[=SDC=] Totally Official Teaser # 4093
Jerry Friedman
---------------------------------------
Please consider this fragment composed by an American high-school
student:
"I have always considered the reading of _Cry, the Beloved Country_
to be an excellent choice for 10th grade English classes, and this
question deserves not only my praise, but also my full attention. The
main theme of _Cry, the Beloved Country_, which is one of my personal
favorites, is an age-old, some would even say a universal, theme which
calls to mind many universal themes belonging to the same category of
deeper meaning, but there is not enough space here to explore all of
these implications and it would be an injustice to the universality of
these themes to even attempt such a foolhardy act.
Nonetheless, I have always considered the theme of _Cry, the Beloved
Country_, which I eagerly recommend to anyone interested in universal
themes, to be deeply profound in substance and broadly universal in its
application to modern life, especially in the area of deeper meaning.
This universality and deeper meaning becomes abundantly evident in the
early chapters (and heavily reinforced in the final chapters) of _Cry,
the Beloved Country_ where it is clearly stated that TIME!"
What's going on here? What, if any, significance can be assigned to
the final word of this fragment? Please be precise!
--
Jerry Friedman
Franke
Jerry Friedman wrote:
The student was taking a timed essay exam on the novel he so
frequently mentions. He hasn't read the novel or, if he has, he
hasn't understood it. He is trying to bullshit his teacher by using
lots of book-review English phrases and code words -- meaning
that he is obviously from a heavily Conservative Republican
part of the country -- until, after having repeated himself sufficiently
often that even he recognizes the vacuity of his prose, he finally
decides to indicate that he is going to tell the reader what the
theme of the novel is when he is saved by the bell.
Martin Ambuhl
The writer -- who has obviously neither read the book nor gleaned any
information about it from instructors or classmates -- has run out of
bullshit. In an attempt to hide this, he claims that the reason he has
been cut short (Thank God!) is that the proctor has declared the time
for writing the exam has elapsed.
--
Carius est nobis flagellari p doctrina quam nescire.
[leofre ys us beon beswungen for lare thaenne hit ne cunnan.]
- MS Cotton Tiberius A, xv, fol. 60v (British Library)
Joe Manfre
The student (=UK "pupil") is writing a timed essay on a book he
didn't bother reading, so he's faking his way through it. The
TIME at the end means the time is up for writing the essay, so
that's all he's got to say about that.
JM
Tony Cooper
>
> The student (=UK "pupil") is writing a timed essay on a book he
> didn't bother reading, so he's faking his way through it. The
> TIME at the end means the time is up for writing the essay, so
> that's all he's got to say about that.
I've never seen a student put "TIME" at the end of a blue
book exercise, but I'll go along with Joe's guess 100%.
I've read "Cry the Beloved Country" (Which was made into a
musical "Lost in the Stars" by the way), but it's been years
ago. I've also written essays about topics that I hadn't
studied and books that I'd only skimmed. The technique of
bringing in pretentious, but meaningless, phrases is a
test-taking tradition that has been a successful ploy for
years. This high school student is precocious. Usually,
one is in college before one learns to say a great deal
without saying anything.
Given more time, he probably would have gone into Paton's
ability to develop characters and images. Done right, he
could do this without every using an example of either.
--
Tony Cooper aka: tony_co...@yahoo.com
Provider of Jots and Tittles
Bob Stahl
>Totally Official Summer Doldrums Competition Teaser # 4093
>---------------------------------------
>Please consider this fragment composed by an American
>high-school student:
>What's going on here? What, if any, significance can be
>assigned to the final word of this fragment? Please be
>precise!
The student had insufficient TIME to plagiarize.
http://www.time.com/time/europe/me/magazine/0,9868,185825,00.html
---
Bob Stahl
Richard Fontana
>Joe Manfre wrote:
>>
>> The student (=UK "pupil") is writing a timed essay on a book he
>> didn't bother reading, so he's faking his way through it. The
>> TIME at the end means the time is up for writing the essay, so
>> that's all he's got to say about that.
>
>I've never seen a student put "TIME" at the end of a blue
>book exercise,
Whoa! Did you have occasion to look closely at what students wrote in
examination books?
BTW why assume that this involved a "blue book"? Joe's analysis implies
that this is a pre-university student. I never saw any bluebooks till I
got to college, but others may have had different experiences.
Regarding the "TIME" thing, it seems unfamiliar to me, but I think I might
have written "(Ran out of time)" on certain exams.
Jerry Friedman
> Jerry Friedman wrote:
>
> > Totally Official Summer Doldrums Competition Teaser # 4093
> > ---------------------------------------
> >
> > Please consider this fragment composed by an American high-school
> > student:
> >
> > "I have always considered the reading of _Cry, the Beloved Country_
> > to be an excellent choice for 10th grade English classes, and this
> > This universality and deeper meaning becomes abundantly evident in the
> > early chapters (and heavily reinforced in the final chapters) of _Cry,
> > the Beloved Country_ where it is clearly stated that TIME!"
> >
> > What's going on here? What, if any, significance can be assigned to
> > the final word of this fragment? Please be precise!
>
> The student was taking a timed essay exam on the novel he so
> frequently mentions. He hasn't read the novel or, if he has, he
> hasn't understood it. He is trying to bullshit his teacher by using
> lots of book-review English phrases and code words -- meaning
> that he is obviously from a heavily Conservative Republican
> part of the country -- until, after having repeated himself sufficiently
> often that even he recognizes the vacuity of his prose, he finally
> decides to indicate that he is going to tell the reader what the
> theme of the novel is when he is saved by the bell.
A+! If I trust Google's time-stamps, this is the first correct
answer. Thank you, and thanks to all who provided precise, concise,
and cogent responses.
Anyone else's English teacher write "YHTAW" (your highway taxes at
work) next to this sort of writing?
Expect another teaser in about a month!
--
Jerry Friedman
Joe Manfre
> A+! If I trust Google's time-stamps,
*snicker*
> this is the first correct answer.
*snicker*
JM
Tony Cooper
>
> On Fri, 11 Jan 2002 10:36:52 -0500 Tony Cooper wrote:
> >Joe Manfre wrote:
> >>
> >> The student (=UK "pupil") is writing a timed essay on a book he
> >> didn't bother reading, so he's faking his way through it. The
> >> TIME at the end means the time is up for writing the essay, so
> >> that's all he's got to say about that.
> >
> >I've never seen a student put "TIME" at the end of a blue
> >book exercise,
>
> Whoa! Did you have occasion to look closely at what students wrote in
> examination books?
Yes. I have personally examined each and every blue book
submitted by every student in the United States between 1963
and (September) 2001. I missed a few during the hurricane
of 1973, but I have been assured they were duplicates of
work earlier submitted by older brothers and sisters that
took the class.
>
> BTW why assume that this involved a "blue book"? Joe's analysis implies
> that this is a pre-university student. I never saw any bluebooks till I
> got to college, but others may have had different experiences.
It was stated by Jerry Friedman - not Joe - that this was a
high school student's essay.
You are probably thinking of the standard university blue
book handed out for examinations and essays. I was clearly
thinking about a blue, spiral-bound notebook with lined
pages and three-hole punched. The particular blue notebook
that I was thinking of has a drawing of a Weasel on
rollerskates on the cover since that is the mascot of the
high school.
>
> Regarding the "TIME" thing, it seems unfamiliar to me, but I think I might
> have written "(Ran out of time)" on certain exams.
TIME, this case, is an acronym for "The Inventive Muse
Exited" as is traditional at this particular high school.
Do I have to explain *everything*?
Richard Fontana
>Do I have to explain *everything*?
That reminds me of that excellent recent commercial (= BrE "[television]
advert") -- is it for Visa? -- which features the Washington Redskins'
Hoggettes. At the end of the commercial one of them, who'd been featured
earlier in the commercial trying on and purchasing women's clothing, says
to his colleague "Do I look fat in this dress?", and the other one says
"Yes!".
So let me repeat your question for you, Coop:
>Do I have to explain *everything*?
Yes!
Maria Conlon
Tony Cooper wrote
[...]
>You are probably thinking of the standard university blue
>book handed out for examinations and essays. I was clearly
>thinking about a blue, spiral-bound notebook with lined
>pages and three-hole punched.
You are confusing me. At the time when you were "pre-university,"
were most spiral notebooks blue? Three-hole punched? I seem to
recall mostly brown spiral notebooks, and if hole-punched at all,
they were two-hole punched.
Loose-leaf binders (also called notebooks by some) in the
mid-to-late 1950's generally had two "rings," but three-ring binders
were coming in. Anything three-hole punched would not fit in a
two-ring binder, and two-hole punched paper or notebooks would not
fit in a three-ring binder. Thus, we had five-hole punched paper to
bridge the gap until everyone was up to speed with three rings.
(Colored paper, too -- light blue, pastel pink, minty green, and the
ususal [vanilla] white. I don't think the boys used the colored
paper.)
The essays we had to write were on loose-leaf paper. The spiral
notebooks were generally just for notes -- the pages had that ragged
edge when removed from the notebook, and that didn't look good. We
never handed in a whole notebook.
What I'm saying pertains to my own area; how other school districts
did things, I don't know.
By the way, my loose-leaf binder (a new one each year!) was usually
blue, sort of a cloth-finish thing. Very common. Anything too
different was not too cool. Some people drew pictures on the front
and some just printed their names. "Dividers" were essential, as
were reinforcements.
While I'm thinking of those days and books that weren't read (per
the SDC question), I am reminded of a book report I turned in (7th
grade) which the teacher praised to the whole class. She said my
report was a good example to follow, and that I had obviously read
the book.
I have never felt so ashamed. But I wasn't ashamed enough to tell
the truth. I accepted the A, and figured it made up for some lesser
grades along the way that should have been higher.
To this day, I have never read that book -- and for the same reason
I didn't read it in the first place. It seemed an exceedingly
"young" book for my tastes, as was evident with just a quick
skim-through. Why it was on the reading list is beyond me.
>TIME, this case, is an acronym for "The Inventive Muse
>Exited" as is traditional at this particular high school.
Interesting. (In high school, we stopped right where we were when
time was
>Do I have to explain *everything*?
Sometimes. This may not be one of those times, though. ;-)
Maria (Tootsie)
Tony Cooper
>
> Tony Cooper wrote
>
> [...]
> >You are probably thinking of the standard university blue
> >book handed out for examinations and essays. I was clearly
> >thinking about a blue, spiral-bound notebook with lined
> >pages and three-hole punched.
>
> You are confusing me.
That is often my intent. Not to confuse you, Maria, but
more a shotgun effort to confuse anyone within range.
At the time when you were "pre-university,"
> were most spiral notebooks blue?
Look, I was reading every essay handed in by every high
school student. Does it sound like I had time to check
notebook cover colors?
Three-hole punched? I seem to
> recall mostly brown spiral notebooks, and if hole-punched at all,
> they were two-hole punched.
And, some were no hole punched. There was the top spiral
style with the Gregg shorthand symbols imprinted on the
back. The shorthand symbols later gave way to a list of
commonly misspelled words.
> Loose-leaf binders (also called notebooks by some) in the
> mid-to-late 1950's generally had two "rings," but three-ring binders
> were coming in. Anything three-hole punched would not fit in a
> two-ring binder, and two-hole punched paper or notebooks would not
> fit in a three-ring binder. Thus, we had five-hole punched paper to
> bridge the gap until everyone was up to speed with three rings.
It's a wonder no one in your high school totally lost it and
sprayed the cafeteria with machine gun fire. All we worried
about was acne.
>
> The essays we had to write were on loose-leaf paper. The spiral
> notebooks were generally just for notes -- the pages had that ragged
> edge when removed from the notebook, and that didn't look good. We
> never handed in a whole notebook.
It was permissible to turn in in-class assignments written
on ripped out paper from spiral notebooks. If we finished
early (which I always did), the remaining minutes of the
class were spent picking off the little jagged parts and
neatening up the paper.
The little jagged bits were then discarded on the floor to
unneaten it up.
Richard Fontana
>Maria Conlon wrote:
>>
>> Tony Cooper wrote
>>
>> [...]
>> >You are probably thinking of the standard university blue
>> >book handed out for examinations and essays. I was clearly
>> >thinking about a blue, spiral-bound notebook with lined
>> >pages and three-hole punched.
>>
>> You are confusing me.
> Three-hole punched? I seem to
>> recall mostly brown spiral notebooks, and if hole-punched at all,
>> they were two-hole punched.
>
>And, some were no hole punched. There was the top spiral
>style with the Gregg shorthand symbols imprinted on the
>back. The shorthand symbols later gave way to a list of
>commonly misspelled words.
Whoa! Those aren't "spiral notebooks".
Those were (and are) called "steno pads" ("steno notebook" seems
possible but less proper) in my dialect. (Though I don't know steno.) My
sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Glass, required us to buy them; we used them for
writing down homework assignments. I've made use of them occasionally
since then. I don't think of them as "spiral notebooks". They're not
notebooks proper; they're too small. They're "pads".
At least since the 1990s they've had conventional-notebook-sized
top-spiral "notebooks", but these too I think of as "pads" rather than as
"notebooks" even though they are functionally not very different from true
notebooks. I think I'd call those "spiral-bound pads". So the key thing
that distinguishes a "pad" from a "notebook" seems to be the binding (top
or side), which of course has implications for how the thing is opened up
and so forth.
Google:
"steno pad" 2060
"steno notebook" 547
Richard Fontana
>Loose-leaf binders (also called notebooks by some) in the
>mid-to-late 1950's generally had two "rings," but three-ring binders
>were coming in.
In my dialect they're "looseleaf notebooks" provided they're used as
notebooks. If they're empty, say, they can be called "binders" or
"looseleaf binders". "Binders" can refer to other paper-binding-devices
too. Three-ring-binders were a standard requirement when I was in
elementary school from third grade on. In first and I think second grade
we used those black-and-white-marble-design-covered "composition
books".
Last week I bought an unruled composition book -- I'd never seen
anything like it before. I haven't written in it yet. It has the
traditional "Class Program" form on the inside front cover. On the inside
back cover it has the traditional multiplication table and (for all those
budding little Gene Nygaards out there) metric conversion tables for
"length", "capacity" and "weight". But below all that is a set of
"Grammar Rules"! Hkpr Walker will be happy to know that there are eight
parts of speech. There's a detailed explanation about how "Some verbs
need helpers": for example, "I be/you be" is incorrect (!) and "I am/you
are" is correct! There's a useful note explaining the use of "its" and
"it's", "your" and "you're". Here's something Tony might want to keep in
mind:
* Which word do I use?
Lay or Lie?
To "lay" is to place an object. To "lie" is to recline.
(It goes on to explain "affect" and "effect".) Then below that is a set
of rules for punctuation. R.J. Valentine may be happy to know that "[a]
comma is used to indicate a pause within a sentence", among other things.
One thing it says is that names of TV programs should be in quotation
marks and not underlined (the counterpart to italics). I suppose that may
be conventional, but I don't agree with it.
> Anything three-hole punched would not fit in a
>two-ring binder, and two-hole punched paper or notebooks would not
>fit in a three-ring binder. Thus, we had five-hole punched paper to
>bridge the gap until everyone was up to speed with three rings.
Ah! I remember five-hole punched paper! That was standard for the
longest time.
>The essays we had to write were on loose-leaf paper. The spiral
>notebooks were generally just for notes -- the pages had that ragged
>edge when removed from the notebook, and that didn't look good. We
>never handed in a whole notebook.
In elementary school and secondary school we generally submitted written
assignments (reports, papers, essays) handwritten (in print, or at least I
printed) on looseleaf paper, stapled, except that English essays were by
custom just folded in half. In secondary school we weren't required to
type term papers except in one or two classes, I think; even then it might
have just been a strong encouragement rather than a requirement. A small
number of kids, typically male white ones from higher socioeconomic
backgrounds, composed and printed written submissions using a computer.
>By the way, my loose-leaf binder (a new one each year!) was usually
>blue, sort of a cloth-finish thing. Very common.
That was also the standard design when I was in elementary school, at
least from third through sixth grades. I think on the inside there was
the usual sort of Gene Nygaard type stuff which no one paid any attention
to. There were other sorts of looseleafs out there, used in businesses
and so forth, but they weren't marketed towards schoolchildren. I
remember I used a black sort of glossy binder for my fourth grade Tree
Book. It must have been a spare binder we had at home.
> Anything too
>different was not too cool. Some people drew pictures on the front
>and some just printed their names. "Dividers" were essential, as
>were reinforcements.
We were required to buy reinforcements in elementary school (again, from
third grade on). I found them pretty useless and I still do. Much better
was the expensive pre-reinforced looseleaf binder paper. Dividers were
necessary, of course. The subjects included: "math" (= BrE
"arithmetic"), "language arts", "social studies", "science", and probably
some other stuff. I can't remember whether language arts included
spelling and vocabulary, but you'd think it would have. I think I called
dividers "sections".
Secondary school was a transitional period for most kids, with a tendency
to move gradually away from the rigid use of looseleafs and towards
notebook heterodoxicalism; this continued in college, but in college
students would use spiral notebooks by default. The silliest thing was
how in the early secondary school years some kids could be seen with
emblems of their favorite musical beat combos on the covers of their
looseleaf notebooks. Generally by eighth or ninth grade most kids grew out
of that. This was, I think, in fact a defiantly socially conservative
practice, as evidenced by the particular sorts of beat combos that would
typically be referenced (either classical beat combos from an earlier era
or contemporary beat combos associated with relatively provincial
subcultures with relatively direct stylistic connections to particular
classical beat combos).
Nowadays I think they actually sell commercial looseleaf notebooks for
kids pre-designed with emblems of particular popular beat combos. It's
really pathetic.
Tony Cooper
>
> >And, some were no hole punched. There was the top spiral
> >style with the Gregg shorthand symbols imprinted on the
> >back. The shorthand symbols later gave way to a list of
> >commonly misspelled words.
>
> Whoa! Those aren't "spiral notebooks".
> Those were (and are) called "steno pads" ("steno notebook" seems
> possible but less proper) in my dialect. (Though I don't know steno.) My
> sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Glass, required us to buy them; we used them for
> writing down homework assignments. I've made use of them occasionally
> since then. I don't think of them as "spiral notebooks". They're not
> notebooks proper; they're too small. They're "pads".
Richard, you do live in your own little world. The "steno
pads" are sheets of ruled paper on which notes are taken.
The sheets are held together with a spiral length of wire.
Hence, a spiral notebook. There is no definitive size for a
notebook proper. A pad is a quantity of paper held together
with a glue.
I preferred them since the spiral on the other notebooks
runs down the left side and interferes with my
left-handedness. Left handed (right spiraled) notebooks
do/did exist, but were difficult to find.
So the key thing
> that distinguishes a "pad" from a "notebook" seems to be the binding (top
> or side), which of course has implications for how the thing is opened up
> and so forth.
No. The key is spiral binding vs glue.
> Google:
> "steno pad" 2060
> "steno notebook" 547
I don't believe in Google. It is a false religion.
Richard Fontana
>Richard Fontana wrote:
>>
>> >And, some were no hole punched. There was the top spiral
>> >style with the Gregg shorthand symbols imprinted on the
>> >back. The shorthand symbols later gave way to a list of
>> >commonly misspelled words.
>>
>> Whoa! Those aren't "spiral notebooks".
>> Those were (and are) called "steno pads" ("steno notebook" seems
>> possible but less proper) in my dialect. (Though I don't know steno.) My
>> sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Glass, required us to buy them; we used them for
>> writing down homework assignments. I've made use of them occasionally
>> since then. I don't think of them as "spiral notebooks". They're not
>> notebooks proper; they're too small. They're "pads".
>
>Richard, you do live in your own little world. The "steno
>pads" are sheets of ruled paper on which notes are taken.
>The sheets are held together with a spiral length of wire.
>Hence, a spiral notebook. There is no definitive size for a
>notebook proper.
True. Some notebooks are quite small. But steno pads do not have
sufficient notebook essence.
> A pad is a quantity of paper held together
>with a glue.
That's one type of pad, yes.
What about "memo pads"? These, to me, are those little
spiral-at-the-top things, a quarter of the size of a steno pad.
Jitze Couperus
<tony_co...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>I preferred them since the spiral on the other notebooks
>runs down the left side and interferes with my
>left-handedness. Left handed (right spiraled) notebooks
>do/did exist, but were difficult to find.
>
I know what you mean. I was at the stationery store
just the other day looking for refills for my pocket calendar
and a notebook with right-hand spiral. They used to
have two spots on their shelves, one for conventional
left-handed spiralled books, and another for right-handed
spiralled book. The books in the second pile were physically
identical to the ones in the first pile, except they were placed
on the shelf having been rotated 180 degrees (rotated in the X
plane or the Y plane - I forget which - but definately not
about the Z plane). The ones in the second pile cost a
little bit more to make up for having to stock them in the
face of so little demand.
Anyway - there I go in to my usual purveyor of fine
paper goods, prepared to purchase a notebook adapted
to my leftishness, and what do I find? Only one spot on
the shelf - for left-spiralled notebooks. The only kind they
carry. Sign of the times I call it. Sad.
Jitze
Joe Manfre
> Loose-leaf binders (also called notebooks by some) in the
> mid-to-late 1950's generally had two "rings," but three-ring binders
> were coming in. Anything three-hole punched would not fit in a
> two-ring binder, and two-hole punched paper or notebooks would not
> fit in a three-ring binder. Thus, we had five-hole punched paper to
> bridge the gap until everyone was up to speed with three rings.
Hey, we still had the five-hole punched paper when I was in school in
the 1980s and early '90s. Apparently that gap is still being minded,
even though everybody has three-ring binders now.
JM
Skitt
"Tony Cooper" <tony_co...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3C3FD561...@yahoo.com...
[...]
> The "steno
> pads" are sheets of ruled paper on which notes are taken.
> The sheets are held together with a spiral length of wire.
> Hence, a spiral notebook. There is no definitive size for a
> notebook proper. A pad is a quantity of paper held together
> with a glue.
>
> I preferred them since the spiral on the other notebooks
> runs down the left side and interferes with my
> left-handedness. Left handed (right spiraled) notebooks
> do/did exist, but were difficult to find.
I probably have not thought this through well enough, but wouldn't a
"regular" notebook, turned so that the spiral would be on the right side, be
just about the same as a "left-handed" notebook? Except for the printing on
the covers, of course.
--
Skitt (in SF Bay Area) http://www.geocities.com/opus731/
I speak English well -- I learn it from a book!
-- Manuel of "Fawlty Towers" (he's from Barcelona).
Skitt
"Richard Fontana" <rfon...@wesleyan.edu> wrote in message
news:slrna3vhrd....@localhost.localdomain...
> In elementary school and secondary school we generally submitted written
> assignments (reports, papers, essays) handwritten (in print, or at least I
> printed) on looseleaf paper, stapled, except that English essays were by
> custom just folded in half.
You had staplers?
We attached sheets of paper to each other by stacking them, then folding
under a small corner of them, and finally, making two short tears in the
folded area and folding back the little strip of paper between them. Try
this at home -- it works!
Richard Fontana
>
>"Richard Fontana" <rfon...@wesleyan.edu> wrote in message
>news:slrna3vhrd....@localhost.localdomain...
>
>> In elementary school and secondary school we generally submitted written
>> assignments (reports, papers, essays) handwritten (in print, or at least I
>> printed) on looseleaf paper, stapled, except that English essays were by
>> custom just folded in half.
>
>You had staplers?
>
>We attached sheets of paper to each other by stacking them, then folding
>under a small corner of them, and finally, making two short tears in the
>folded area and folding back the little strip of paper between them. Try
>this at home -- it works!
In fact I did that whenever I had to staple something at the last minute
and didn't have a stapler handy.
Maria Conlon
Skitt wrote in message ...
>I probably have not thought this through well enough, but wouldn't
a
>"regular" notebook, turned so that the spiral would be on the right
side, be
>just about the same as a "left-handed" notebook? Except for the
printing on
>the covers, of course.
The paper would be upside down. There's usually a blank space (no
lines) at the top of the sheet of paper -- for the header or
whatever. When you turn the spiral notebook around, that would now
be on the bottom.
And if the back of each page is lined all the way (no header space),
each sheet would be backwards as well.
I think. I haven't tried this at home yet.
Maria
Maria Conlon
Skitt wrote
>You had staplers?
>
>We attached sheets of paper to each other by stacking them, then
folding
>under a small corner of them, and finally, making two short tears
in the
>folded area and folding back the little strip of paper between
them. Try
>this at home -- it works!
Good description, Skitt. We used that "trick" in school, too. I
don't remember anyone having a stapler, with the possible exception
of the teacher. I can't recall paper clips being used by students in
class either, but ICBW. It's been a long time.
Maria
Bob Stahl
>Richard Fontana:
>>In elementary school and secondary school we generally submitted
>>written assignments (reports, papers, essays) handwritten (in
>>print, or at least I printed) on looseleaf paper, stapled,
>>except that English essays were by custom just folded in half.
>You had staplers?
>We attached sheets of paper to each other by stacking them, then
>folding under a small corner of them, and finally, making two
>short tears in the folded area and folding back the little strip
>of paper between them. Try this at home -- it works!
At my old grammar school (Star of the Sea) it would be finished
with a neatly printed "JMJ" at top-center (in cursive, if we were
confident enough). The paper provided at school was lined, but
almost like newsprint, so it tore easily -- I used a single tear
in the dog-eared corner, folding one side of the tear diagonally
to the front and one to the back, ending up with a little right-
isosceles-shaped triangular divot with the short sides orthogonal
to the sides of the sheets.
All this decorum went out the window in high school, though.
---
Bob Stahl
Jitze Couperus
Ah - but that's if you rotated the book around in one dimension -
specifically about the axis that would drill perpendicularly
through the middle of a page.
But if instead you rotate the book around the axis that
is parallel to the spiral binding (otherwise referred to
in lay terms as "start reading it backward from the last page")
then the extra blank space is still at the top.
(Just to show that consultants like me can be useful sometimes)
Jitze
Maria Conlon
Jitze Couperus wrote
>Maria Conlon wrote:
>>Skitt wrote
Okay, I see what you mean -- I think. If you just flipped the
notebook over onto it's front cover, you'd have the spiral to the
right.
If the back of the sheets of paper had the extra space at the top,
you'd be looking at it when you open the notebook. If the back of
the paper was fully lined, you'd have no extra white space at the
top -- but you would on the reverse.
The advantage of your way is that the covers would not be
upside-down. Yes? And the individual sheets would not be upside-down
either.
Thanks, Jitze, for your consultancy. But we know you were useful
before this. ;-)
Maria (Tootsie)
Tony Cooper
>
> "Tony Cooper" <tony_co...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:3C3FD561...@yahoo.com...
> [...]
> > The "steno
> > pads" are sheets of ruled paper on which notes are taken.
> > The sheets are held together with a spiral length of wire.
> > Hence, a spiral notebook. There is no definitive size for a
> > notebook proper. A pad is a quantity of paper held together
> > with a glue.
> >
> > I preferred them since the spiral on the other notebooks
> > runs down the left side and interferes with my
> > left-handedness. Left handed (right spiraled) notebooks
> > do/did exist, but were difficult to find.
>
> I probably have not thought this through well enough, but wouldn't a
> "regular" notebook, turned so that the spiral would be on the right side, be
> just about the same as a "left-handed" notebook? Except for the printing on
> the covers, of course.
While not an insurmountable problem, this puts the margin
line on the right. It's also possible to write on the backs
of the pages as if they were the front. All in all, I
prefer top spirals.
> Skitt (in SF Bay Area) http://www.geocities.com/opus731/
> I speak English well -- I learn it from a book!
> -- Manuel of "Fawlty Towers" (he's from Barcelona).
--
Jerry Friedman
> "Richard Fontana" <rfon...@wesleyan.edu> wrote in message
> news:slrna3vhrd....@localhost.localdomain...
>
> > In elementary school and secondary school we generally submitted written
> > assignments (reports, papers, essays) handwritten (in print, or at least I
> > printed) on looseleaf paper, stapled, except that English essays were by
> > custom just folded in half.
>
> You had staplers?
>
> We attached sheets of paper to each other by stacking them, then folding
> under a small corner of them, and finally, making two short tears in the
> folded area and folding back the little strip of paper between them. Try
> this at home -- it works!
I learned that one too. Now that I'm on the receiving end, I can
assure you that it works just long enough to get to the teacher's
office so he can staple the papers himself. One of the great
inventions of recent decades is the half-length stapler suitable for a
student's backpack.
--
Jerry Friedman