Our writing instruments are also working on our thoughts Nietzsche wrote or more precisely typed the sentence on a Malinghanson writing ball a wondrous strange contraption that looks a little like a couche ball cast in brass and studded with typewriter keys.

Depressing a key plunged a lever with a typeface downward onto the paper clutched in the underbelly. It's well known that Nietzsche acquired the riding ball to compensate for his failing eyesight.

Working by touch, he used it to compose terse aphoristic phras exactly like that oft-quoted

pronouncement. Our writing instruments he suggested aren't just conveniences or

contrivances for the expression of ideas.

They actively shape the limits and expanse of what we have to say.

Not only do we write differently with a fountain pen than a crayon because they each feel different in our hands,

we write and think different kinds of things.

But what can writing tools and writing machines really tell us about writing.

Grammar Girl here, I'm Mignon Fog Fog Fog,

your friendly guide to the English language.

Stick around because after the first segment in which Matthew Kirshambam talks about how technology

changes the way we write, we'll talk about where we get the phrase goody two shoes.

Professor Kurschenbaum continues.

Having just published my book, Track Changes on the Literary History of Word Processing,

I found such questions were much on my mind.

Every interviewer I spoke with wanted to know how computers had changed literary style. Sometimes they meant style for an

individual author. Sometimes they seem to want me to pronounce upon the literary establishment,

whatever that is, in its entirety.

Style is at once something tangible built out of individual words and phrasings

with the academic specialization of stylometry devoted to its study and elusive associated

with the writer's voice or the unique feel of their prose. Doubtless this is why it fascinates us and why we're so concerned to know what computers

...