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I taught Gore Vidal how to use a computer in 1995. After a week worth of trying to use a PowerBook Duo, he went back to pen and paper. When asked how to improve my writing, he said use a pen and transcribe your favorite author. That I would eventually find the rhythm and style and make it my own.
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Better yet, take actual notes abd give yourself space to think: https://www.dsebastien.net/2022-02-17-how-to-capture-book-no...
Eep, I guess it depends on what kind of learner you are. For me, the notes being in the book, and the book being somewhere on my shelf spatially encodes it into my mind. Offloading things into a centralized store according to a system not only causes me anxiety but it doesn’t have the same spatial kick.
That’s definitely a design principle that’s been long since lost.
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I've thought about how hard it must be to be a lefty fountain pen user. What is one to do? Learn to write without resting your hand on the page?
If you read the linked post, he covers this
Do most left-handers learn to hold their pen/pencil like that? If not I imagine it would be quite a transition to adapt to as all the motions are rotated - the portion of the stroke previously done by moving fingers in and out would instead be done by moving side to side, and vice-versa.
Edit: Or from trying it, I guess you could just write as normal and end up with everything italic/slanted.
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No, my argument is that it's totally obnoxious to lend or resell a book that you've written in, and it's a shallow way of taking notes to begin with. It is precisely what Socrates warned us about.
I'd say this is a problem with the seller's communication, not the use of the book. If the seller didn't specify that the book was marked up, I agree with your sentiment. The act of writing in a book and selling it isn't the issue, but setting false expectations to whoever you're selling it to is. > and it's a shallow way of taking notes to begin with Are we really going to speak down to how someone uses a bunch of p…
It is very frustrating the number of people who say "it's their property, they can do whatever they want" and similar comments, all of which are missing the point. Yes. It is legal to write on your own property. I know thay. It's my opinion that they're doing something that is guaranteed to harm overall human knowledge: whoever purchases/inherits/digitzes the book has to deal with it. And it almost certainly harms their own understanding of the book.
I've always been pretty skeptical of the data which says handwriting is better for learning than typing. Yes, handwriting causes more brain activity, but just because your brain is doing more does not mean it's doing the right thing! For example, if I asked you to code FizzBuzz while riding a unicycle, I'm pretty sure you would show more brain activity than if you were just sitting at a desk. This does not mean it's…
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No, my argument is that it's totally obnoxious to lend or resell a book that you've written in, and it's a shallow way of taking notes to begin with. It is precisely what Socrates warned us about.
it's totally obnoxious to buy a copy of a book with notes in it and complain about those notes. 2¢
I taught Gore Vidal how to use a computer in 1995. After a week worth of trying to use a PowerBook Duo, he went back to pen and paper. When asked how to improve my writing, he said use a pen and transcribe your favorite author. That I would eventually find the rhythm and style and make it my own.
I find his dismissal of iPad writing to be unconvincing. He talks about how we have calibrated our writing utensils over centuries to involve the proper amount of friction, and how that knowledge goes out the window when you're writing on an iPad. That may be true, but it's not like you can't just re-acclimate to the experience of writing on an iPad. Most people don't handwrite much, period, so if they start handwrit…
iPad is terrible for hand-writing. It's (relatively) heavy, so you can't hold it and write on it. It's slippery, and the friction between the pen and stylus is bad. The pen itself also produces gigantic strokes.
It's also that I'll often not have my entire notepad on the desk, I might not have room, might only have the top corner on it, or just quickly jotting something down. An ipad, that's too precarious and unstable, no a notepad, it just works.
I often have like an inch of the notepad hanging off of my desk, when my arm is across it, the notepad just flexes and it's fine, if I do that to an ipad, it's cutting into my arm.
It's not just the ipad, I've also tried a remarkable and a kindle scribe and they all suffer from the same issue. Notepads are just more flexible, both literally and figuratively.