My inspiration for creating this blog comes from my very smart daughter (see http://jessicatillyer.wordpress.com/). Since I created this Web log to serve as an example to my writing students who have been given the standing assignment to journal via Weblog as they process through the semester, my posts are small lesson packets. Lessons should be reciprocating, and indeed as I follow my student’s posts these lessons are. Much interesting work is going on out there.
Boy, have I been busy though–I have not posted nary a twinge (textural word choices) in the past two weeks. Business with classes and advising, with extracurriculars and parenting responsibilities have taxed texting time! I do have one post that I have worked on in spare moments. It is about the word “text” and the concept of texture as applied to writing. This “text” post follows:
Texting Me
Text has come to mean a small grouping of words, word fragments, or even invented acronymic constructs that can be sent by electronic means for the purposes of rapid remote communication, and then follows the verb “to text” and gerund “texting” as in text messaging.
IDK--somehow language loses its feel when compressed down to a teensy digital packet that is sent bouncing from server to satellite to server to user. The feel of language is a delicate property of words. The word “text”, for instance, has a gathered a finespun meaning on its historical journey from the latinate origin “texere”–to weave. Associated terms, textile and texture, give life to the definition.
To text is to weave together a meaning in terms (words–”terms” is in the latinate sense a limit: we limit through words) and inevitably from font, or typeface. The texture of a message is an important feature of writing. Texture in text is made of word choices, diction and cadence, and word arrangement. Visually, texture in text may be made of font choices and the arrangement of font and other graphical features including negative space on the page. Texture is the message insofar as meaning relates to feeling. Texture in writing is a step beyond skill. It is the touch of its author to the reader. The touch of the message. Its creation is instinctual.
Here is a little textured collage to accompany my new post. 
