Friday, October 14, 2011

Keyboards

Larger keyboards, notably the ones that are full-size, make typing a lot easier. I think that's a bad thing, because it tends to invite verbose vernacular that most readers don't want to wade through. This is not to suggest that I will endeavor to write from the keypad of my phone, but it does mean that I believe my writing improves considerably when I am forced to consider the words I use and the additional effort required to type them on a tiny keypad. When the process slows, time is taken to craft better imagery, smoother transitions, and more intricate details. For instance, the recent entry on Oreos (titled "You've got to be kidding") was written on my phone, but the more recent entry on my bad day turned good (titled "A day that started out rough") was written from a full-size keyboard, and subsequently reads more like a flow of thoughts than a story. The downside of typing from my phone is that doing so tends to produce more typographical errors.

What do you think? Does flow depend on effort, which might be related to keyboard size? Can you guess on which device was this written?

1 comment:

  1. The keyboard doesn't matter if a writer has the discipline to use the delete button as a structural tool. :)

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