TEXT C Does using a word
processor affect a writer’s style The medium usually does do something to the
message after all, even if Marshall McLuhan’s claim that the medium simply is
the message has been heard and largely forgotten now. The question matters. Ray
Hammond, in his excellent guide The Writer and the Word Processor, predicts that
over half the professional writers in Britain and the USA will be using word
processors by the end of 1985. The best-known recruit is Len Deighton, from as
long ago as 1968, though most users have only started since the microcomputer
boom began in 1980. Ironically word processing is in some ways
psychologically more like writing in rough than typing, since it restores
fluidity and provisionality to the text. The typist’s dread of having to get out
the Tippex, the scissors and paste, or of redoing the whole thing if he has any
substantial second thoughts, can make him consistently choose the safer option
in his sentences, or let something stand which he knows to be unsatisfactory or
incomplete, out of weariness. In word processing the text is loosened up whilst
still retaining the advantage of looking formally finished. This
has, I think, two apparently contradictory effects~ The initial writing can
become excessively sloppy and careless, in the expectation that it will be
corrected later. That crucial first inspiration is never easy to recapture,
though, and therefore, on the other hand, the writing can become
over-deliberated, lacking in flow and spontaneity, since revision becomes a
larger part of composition. However, these are faults easier to detect in others
than in oneself. My own experience of the sheer difficulty of committing any
words at all to the page means I’m grateful for all the help I can
get. For most Writers, word processing quite rapidly comes to
feel like the ideal method (and can always be a second step after drafting on
paper if you prefer). Most of the writers interviewed by Hammond say it has
improved their style ("immensely", says Deighton). Seeing your own words on a
screen helps you to feel cool and detached about them. Thus it
is not just by freeing you from the labor of mechanical retyping that a word
processor can help you to write. One author (Terence Feely) claims it has
increased his output by 400%. Possibly the feeling of having a reactive machine,
which appears to do things, rather than just have things done with it, accounts
for this—your slave works hard and so do you. Are there no
drawbacks It costs a lot and takes time to learn "expect to lose weeks of
work", says Hammond, though days might be nearer the mark. Notoriously it is
possible to lose work altogether on a word processor, and this happens to
everybody at least once. The awareness that what you have written no longer
exists anywhere at all, is unbelievably enraging and baffling.
Will word processing generally raise the level of professional writing
then Does it make writers better as well as more productive Though all users
insist it has done so for them individually, this is hard to believe. But
reliance happens fast. As far as learning to use a word processor is concerned, the author of the passage feels that Hammond ______.
A.is understating the problem B.exaggerates one drawback C.is too skeptical about the advantages D.overestimates the danger of losing text