You too can write like Jane Austen
Monday, 31 October, 2005
Jane Austen lived at an epoch without typewriters, when people were strictly trained to adopt a conventional style of handwriting. I strongly suspect that, left to herself, she would have done what graphologists—and font-makers—hate most, e.g. flattened out her words in a long wavy scrawl. Yet legibility had to be (and was indeed) a chief concern of hers. So she is rather closely following the Bickham model, as well as given to bettering, e.g. to rework on perusal those of her letters that don't look quite identifiable to her. This is best observed with the x, which tends from the first to be her most illegible letter, shrinking occasionally to a mere knot in the word, with a tiny sharp edge to it. Time and again, she has re-x-ed it, covering it with an unmistakable, spelling x.
(Source. Download font. Via Neil.)
Blinks:
A way of funding writing in the future: pitch and idea and get people to support it.
Place where you can hire play equipment for parties, etc.
How to recalibrate the home button on your iPhone.
Unsolicited manuscripts accepted by Pan Macmillan with certain conditions.
Thought Balloon is a group blog in which the writers tackle a new theme every week? month? with one-page scripts. This URL is for their Phonogram ones.
How to sew a zipper on a knitted garment.
Issues organised by tale.
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Hi Karen….
erm… has ben’s blog really disappeared?
Interesting, isn’t it? I always found I did better when I handwrote essays in high school, because I didn’t just “blab” on the way I can because I type so fast…
But writing my current essay (which I am in the process of procrastinating from whilst I comment on your blog) would be HORRENDOUS if I didn’t have a word processor. Hmmm…..
Ben’s doing something mysterious ... so mysterious, he hasn’t shared it with me.
ooh, sounds… mysterious…