Word: alphabet
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Writing, or what is now called writing, is still of course in common use, but the modern tendency seems to be for everyone to ignore the recognized signs which represent the alphabet and to develop a species of short hand, intelligible only to themselves. This is only too evident in present day business life, where practically all correspondence is typewritten. Business men realize the difficulty of interpretting letters written in ordinary long hand, and they save themselves trouble by arranging their transactions through the medium of a typewriter...
...themselves by sensational tactics, but because to most enlightened people it appeared that justice in Massachusetts was in grave danger of miscarrying. The courts, they thought, had perhaps been honest, had adhered to every rule and precedent, had obeyed the letter of the law to the end of the alphabet. But the very safeguards of the individual in this case, it seemed, had rendered justice in the broad sense impossible. Turning from the impotent courts, the advocates of Massachusetts justice--that part of them who thought it in danger--appealed to the executive branch to save the judiciary from itself...
...Varnished board decorated with the alphabet, the ten digits and the words "Yes" and "No," upon which, with a planchette (little table), amateurs of spiritualism received supposed psychic communications...
Many professors, indeed, admit the defliciencies of tests. The difficulty is to find a substitute medium for translating intelligence and industry into the official alphabet. And in determining grades it would seem necessary always to place some reliance upon examinations. But this necessity should by no means prove a barrier to other forms of cultural inquisition...
...considers himself a literary oak or not, can do much worse than to hear Professor Tozzer talk about the acorns of our language. At 9 o'clock this morning, he will lecture in the Semitic Museum in Anthropology I on the origin of writing and the beginnings of our alphabet...