KatLondon wrote:

I printed my drafts out and literally cut and taped the paragraphs into the order I wanted, abefore moving it all around on the screen. 

I remember "inventing" physical cut-and-paste to write a term paper, and very proud I was of myself at finding such a nefarious way of cheating. Must have been early '70's. I typed the paper stream of consciousness, whatever popped into my head, snipped it up and put it back together in some logical order by taping it to fresh sheets of paper, then retyped the result. Interesting questions that come to mind now are (1) why did I consider that this was cheating(!) and (2) why don't I call it "cut and tape"? The origin of the phrase must be old... prior to ubiquitous clear tape... and maybe even predates typing. You could do the same to a written manuscript.

KatLondon wrote:

It never occurred to me to do it another way, and THAT is what I now want to get back to. 

Interestingly though this technique allowed me to throw together a paper in record time - so that clearly I invented it under force of necessity - I never reused it until I began doing it on computers. Since my personal writing does not rise beyond persiflage (sorry, Persiflage), I mainly just edit paragraphs, but I have used the full blown technique at work for longer documents. Off-topic for typing, but at least the first anecdote involved a typewriter.

OB METAHISTORICAL COMMENT: technology never evolves monotonically toward advantage, but when a new technique becomes dominant by general practical superiority some things the old technology did better will at least be temporarily lost. I am thinking that cutting up paragraphs and turning them into physically movable objects must activate some circuitry in our manually focused brains not tapped by doing something similar on a screen, and achieve different results.

It's like what's the average lifetime of a car. Some people get a new one every few years, others drive old bangers, and look at Cuba - through self-repair they've managed to keep their 1950s cars going for half a century. My other half is currently driving 1991 Mercedes...

Hey, thanks Repartee. I learned a new word today: persiflage (not sure why you wanted it capitalized) And here all along I've been calling my writing "garbage". This gives it a much fancier flavor, yes indeed!

KatLondon wrote:

It's like what's the average lifetime of a car. Some people get a new one every few years, others drive old bangers.

Or cell phones. The planned obsolescence point seems to be about two years, between two and three you are seriously thinking about getting a new phone even if you are not the have-to-have-the-latest type, but some people keep them far longer.

KatLondon wrote:

and look at Cuba - through self-repair they've managed to keep their 1950s cars going for half a century.

More common in ships and planes. 30-35 years is the expected lifetime of a naval vessel, and B-52's have been older than the pilots that fly them for so long that it no longer even seems like a clever thing to say. And yet they are still flying. "Planned obsolescence" no longer seems like a cutting edge observation either, and yet it remains a fact of business. But cherishing and continuing to use 85 year old working typewriters strikes a blow for maintenance!