Welcome, new readers.  Perhaps you've never read a thing before,
but if you study this lesson assiduously, you will be acquainted
with simple reading skills that will enable you to peruse such
common, everyday texts as the Telephone Book and the Sports
Section with partial to complete comprehension.

The basic building blocks of printed text are letters.  For
example, here is a letter:

          X

There are 25 other letters.  To save space, we won't list them
here, but it is important to understand the difference between
a letter and a punctuation mark.  An example of a punctuation
is
          ,

There, that was easy, wasn't it?  Now that we have the basic
building blocks "under our belt", let's move on to groups of
letters, commonly called "words".  It's pretty easy to tell
when something is a word.  For example

          DICK

is a word, but

          DICK AND JANE

is not a word; it is three words.

Words are grouped into units called sentences.  It is easy to
tell a sentence from something that is not a sentence by the
fact that it ends with a punctuation mark "." called a period.
Like all rules about writing, that's not a hard and fast rule
though.  Some sentences end with other marks, such as "?" or
"!", or perhaps with nothing at all if the author forgets.
Even authors are not perfect

Sentences are but stepping-stones to the next unit that readers
need to be concerned about:  paragraphs.  Now, paragraphs are
very easy to spot.  A paragraph is just an ordered sequence
of sentences.  The first line of a paragraph is either indented
or separated from the preceeding text by a blank line.  You can
usually tell the last line of a paragraph by the fact that it
is significantly shorter than the other lines which are in it.

There, that's all for today.  We've covered the art of reading
all the way up to paragraphs.  Using what you've learned, you
will be able to read, for example, one-paragraph stories in the
Sports Section.  You can tell when a story is more than one
paragraph by the fact that you will not be able to read it.
But do not lose hope; you will be able to read such stories after
studying Lesson Two.

To test your understanding of today's lesson, here are some
Exercises:

1.  Which of the following are words?

    (a) HIEROGLYPH
    (b) MADONNA
    (c) SPORTS
    (d) All of the above and all of the below
    (e) All of the above

2.  In Chekov's "Three Sisters", what is the significance of
    stage setting in developing the theme of the play?

3.  Get a dictionary and look through it.  How many words can
    you spot?

Happy reading!

72 responses total.

 terrific!

 <chuckle>

Sorry, don't really have time to respond.  I'm too busy counting
words in my dictionary.

"I try to catch every sentence, every word you and I say, and quickly lock
all these sentences and words away in my literary storehouse because they
might come in handy."

    The Seagull, translated by Ronald Hingly, from Act II

    - Anton Pavlovich Chekhov -

darn. now i have to go back and check in which conference we are.

Are those trick questions? As far as #3 goes, I can spot every
single word in my dictionary - every one, so there! Danr is confused.
And about #1 ...  (a) is not, (b) is not, (c) is not, (d) is not and
(e) is not. All the rest are..

Ah, the soul of a spam on rye.

 still checking in my dictionary... I'll get back to you guys.

Well, the set helps develop the setting of the era in which the action takes
place.  Since the time of the story is so closely related to the issues with
which the story deals, the stage setting gives additional context for the
audience.

Okay, but what's your answer to questions 2 and 3?

I can't read any of this to even learn about it.  (My cat typed this).

Aha! I found a WORD in my dictionary! Do you have one yet, aa8ij?

I can't find any words in my dictionary.  Someone put these
intricate blotches of ink on the paper and now I can't tell
what was there.

 I don't have a dictionary, nor a HD.

 I have several crossword and foriegn language dictionaries though.

Know that I can read, who will show me how to Write?

...

Very.

re 15:  It's easy.

Just pour yourself an extra cup of coffee, turn on some quiet music
in the background, sit comfortably in front of your computer, place
the keyboard in easy reach, and...

"You put your write hand in,
   You put your write hand out,
 You put your write hand in,
   And you shake it all about..."

Are Unix file names like .cflist and mbox words? 
Are Unix commands like ls -al sentences? 

carl- that's awful!!! :)

(it comes from years of practice)

Does someone feel a slight breeze in here?

yes.

Writing is easy;  it's making sense that's tough.

I second that emotion!

Motion.

waveless, eh?

I meant emotion!

Damn!

Makes sense.

I'm not sure I follow you.  Are you saying that picking up a writing tool
and putting words to a surface is easy, whereas making those words mean
something is hard?  Well, I think a person without any hands, or perhaps
a parapalegic would take issue with you.  And I'm sure there's no problem
with the words making sense.  Get out a dictionary and they all make sense.

What makes sense?

The WORDS!!!!!

DAMN IT ALL TO MARTY ROBBINS!

And beside that, it says:

  Sentences are but stepping-stones to the next unit

but I know somebody that got a sentence of 20 years to life, and he
doesn't see it as a stepping-stone to anything.

re #31: A sentence is more than the sum of its words; a paragraph
is more than the sum of its sentences.

Re #35: the "next unit" is the afterlife (such as it is).

Okay.  Now I understand.  The afterlife is going to be a paragraph.

Okay.  I think I'm going to die now.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss