Why Paper Is Eternal - Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press ...

communication. Rather, the two influenced each other back and forth, often in
surprising ways. For example, the earliest printed books emulated medieval
manuscripts, partly because in elite circles print was initially considered
déclassé, a medium for the hoi polloi. But subsequently the reverse happened,
as in the case of a hand-lettered document from 1657 that carefully mimics a
printed one. 47
Particularly intriguing to the contemporary observer are the ways early
modern Europeans used handwriting as a strategy for dealing with the sudden
glut of printed matter. This abundance of information – which included not
just books (which were still relatively expensive) but pamphlets, advertising
placards, printed government records, and, by the early 1600s, proto-
newspapers – was something entirely new and, for the time, startling. As the
Folger curators observe, the situation was analogous to the “information
overload” of our own time. 48 The challenge was how to navigate this
bewildering sea of words, and make sense of it. Competing methods of
shorthand, and schools to teach them, mushroomed. A new organizational
tool – printed forms with blanks for filling in information by hand – was
adopted by both the state and private business. And in the sixteenth century,
an innovative device began to catch on, known as “writing tables,” or simply
“tables.” This was typically a pocket-sized, printed almanac bound with blank
leaves of specially coated paper or parchment that could be written on with a
stylus and erased with a sponge. 49 The Folger show offered several examples,
including one with printed user instructions: “Take a litle peece of a Spunge, or
a Linnen cloath, . . . wet it in water, and wring it hard, & wipe that you ha(v)e
written very lightly, and it will out.” 50 A busy sixteenth-century Londoner
would carry his tables around during the day, jotting quick notes in them with
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