Typewriter vs. Pen

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB.

WHEN I declare my preference for the pen over the typewriter, the hustling business man of to-day will class me among the cranks who would abolish the railway in favor of the stagecoach. But I am no bigoted devotee of ancient ways. I have myself used the typewriter for thirteen years, and would not hesitate to give it a testimonial for services rendered. I can understand, too, that to the merchant or lawyer, with his immense correspondence, it has become a necessary laborsaving device. I do not dispute its usefulness as a commercial instrument; it is as a literary instrument that I believe its value to be commonly over-rated.

Let it be granted that in many cases the machine promotes legibility. There are persons of so vexatious a handwriting that the Golden Rule would prohibit them from putting their thoughts on paper without its assistance. Yet, in spite of the neglect of penmanship in modern schools, these are exceptions. The next advantage is speed. No doubt this counts for much in an office, or in the reporters’ room of a daily paper, but where it is a question of thoughtful composition, ancl not of the mere transcribing of shorthand notes, the supposed profit is illusory. You do not need a literary automobile for ideas that can scarcely keep up with a pedestrian pace. I have serious doubts about the ingenious conceptions that have been lost to the world because the author’s pen lagged behind his imagination.

Now for my grievances against this vaunted substitute for the old-fashioned pen. First, there is its weight, which restricts its use to the table or desk at home. Next, there is the fact that, being a machine, it is subject to all the ills that machinery is heir to. All makes of typewriter except one — see advertisements and circulars passim — have a tendency to get out of order, and the law of chances makes it unlikely that any individual among us will capture that elusive perfect creation. Now, as a rule, the professional author is not of a mechanical bent: neither natural aptitude nor training has given him the knack of dealing authoritatively with levers and pawls. And the derangements are sure to come at the most irritating moments, with disastrous effects upon the writer’s moods. There was no unhealthiness of tone about Oliver Wendell Holmes, yet he was careful to avoid all possible friction that might interrupt the act of composition. Many a fine thought, he said, had perished ere it was fairly born, being strangled in the birth by a hair on the nib of the pen or choked out of life by muddy ink. How much more apprehensive would he have been of the intellectual parts of an erratic type-bar or a refractory ribbon ! Then, the physical labor involved in the working of any make of machine must consume much more energy than the formation of letters by the pen. Possibly the average literary man would be better if he took more exercise, but indoor athletics of this sedentary type scarcely supply the lack. Further, although one may not be acutely conscious of the noise of the operation, the constant rattle cannot but add to the strain, and produce a certain nervous wear and tear.

A novice at typewriting commonly fears that the demand of the machine upon the attention must make original composition upon it impossible. Actually there is no difficulty here, for after a little practice he thinks as little about his keys as the bicyclist about his balance. The real drawback does not lie in any sense of the unnaturalness of the medium, but in the awkwardness of making corrections while writing. It is a clumsy task to alter a word, or change the order of clauses, or make interlineations while the paper is on the cylinder, so we decide to wait until the sheet comes off the machine. By the time we have reached the bottom of the page the projected amendment has slipped our memory. To some kinds of writing the forfeiture of this opportunity means a serious loss. Literary quality is still further impaired by a temptation to which the typewriter exposes those authors for whose work there is a great demand. In the facilities it supplies for the copying of dictated matter in a short time, and at a cheap rate, some professional writers have discerned an expedient for increasing their output. This inevitably means the production of poorer stuff. Mr. Herbert Spencer confessed not long ago that in re-reading his own books he found those which had been dictated inferior in style to the others. When a writer attempts to compose at shorthand speed he turns himself into an extempore speaker; he is insensibly drawn to cultivate the style of the man on the platform, and his article has the diffuseness of an harangue. It might be impressive with an audience, but it wearies the reader.

But suppose that the book or article is completed without the aid of either stenographer or machine, is it not desirable that the manuscript should then be translated into the clearer letterpress of the typewriter before coming into the printer’s hands ? Only in one case, —namely, when the author performs this translation himself. If his own handwriting is hard to read, better let him send his autograph sheets to the printer in all their tangle and uncouthness than have them “straightened out ” in a typewriting office. The average compositor, in a good house, is far more competent than the average girl typist to decipher difficult manuscript, and when his sagacity fails he has expert assistance close at hand to appeal to. The typist will misread a word and substitute another, which, though it goes a long way toward spoiling the sentence, does not make nonsense of it. The author, glancing hurriedly through the typewritten sheets and not comparing them minutely with the first draft, does not notice the difference, and the printer, of course, follows the copy that is set before him. If the autograph original had gone straight to the compositor’s case the mistake would not have been made. I could give instances within my own knowledge, illustrating the corruption of a text by the process just described. As I said at the outset, I am no unreasoning foe to the typewriter, for it has been a helper and friend to the journalist and author as well as to the man of business ; but at a time when there are so many other causes of slovenliness in the production of printed matter it will be a great pity if its indiscriminate use leads to a degeneration in literary style, or to a lowering of the standard of high-class printing.