h a l f b a k e r yRenovating the wheel
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(What? No "Writing" category?)
See the link. Your browser should open the page in a monospace (fixed-width) font. Look CAREFULLY at the text (you don't have to read the story). I think I independently invented this, and don't know of any significant examples of this writing style by others.
While
it is obvious that each line of the linked text (except for the last of each paragraph) has the same number of characters, it is not so obvious how it was achieved using a monospace font.
Traditionally, for a monospace font, the normal trick is to semi-randomly add extra spaces in-between words, to make each line come out the same length. But in the linked text there is always just one space between words, and just two spaces after each period or question mark or exclamation mark or colon (not counting paragraph breaks).
Which means the text must have been WRITTEN so that each line would come out the same length! Yet the text reads basically "normally" (if a bit wordy, but you-all know that is normal for me!) --the text is not particularly "stilted" or "forced".
So, what if you were to attempt to write something in that manner? That is the puzzle! To select words such that they read normally yet fit precisely in the space available. Remember that you can choose any width you like; all you have to do is stick with it.
Good luck!
Example of Justified Writing
http://1632.org/1632Slush/ROF-2.txt
As described in the main text. [Vernon, Mar 28 2013]
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Annotation:
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The easiest way would be to compose writing in Twitter,
because it counts characters and imposes a limit. |
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What about an automatic writing justifier? You take
your unjustified writing sample, and it detects the
best column width for justification. Then it goes
through and adds filler words (“thus”, “so”, “well”,
“therefore”, etc.) and extra punctuation as
necessary. Lastly, it replaces
words
with synonyms of differing lengths in order to get
each line to fit as closely as possible. The resultant
product should only require a bit of manual cleanup
to make sure it maintains a minimum standard of
readability. |
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Change "Pefectly" to "Perfectly" in the 17th paragraph and you will gain a space and lose an ironic typo. (Nice work though.) |
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This could be word processor add-in which replaces words
with synonyms until perfect justification is achieved. It
would have been great to have this 30 years ago when
people still used monospaced fonts. |
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Monospace fonts are typographic abominations. |
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example of an autogram: This sentence contains only three a's, three c's, two d's, twenty-five e's, nine f's, four g's, eight h's, twelve i's, three l's, fifteen n's, nine o's, eight r's, twenty-four s's, eighteen t's, five u's, four v's, six w's, two x's, and four y's |
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I first came across these in Douglas Hofstadter's Metamagical Themas. It remains one of my favourite books. |
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It is a clever idea, but I'm afraid If it contains mispellings of different length to the original (eg. "oustandingly") then that's essentially a replacement for adding spaces.
Similarly, inventive use of punctuation. |
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I do like the idea, and I like the idea of a program to auto-justify text.
I'd do synonyms first, and where that failed see if sentences could be re-arranged using a set of patterns. For example "this and[CR]that" could become that and[CR]this. |
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Semi-automation would be fairly straightforward and likely would give the best results. But if it could be completely automated then dragging the text width and watching it reformat would be a sight to behold. |
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I do this sometimes if I'm writing in a context which uses monospace fonts (eg Bugzilla comments). |
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I've heard it referred to as "bricklaying". |
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[AusCan531] and [Loris], yes, I know the example
text has some typos in it. However, there has
been no need to update it because the story did
not get accepted for publication. That is, I don't
know that if I corrected the typos and submitted
it, they would replace the old file on their web
site with the new one. |
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Anyway, I'm quite sure that if I did fix the typos, I
could also edit the verbiage to maintain the
justification of the text. There are quite-more-
than-enough lines of text in the file, which have
zero typos, to back that statement up. |
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//For example "this and[CR]that" could become that and[CR]this// |
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But “that” and “this” both have four characters, so your suggestion would make no difference. |
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//But “that” and “this” both have four characters, so your suggestion would make no difference.// |
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You're right. However, I assume they were intended as metasyntactic variables. |
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" I think I independently invented this " |
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Is justification [Vernon]'s justification for "randomly"
putting quotation marks around ordinary words? |
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Noted as a NaNoGenMo idea. |
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[+] This idea is a form of “constrained writing”. I’ve never heard of this constraint before. Perhaps you should join the Oulipo. |
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I / am / now / post / haste / (sort of) / posting / new topic / to discuss. / |
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do you enjoy / constraints? / does word play / give headeaches? / are you confused? / |
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This is a snowball, / A poetic form which / was created by those / who group themselves / with the name of Oulipo. / Every line contains one / Additional letter. U like? |
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