crosswriting

[Kevin M. F. Platt]

About Russians and crosswriting:

I don't know how common it was, but I came across this practice while  
working on N.D. Khvoshchinskaia'a archives. It was some years ago,  
and I can't remember if she used the technique in her manuscripts,  
her letters, or both. I seem to recall that she wrote in two  
different inks along the two different axes. She also wrote in  
unbelievably tiny cursive--apparently (according to biographers) a  
habit picked up in the interests of economy of writing materials  
during her younger years.

Kevin Platt


On Feb 18, 2008, at 1:00 AM, SEELANGS automatic digest system wrote:

> Dear SEELANGers,
>
> Referring to the controversy over the editing of Frost's notebooks,
> an article by Megan Marshall in Slate (http://www.slate.com/id/
> 2183903/) discusses the difficulties editors have had with
> deciphering handwriting. I read with sympathy, especially the part
> about having to resort to "counting humps," and was struck by the
> 19th c. practice of crosswriting, or turning a page filled with
> handwriting 90 degrees and writing more (an example by Henry James is
> viewable in the article). Was this practice a common Russian
> epistolary habit too?
>
> Thank you,
>
> Annie

Associate Professor Kevin M. F. Platt
Chair, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
745 Williams Hall
255 S. 36th Street
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

kmfplatt at sas.upenn.edu
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/slavic

Tel: 215-746-0173
Fax: 215-573-7794





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