ABSTRACT
Many kinds of writing equipment will be considered in this chapter, beginning with the venerable instruments that we can hold in our hands, like medieval scribes, to make marks directly on paper—the pencil and pen. But the writing, printing, and publishing landscape is dominated today by the computer—a device hardly mentioned in the first edition of this book. Thus the bulk of this chapter will be concerned with electronic “word processing.” After a general review of writing instruments and accessories, I examine three aspects of word processors—their utility in helping writers to write, their relevance in teaching writing, and their potential to bring about new kinds of writing and reading.
