it or not I have thought this through, my work needs to be submitted online and if I could not use the typewriter for this I’m basically looking for a roughly 10kg desk ornament but I have a quick, effective scanner with a copy of speedy and accurate OCR software installed. Therefore, if I feed my scanner typewritten notes I can extract the text from them with no problem whatsoever and great speed. OCR would immediately choke if I made it try to read my handwriting (I’d offer to be a CAPTCHA but I’d be too effective) but if I try to make it read evenly spaced lines of typescript it will run through the documents with aplomb. This means that I get to benefit from the alleged (I have never tried it for myself) advantages of the typewriter – the distraction free writing environment – I’m really interested in this on because I’m very, very easily distracted by computers, frankly because they are my favourite toy, so I often sit down to work on real work and end up on a highly informative but irrelevant quest on Google or by a new email that’s come in – and the increased ability to draft without editing as I go along. I’ve always found it very hard to redraft my work, to be honest and I suspect that any incentive to change this would be fantastic because it’s a recognised beneficial process for writers and the extra coordination that it requires is a positive step in writing carefully and better.  I also think it might come in handy as a quick and easy way to set a typed address onto an envelop for posting.

And if all else fails? Well, maybe I am in the market for a 10kg desk ornament. I’ll keep it with me as long as I can because it’ll make me look very arty and boho and alternative and I’ll just have to learn to live with that. At the very least it’s something I can bring on holiday and use to scare the bejeezus out of the baggage scale.