Re: OT: query regarding HTML

["Carl Distefano" cld@xxxxxxxx]

Reply to note from Myron Gochnauer  Sun, 26 Feb 2017
01:55:33 +0000

Myron,

>> ... At any rate, the common wisdom in the legal profession, at
>> least among my colleagues, is that you catch more errors by
>> proofreading from paper than from a screen.
>
> I agree with the common wisdom, though I do not understand why is
> would be correct.

I read or heard a long time ago, somewhere, that paper delivers more
bits of visual information to your eye/brain than the screen. This
seems intuitively true to me, but I couldn't find anything directly
corroborative when I looked earlier today.

A proofreading tactic that I've tried in the past is to change the
on-screen formatting of the document -- different font, type size,
margins, etc. -- anything that enables seeing the document in a
different light, so to speak. Text-to-speech readback falls into this
category, I think, and has the added advantage of engaging the sense of
hearing.

> ... discussion or lecture notes are *way* more effective for me if
> they are not only on paper but hand-written.

A friend of mine, a professor of English in the UK, writes all the
first drafts of his books and articles longhand, with a fountain pen. I
rediscovered fountain pens myself close to 20 years ago. When writer's
block descends, I retreat to a quiet place with my favorite pen filled
with my favorite ink, and (literally) sketch out my ideas on a piece of
foolscap. Highly recommended.

--
Carl Distefano
cld@xxxxxxxx