cut/paste

[Laurence Horn]

At 1:40 PM -0400 6/7/03, James A. Landau wrote:
>
>"cut and paste" long antedates computers.  It originally meant exactly what
>it says---to move things around in a typewritten or handwritten document, you
>cut out the words with scissors or a knife and then pasted them with paste or
>cement where you wanted them to go.
>
Right; used frequently in the context of preparing a talk from a
handout, especially by procrastinating academics like me who spent
much of the early 1970's traveling to conferences while cutting and
pasting presentations together using a prepared handout and blank
sheets from a yellow legal pad.  (I confess that I've maintained the
practice deep enough into the current age to have had my handout
preparation scissors confiscated by security at the San Francisco
airport, luckily *after* I'd done the cut-and-paste job.)

larry