Syllabic Script to E Readers

"A book that can throw you across the room is a book to be treated with some respect." notes Robert Bringhurst in Why There Are Pages And Why We Need To Turn Them.

This article takes you through the history of script. Story telling was once syllabic script on ancient Egyptian walls to our now more progressive E Readers.

I agree with some key points Bringhurst brings to the table. I love the smell of an old book. A book handed down or found on a library shelve or maybe in a re-sale store. When you pick up an old book a story unfolds, capturing you. Has it ever crossed your mind, how many others have read that story from that very book? Well, I have and it brings a comfort to me. It even opens the doors to my imagination even more.

There are many forms of script in our culture. You can hear a "story" or a "passage" from your Minister, Preacher, or Priest every Sunday morning or you can pick up your laptop and browse the World Wide Web.

Bringhurst seems saddened by the way technology has taken us from a story book to an electronic device. He states that electronic books are still in their state of infancy and he believes that they have no future. Well, he was wrong with this statement. In 2008 he had never heard of the I Pad. Script and our way of communicating to one another evolves as we do as a society. Texting on cell phones was just beginning in 2008. Bringhurst would definitely have something to write about on how our younger generation has abbreviated half the English language. I do feel the author may have contradicted his self. What’s good for technology may be good for the environment. In his own words, "forests disappeared into these disposable books." I am sure the forest is thankful for the E-Reader.

Works Cited

Bringhurst, Robert. “Why There Are Pages and Why They Must Turn.” World Literature Today (2008): EBSCO. University of Oklahoma 24 Feb. 2011

Editorial note: Adapted from Robert Bringhurst, The Surface of Meaning: Books and Book Design in Canada, to be published in fall 2008 by CCSP Press (the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing Press) at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver.