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45 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
50 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
55 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
60 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».
65 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
70 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.
8)
There are other claims made for the word processor that may or may not be borne out by fact. The
75 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.
80 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
GETTING TO KNOW YOUR SYNCHRONIZED INPUT SHAFT
by Noel Perrin
(A Review of The 1990 Chevrolet S-10 Owner's Manual and The 1990 Buick LeSabre Owner's Manual)
Two new books from the General Motors Corporation suggest that the tradition of owner's manuals
supplied by car manufacturers is undergoing profound change. One book is confusing, hard to read, cheaply
5
produced on poor-quality paper — just what a manual ought to be. But the other looks good and reads better.
It often — no, usually — gives directions that can be followed by an ordinary untrained person. At a time
when literacy is plunging and many college freshmen are having to be taught to write a simple
10 declarative sentence, any evidence
of clarity in writing is cause for celebration. Furthermore, both G.M.
manuals show a rudimentary sense of social responsibility, which is almost as revolutionary a change as the
use of clear prose. Considering that both would also easily make bestseller lists if bookstores handled them
15 (each has more than 100,000 copies in print), they deserve a review.
«1990 Chevrolet S-10 Owner's Manual» mostly upholds the old tradition. Its confusingly numbered
pages (typical page number: 2D-6) attempt to cover not one but three different Chevrolet models: the Blazer
20 and two varieties of light truck.This makes for difficulties. Suppose you get a flat tire in your Blazer or your
regular pickup or your extended-cab pickup. In each the jack is stored in a different place, so that it can
require a thorough study of pages 3-9 through 3-12 just to find out where to look for it (and how to extract
25 it when found). By a piece of inspired bad planning, these four pages of instructions for finding your jack
come after the directions for changing a tire. The owner, already sullen because of the flat, may be tempted
to hurl the jack, when it finally is found, through the optional sliding rear window. That, of course, would
30 be a mistake. Windows are complicated enough in the manual already. If you own a Blazer, you waste your
time when you read the instructions for swingout windows — they are to be found only in the extended-cab
truck. Roughly a third of the manual will be mere distraction for any given owner. That leaves two-thirds
35 that still applies. By no means will all of this be of much help to the average person, however. Suppose you