NET RESULTS:The process of writing using voice-recognition software is surprisingly like using a typewriter, writes KARLIN LILLINGTON

TECHNOLOGY HAS utterly changed the way many people write.

For those who have never known anything except a word processing program on a computer, this can be difficult to understand. But the change can be imagined by contrasting the difference between looking at something in flat 2D, then switching to the depth of 3D.

The metaphor is appropriate because the way people generally wrote in a world of typewriters was in a linear fashion. You began at the beginning and worked forward until you reached the end. Because making corrections to a typed page was difficult – often requiring the retyping of an entire piece to accommodate a new sentence or phrase – changes were time-consuming.

This forced writers to outline, and to think carefully about each sentence before their fingers hit the keys. I am old enough to have begun my own writing career in this way, using boxy manual typewriters in the newspaper office at my university.

Their metal bodies weighed a ton, but the keyboards were wonderful. Rows and rows of tiered keys set on little metal arms that had just the right amount of resistance when pressed. They clacked reassuringly. The machines had been in that office for decades, and like a well-loved piano, their keys had learned the perfect responsiveness of constant use.

But writing a story was a chore. The best hacks were admired for an ability to pause momentarily to organise thoughts before plunging into a constant rat-a-tat-tat that produced a story at speed. A few annotations by pencil, and the editing was done, the story sent for typesetting.

A few years along, my paper had enough money to opt for the new world of computerised writing and typesetting. A system was ordered, and we wrote our stories on screens in a pre-Windows era – just a line of letters and a blinking cursor.

The process introduced an exciting new way of writing. Soon, people realised they could write the middle of the story first – you could come back and do the all-important lead after you’d worked out the rest.

The problem was the programmers who designed our software in this Jurassic era of word processing assumed writers still wrote by beginning at the beginning, vaulting through the piece of writing, and ending at the end. So, in a period before the advent of auto save, the programmers decided a “save” key should save everything above the cursor, but delete everything below it.

In other words they were taking the basic approach of writing on paper and transferring it wholesale to the screen, where there was the risk of eliminating your entire story if you took advantage of the technology to write more freely. We had a nightmare of lost stories at deadline, every day.

Needless to say, this was corrected in future versions of the software. We had the unfortunate “opportunity” of being the guinea pigs for programmers who hadn’t spent any time learning about how writers write.

A decade later, I taught writing at university level to students who were struggling with this transition to computers. But the teachers were troubled too. Most avoided teaching composition in computer-equipped classrooms as much as possible because they were a typewriter generation.

Increasingly, conferences and textbooks were dedicated to the pedagogy of using the unique possibilities offered by technology for the writing process. Students had to be re-taught how to write, moving from a linear mode to a more three-dimensional, flexible, open, creative flow. You could begin anywhere and edit easily.

My own writing changed to accommodate and take advantage of technology, a freer landscape of writing with fewer rules.

But recently technology has altered my writing style yet again – ironically bringing me full circle back to a process of composition that has more in common with those banks of noisy upright typewriters than the quiet hum of desktop computers.

I’ve switched over to using speech-recognition software, and now I dictate my stories rather than type them. The software that I use cautioned that the writing process would be different, but I didn’t fully appreciate this until I started using a headset rather than a keyboard.

Once again, the writer has to think carefully before committing words to paper, this time using the medium of speech. I find myself pausing to compose sentences and paragraphs in my head before dictating them, as in the typewriter era. The writing style, based on speech, is less formal too, I think.

Of course it’s possible to go back and insert a phrase, a sentence, or a paragraph, but the bulk of writing is done in a more linear fashion, carefully composing sentences as you go.

It was a little disconcerting at first, but I find it oddly satisfying now. I like the enforced discipline, which has reawakened old skills of composition and forethought. I suppose eventually this will be how we all write. But how ironic to find the future of writing technology is in part a voyage backwards in technique.

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