And when the seven thunders had uttered their voices, I was about to write: and I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not.
—Revelation 10:4
7619 Record Books And Writers
MOST BOOKS: The German writer Johann Krunitz wrote an Encyclopedia of 242 volumes—in longhand—and also published 438 other big books.
MOST NOVELS: Kathleen Lindsay of South Africa published a total of 904 novels. And, during a forty-year period, British writer John Creasey wrote 564 books, totalling over four hundred million words.
FASTEST NOVELISTS: Erle Stanley Gardner, creator of Perry Mason, dictated up to 10,000 words a day and could work simultaneously on seven novels. His 140 titles enjoyed a circulation of one hundred seventy million copies. The above-mentioned John Creasey had similar output: 15 to 20 novels a year. Once, he wrote two books in a week, with only a half day off.
MOST PROLIFIC: He created Billy Bunter and the boys’ comics Gem and Magnet. His lifetime output of written words was about 100 million words. He enjoyed the advantage of electric light rather than candlelight, and of being single. His name: Charles Hamilton
7620 More Writers’ Records
YOUNGEST AUTHOR: The 4-year-old Dorothy Straight of Washington, DC, wrote How the World Began in 1962. The book was published by Pantheon Books, New York.
MOST CHILDREN’S STORIES: Enid Blyton of England wrote 600 books of children’s stories. In 1955 alone, she put out 59 titles. Her stories have been translated into a record 128 languages.
7621 To Immortalize Her
The historian, Edward Gibbon, author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was once the rival in love of a certain French physician. Both were enamoured of the beautiful Lady Elizabeth Foster.
“When Lady Elizabeth is sick of your foolish chatter,” remarked the physician, “I will cure her.”
“When Lady Elizabeth is dead from your prescriptions,” retorted Gibbon, “I will immortalize her.”
7622 Talking To 30 Million People
Wendell Phillips was one of the most polished and graceful orators our country ever produced. He spoke as quietly as if he were talking in his own parlor, and almost entirely without gestures. He had great power over all kinds of audiences.
One illustration of his power and tact occurred in Boston. The majority of the audience were hostile. They yelled and sang and completely drowned his voice. Phillips made no attempt to address this noisy crowd, but bent over and seemed to be speaking in a low tone to the reporters who were seated near the platform.
The curiosity of the audience was excited: they ceased to clamor and tried to hear what he was saying to the reporters. Phillips looked at the audience and said quietly: “Go on, gentlemen, go on. I do not need your ears. Through these pencils I speak to thirty million.” Not a voice was raised again.
—Speaker’s Library
7623 He Kicked Own Book
A young American preacher was induced to publish a book of sermons. The first copy was mailed to him. After he read the volume, he said: “I am never so reminded of the sow returning to her wallowing in the mire as when I undertake to look at what I have written or preached.” He literally kicked the book out the window. His name was Henry Ward Beecher.
7624 Less Profitable Work
Anthropologist John Greenway dedicated his book Literature Among the Primitives: “To MacEdward Leach, dear friend and revered teacher, but for whose inspiration, advice and encouragement I would today be in a more profitable line of work.”
—Folklore Associates
7625 Rat-Trap Maker’s Pride
“Literary fame is not always highly regarded by the people,” once wrote William Dean Howells. “I remember when I was in San Remo, some years ago, seeing in a French newspaper this notice by a rat-trap maker of Lyons:
““To whom it may concern: M. Pierre Loti, of Lyons, begs to state that he is not the same person and that he has nothing in common with one Pierre Loti, an writer.””
7626 Shaw’s Letters As Relics
“My letters are often sold not as literature but as the material relics of a modern saint,” wrote George Bernard Shaw to a friend. “Often, some impecunious journalist asks me to refuse his requests for material on an insulting postcard, so that he can dispose of it to a collector for the price of a meal.”
That particular letter brought the price of a pretty good meal—$250—at an auction of G. B. S. letters and memorabilia. $4,250 a packet of 19 love letters from young Shaw to his “undeservedly beloved,” a nurse named Alice Lockett. “I am,” he wrote, “opinionated, vain, weak, ignorant, lazy and so forth.” He gave her a sample in the final letter: “Lovemaking grows tedious to me—the emotion has evaporated from it. This is your fault.”
—Time
7627 Write What Down?
Because TV writer Leonard Stern often gets an idea for a show in the middle of the night, he keeps a pad and pencil on his bedside table. Before going to sleep, he says to himself, “Write it down! Write it down!”
The other night he woke up, scribbled something on the pad and went back to sleep. In the morning he found this note: “Write it down.”
—TV Guide
7628 Penmanship And Brilliance
A handwriting study made at one of our large universities has come up with the discovery that the smarter a person is, the worse his scrawl. It’s thinking faster than you write that makes handwriting messy. The faster you think, naturally, the poorer your penmanship. The handwriting experts who made the study claim that anyone can improve his handwriting if he really tries. But who wants to, if an illegible scribber indicates a high I.Q.?
7629 Testing For Southpaws
Are you ever confused over whether you are really right-handed or left-handed? In The New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. J. E. Block of Sedalia, Mo., tells of a simple test. Hold up your thumbs side by side, and look at the base of your nails. On your dominant hand, the base of the nail is usually wider and more squared off.
—New York Times
7630 How To Write Editorials
It was Joseph Pulitzer who offered the following advice on writing to editorial writers, columnists and reporters: “Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light.”
7631 Oldest Word Symbol
The oldest symbol representing a word is “&,” known as the ampersand. Originally, it was one of the 5,000 signs in the world’s first shorthand system which was invented by Marcus Tiro in Rome in 63 B.C. and which was used for 1,000 years. Not only is “&” the only one of these signs to have survived, but it is used today as the symbol for the word “and” in several hundred languages.
—Selected
7632 Life Of Pencil
The modern 7-inch-long lead pencil can draw a line 35 miles in length; it can write an average of 45,000 words; and it can take an average of 17 sharpenings.
7633 The Modern Typewriter
Credit for the first modern typewriter, belongs to Christopher Sholes, a newspaper editor who lived in Milwaukee in the 1860s. On the Sholes model, as on present-day manual typewriters, each character was set on the end of a metal bar which struck the paper when its key was pressed. The keys were arranged alphabetically. But there was a snag. When an operator had learnt to type at speed, the bars attached to letters that lay close together on the keyboard became entangled with one another. One way out of the difficulty was to find out which letters were most often used in English, and then to re-site them on the keyboard as far from each other as possible.
This had the effect of reducing the chance of clashing type bars. In this way was born the QWERTY keyboard, named after the first six letters on the top line.
7634 Typographical Error
The typographical error
Is a slippery thing and sly
You can hunt till you are dizzy,
But it somehow will get by.
Till the forms are off the presses,
It is strange how still it keeps
It shrinks down into a corner
And it never stirs or peeps,
That typographical error,
Too small for human eyes!
Till the ink is on the paper
When it grows to mountain size,
The boss he stares with horror,
Then he grabs his hair and groans.
The copyreader drops his head
Upon his hands and moans—
The remainder of the issues
May be clean as clean can be,
But that typographical error
Is the only thing you see.
—Author Unknown
7635 Errors Still
The French Academy took 297 years to write a book of 263 pages. Grammaire de L’Academie Francaise was written from 1635 to 1932 and when finally published, it contained fifty errors.
—Selected
7636 Corrected Mistake
A young reporter called on Mark Twain to interview him. He found the writer comfortably ensconced in bed, reading. The reporter asked Mark for the story of his life.
“Well,” drawled Mark, “in the days of George III, when I was a young man I used to … ”
“Pardon me,” interupted the young man, “I know that you are no spring chicken, but you couldn’t possibly have been living in the time of George III.”
“Fine, my boy,” exclaimed Mark. “I heartily congratulate you. You are the first and only reporter I’ve ever met who corrected a mistake before it appeared in print.”
7637 Epigram On Writing
• Weak ink is better than a strong memory.
—Chinese Proverb
• Reading maketh a full man; conference maketh a ready man; and writing maketh an accurate man.
• If you would not be forgotten, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.
—Franklin
• To the thousands of students who wrote to poet Carl Sandburg, asking how to become a writer, Sandburg replied: “Solitude and prayer—then go on from there.”
—Harry Golden
• The surest way to be a failure as a writer is to set out with determination to please everyone.
—Herbert Swope
• A wicked book cannot repent.
—Old Proverb
See also: Books ; Literature, Christian.
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