Khalid Bueshi - Orality and Literacy
On page 121, Ong makes an interesting point about the difference between print and written words. While print is all about the placing of words onto the page, writing is moving from what he refers to as the sound world into the visual space. Print has a massive amount of control to it considering the letters and words themselves are all machine made. There is this huge amount of group process to print as many different editors, authors, and various other people get involved in the process of the typing. The idea of print encapsulating a space being a huge factor makes me think of how often times in poetry, empty space is used to convey certain things. Recently for another course I had to read some of Gary Snyder's poems and I could not help but notice that the poems with the smallest word counts had much more space between lines, creating a sense of breath between lines and a more massive experience. Print is about the dominating of the space, its no longer just about sound and words. The printed word is its own sort of beast worthy of being distinguished between the other forms of speech seeing as how it creates its own new means of conveying messages with composition of the page.
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