Style (writing)

See also: Style

Sometimes improperly called Stylet the style is a small cylindrical instrument of Os, of Fer, or of another hard matter, long from 8 to approximately 15 centimetres and a few millimetres in diameter whose end is frayed and pointed and the other rather strong and is flattened.
The pointed end is used to write, by engraving either of the Cire run on a Wax tablet or a aute support. The widened end is useful is to erase what is written on a Wax tablet by smoothing wax is to be spread out a product which will reveal the made incision.

In Occident its practice is very former, one finds it quoted in the Bible (Vulgate 2R 21,13): " and delebo Jerusalem, sicut deleri solent tabulæ: and delens vertam, and ducam crebrius stylum super faciem ejus "
" I will erase Jerusalem as one erases what is written on shelves; I will pass and pass by again often the style over, so that it remains nothing about it " French translation Fillion Bible

The Romains used much the style with wax tablets, many representations exist on paintings murales.
Its use in Europe, related to the Wax tablet rarefied as from the 15th century when the Papier slowly made disappear this form of mediums from writing; it however continued until the 19th century. It reappears at the end of the 20th century, under the name of Stylet, to write on the screen of the assistants personnels.1

In the East, in particular in India of the south and with Ceylon, the style is used to write on Bambou S or sheets of Palmier. The punt part (broader than in the Roman style) is used to spread out lampblack or ash over the support what, after cleaning, makes it possible to reveal the engraved characters.

Linguistics

“ In the Antiquity, the style (*) indicated this Poinçon iron or bone which was used to write on Cire, and whose other end, flattened, made it possible to erase what one had written. There is something of moving, the centuries after, to recognize in this object the ancestor of the Stylo. But at the time already, by slip metonymic of the instrument to its result, the style is also the manner of writing, the turning of the expression. Cicéron employs it in this direction illustrated as of the first century before our era.

Camille Laurens, Woven by thousand of the 19/12/2005, editions P.O.L.

(*) Or stile.

Random links: