What we see on a page is not as it has always been
Sometimes, when I’m dictating into voice recognition software, I forget to include some punctuation – earlier today, for example, I was putting in commas, periods, and parentheses and dashes just fine, but for about a page I forgot to note where any of the paragraphs began or ended. The result was simply a great blob of text.
This put me in mind of a couple of things.
First, it struck me that there are no paragraphs in spoken tales. And second, it reminded me that in the beginning, there was no such thing as a paragraph.
I speak here of the evolution of European printing. In the Middle Ages, before the printing press was invented, the monks of the abbeys did make books, binding separate leaves together between covers. Each single folio was rather expensive – under some conditions, each page was made from a single lamb’s skin. The complete edition of the Bible, running a few hundred pages, would have necessitated slaughtering an entire herd of baby lambs. Not only that, but each page was written on only one side as I understand it.
The ‘real estate’ of the manuscript page was, therefore, going for an extremely high premium. Every square centimeter was like gold. The monks in the scriptorium therefore, did their best to ‘pack’ every page with as many words as they could – while keeping their strokes large enough so as to be legible.
Every page therefore was a complete ‘block’ of text. There was no punctuation, no paragraphs, no indentation. Instead, whole sections of text would be demarcated by an illuminated majiscule.
Later inventions included not only the printing press, but also paper, whose manufacturing secret Marco Polo brought back from China. In the centuries that have followed since then, paper has become cheaper and cheaper to the point where mass-market books could be sold for an extraordinarily small sum of money. Even though these are cheap, they still take advantage of several innovations in the art of printing – or rather, the art of laying out the page.
Today, we are accustomed to seeing:
- sentences separated by periods
- and marked off with capital letters at their beginning
- other innovations include parenthetical asides
- and notes set off by dashes.
- Paragraphs are indented
- or (in the case of HTML markup) additional leading between the lines.
- Dialogue is set off by quotation marks.
- Sections are either numbered
- or set off by blank lines
- or, when sections end at the bottom of the page,
- with a blank line and a series of asterisks
- or some other ornamental mark.
And of course, we also have lists:
- definition lists,
- bullet lists,
- enumerated lists.
We set off larger sections of texts with chapters: each chapter begins on a separate page, usually under a header with additional whitespace at the top of the page. We also have even larger sections called ‘parts’ or ‘books’ each of which contains more than one chapter.
All these assist us readers to ‘decode and decipher’ the page very rapidly and easily. Could you imagine a newspaper without columns, headlines, paragraphs, or punctuation? A nightmare to read.
(You can get an idea of what this might be like by looking at the bottom of this blog post, or I take the entire posting and, while keeping sentence punctuation intact, eliminate all paragraph-level distinctions.)
Now, as to that first point...
An oral storyteller has none of this at his command. He doesn’t have capital letters, small letters, periods, semicolons, dashes, page breaks, bullet lists, blank lines, whitespace, or any of the other devices that printers and publishers have developed over the centuries to make it so easy for us to read printed text.
Instead, the oral storyteller has other arrows in his quiver. He has tone of voice. He can inject pauses in between words, phrases, that vary considerably in length – a longer pause will indicate not only a more dramatic point in the story, but also a break in organization of thought that is larger than a paragraph.
A paragraph ends with a longer pause than that which ends a sentence. A section ends with an even longer pause, a chapter uses a very very long pause, and the section of the story which is larger than a chapter will probably be told at another sitting.
The oral storyteller has other tools he can work with as well.
If he is sitting down, he can stand. If he is standing up, he can sit. He can gesture with his arms. He can turn his head or his whole body. He can look away from his audience, and he can look back at his audience. He can take a pull at his pipe. (George Burns used to remark that the cigars that he smoked on stage were his best friends for controlling the timing of his comedy routines.)
The oral storyteller can walk about, and do other physical actions that really take him into the realm of the stage actor or performer. He can whisper – declaim – shout – speak slyly and suggestively – boastfully – angrily – laughingly.
But if we are interested mainly in the sound of the storyteller’s voice alone, we must set aside all gesture and physical actions, and instead think only of the voice: both in terms of the timing of phrases as well as the delivery of words and lines.
If I’m going to dictate my stories aloud the way Raymond Chandler did, my stories will tend to suit oral storytelling better than written storytelling – both for myself and is the author and four my readers/listeners.
If on the other hand, I were to write my tales out on a keyboard or longhand, the result would suit better the written model both for myself and my readers. When read aloud, those tales might not sound very good, or make much sense, or be as effective as they would be if I had composed them from the beginning orally.
(Composed by dictation Saturday 20 September 2008)
Sometimes, when I’m dictating into voice recognition software, I forget to include some punctuation – earlier today, for example, I was putting in commas, periods, and parentheses and dashes just fine, but for about a page I forgot to note where any of the paragraphs began or ended. The result was simply a great blob of text. This put me in mind of a couple of things. First, it struck me that there are no paragraphs in spoken tales. And second, it reminded me that in the beginning, there was no such thing as a paragraph. I speak here of the evolution of European printing. In the Middle Ages, before the printing press was invented, the monks of the abbeys did make books, binding separate leaves together between covers. Each single folio was rather expensive – under some conditions, each page was made from a single lamb’s skin. The complete edition of the Bible, running a few hundred pages, would have necessitated slaughtering an entire herd of baby lambs. Not only that, but each page was written on only one side as I understand it. The ‘real estate’ of the manuscript page was, therefore, going for an extremely high premium. Every square centimeter was like gold. The monks in the scriptorium therefore, did their best to ‘pack’ every page with as many words as they could – while keeping their strokes large enough so as to be legible. Every page therefore was a complete ‘block’ of text. There was no punctuation, no paragraphs, no indentation. Instead, whole sections of text would be demarcated by an illuminated majiscule. Later inventions included not only the printing press, but also paper, whose manufacturing secret Marco Polo brought back from China. In the centuries that have followed since then, paper has become cheaper and cheaper to the point where mass-market books could be sold for an extraordinarily small sum of money. Even though these are cheap, they still take advantage of several innovations in the art of printing – or rather, the art of laying out the page. Today, we are accustomed to seeing sentences separated by periods, and marked off with capital letters at their beginning; other innovations include parenthetical asides and notes set off by dashes. Paragraphs are indented or (in the case of HTML markup) additional leading between the lines. Dialogue is set off by quotation marks. Sections are either numbered or set off by blank lines or, when sections and at the bottom of the page, with a blank line and a series of asterisks or some other ornamental mark. And of course, we also have lists: definition lists, bullet lists, enumerated lists. We set off larger sections of texts with chapters: each chapter begins on a separate page, usually under a header with additional whitespace at the top of the page. We also have even larger sections called ‘parts’ or ‘books’ each of which contains more than one chapter. All these assist us readers to ‘decode and decipher’ the page very rapidly and easily. Could you imagine a newspaper without columns, headlines, paragraphs, or punctuation? A nightmare to read. (You can get an idea of what this might be like by looking at the bottom of this blog post, or I take the entire posting and, while keeping sentence punctuation intact, eliminate all paragraph-level distinctions.) Now, as to that first point... An oral storyteller has none of this at his command. He doesn’t have capital letters, small letters, periods, semicolons, dashes, page breaks, bullet lists, blank lines, whitespace, or any of the other devices that printers and publishers have developed over the centuries to make it so easy for us to read printed text. Instead, the oral storyteller has other arrows in his quiver. He has tone of voice. He can inject pauses in between words, phrases, that vary considerably in length – a longer pause will indicate not only a more dramatic point in the story, but also a break in organization of thought that is larger than a paragraph. A paragraph ends with a longer pause than that which ends a sentence. A section ends with an even longer pause, a chapter uses a very very long pause, and the section of the story which is larger than a chapter will probably be told at another sitting. The oral storyteller has other tools he can work with as well. If he is sitting down, he can stand. If he is standing up, he can sit. He can gesture with his arms. He can turn his head or his whole body. He can look away from his audience, and he can look back at his audience. He can take a pull at his pipe. (George Burns used to remark that the cigars that he smoked on stage were his best friends for controlling the timing of his comedy routines.) The oral storyteller can walk about, and do other physical actions that really take him into the realm of the stage actor or performer. He can whisper – declaim – shout – speak slyly and suggestively – boastfully – angrily – laughingly. But if we are interested mainly in the sound of the storyteller’s voice alone, we must set aside all gesture and physical actions, and instead think only of the voice: both in terms of the timing of phrases as well as the delivery of words and lines. If I’m going to dictate my stories aloud the way Raymond Chandler did, my stories will tend to suit oral storytelling better than written storytelling – both for myself and is the author and four my readers/listeners. If on the other hand, I were to write my tales out on a keyboard or longhand, the result would suit better the written model both for myself and my readers. When read aloud, those tales might not sound very good, or make much sense, or be as effective as they would be if I had composed them from the beginning orally.
