Nicholas Howe [04/30/2005]

By Nicholas Howe

Attentive citizens will not have to be told that Wednesday was Secretarys Day, a salute that was invented in 1952 by the advertising giant Young & Rubicam as an advertisement to persuade young ladies to make careers in office work. Now the name of the distaff salute has been changed to Administrative Professionals Day, which puts it in step with the PC affection for high-sounding but value-free upgrades. It cant be long before its Persons of Digital Skills Day.They should have stayed with secretary. The name was taken from the Latin word for secret, which showed that secretaries were such honorable people that they could be trusted with matters of the highest confidentiality and importance. The problem was that almost everybody talked faster than almost anybody could write.Then came one of the most influential books ever written. It was called "La Operina," and it was written by a secretary about being a secretary. He was known as Arrighi and his book was published in 1524 with every page printed from woodcuts of astonishing beauty.Arrighi worked as a papal scribe and he had a specialty: he was assigned to the chancery, a sort of claims court where questions of equity were settled. Arrighi understood that this was important work and it should be preserved in permanent records, so he had to find a way of writing down the words of the arguments that was both fast and accurate. Medieval handwriting was extremely complicated, with all manner of curlicues and flourishes. This made it almost impossible for a forger to duplicate, but it also made it extremely slow; there was more art in it than utility.Arrighi solved this problem by inventing a script that formed almost every letter in the alphabet with two straight lines, one vertical and the other diagonal. There was also a slight turn at the end of each long stroke, as in b, f, y, and so on. This pattern grew out of two requirements of the day. One was the pen, which was a goose quill cut slantwise to a chisel-shaped end, and the other was the ink, which started to coagulate after only a few letters. The shape of the pen was perfect for making the two lines. The straight one was thick and the diagonal one was thin, which made them easy to read, and the slight turn at the end of the long strokes was a momentary pressure that kept the ink flowing. Inks became more fluid, but the slight turn was retained, and this time, utility became art. Its called a serif and it appears hundreds of times in this paragraph.Arrighis writing was extremely fast. The keeper of the secrets, that is, the secretary, only had to flex his thumb and fingers in straight lines and nudge his wrist sideways to make the diagonals. Arrighi called his court writing MANU BREVI or short hand, he called the pages briefs, and he carried them in what he called a briefcase. Now letters formed in Arrighis style are called italics, but we still use his other two phrases for legal writing. (The Greeks used their root word for narrow and called it stenography.)I had the same college roommate for several years, and we got a copy of "La Operina" and fountain pens made with the proper tip, and we learned Arrighis MANU BREVI. It made very classy-looking schoolwork, but it could not compete with a typewriter.Other ways to speed up handwriting appeared many centuries after Arrighis great work. The easiest is Speedwriting, which resembles regular writing with some of the letters left out. Gregg shorthand is more difficult and more accurate; it uses squiggles to represent sounds, for instance ough or ally. Gregg was usually taught in secretarial school, but secretaries almost always made their own adaptations and Gregg writers usually couldnt read another persons Gregg. In fact, many couldnt read their own Gregg when they looked at it in later years.Pitman shorthand is even more difficult and more accurate, and it was widely used by medical secretaries and others who had to take down very complicated words and have them exactly right. It also resists change. Pitman writers could read their own notes decades later and they could read any other Pitman writers notes, too. My mother used Pitman when she was working in medicine and, faithful to the tradition of the secret keeper, she used it for her list of Christmas presents, which led to my determined but unsuccessful efforts to learn Pitman shorthand.It also led to a summertime secret writer. When our house was at full stretch there could be 20 or more people staying with us. After supper, many of them would gather in what we called The Pine Room to play bridge and discuss other matters of similar importance. Sometimes Chip Wood would be there, too. He spent his summers in a log cabin behind the Fernalds house, and some evenings hed walk up the hill and join the throng in The Pine Room. My mother didnt play bridge, which made her something of an outcast, and Chip Wood talked faster than most people thought it was possible to talk and he hardly ever stopped, which made him something of a problem. My mother would sit in the next room where no one could see her and take down everything he said in Pitman. It was a strengthening exercise; after Chip Wood, her winter work could hold no terrors.My mother typed faster than anyone else Ive ever known. Then I showed her my first computer. I wrote a sentence and printed it out and I thought shed be fascinated, but she wasnt.I think I know why. Its the reason I wrote magazine articles in longhand before I put them in the computer. There had always been a connection between thought and letter, and it had always been tangible. (From the Latin tangere, to touch.) Its a kind of everyday magic: something starts behind the eyes and travels down the arm and fingers and appears as words. My mothers handwriting didnt change from her teenage years until she was in her nineties, which is probably why she wouldnt touch my computer, she literally wouldnt touch it. Arrighi would be pleased. So would Sir Isaac Pitman. Nicholas Howe is a writer from Jackson. E-mail him at nickhowe@ncia.net.