The Basic Idea

How Cell-Writing Works

Imagine a writing system in which sentences are not written one after the other in the order in which they are to be read. Unlike conventional writing, the first sentence one writes does not have to be the opening sentence; it could well be the closing sentence. Subsequent sentences do not have to be entered consecutively or in any particular sequence either. One can write whatever comes to mind in any order without worrying about the sequence.

Imagine also that each sentence one writes is kept within its own special container or cell and that that cell allows complete freedom to alter whatever is inside it. Furthermore, nothing that goes on inside that cell affects anything that goes on outside the cell and nothing that goes on outside that cell affects what is contained within the cell. Each cell is self-contained and contains only its own individual sentence.

Given a collection of separate sentences in separate cells, next imagine that one wants to bring some order to the overall set of information collected. That is, one wants to move from having a loose collection of separate sentences to paragraphs of meaningful text that can be understood by somebody else. To do this, one simply puts the sentences in an appropriate order by moving the cells around accordingly, putting them one after the other. If one needs to add or remove sentences, one simply adds or discards cells. If one needs to edit a sentence, one simply does so inside the relevant cell making the necessary changes without affecting any of the other cells. Furthermore, one can try out different sentence orders before settling on the final sequence.

That, in essence, is cell-writing. It is about collecting sentences in a non-linear fashion and adding a linear sequence later.

Cell writing has a lot in common with brainstorming. In brainstorming, ideas – not necessarily complete sentences – are scribbled down and placed on a wall, flip chart or computer screen and are rearranged later. One finds that mind-mapping software usually has a brainstorming facility. With that software, ideas can be placed on screen in containers and then structured as necessary. While mind mapping software can provide containers which can hold ideas and even sentences, what I am advocating instead is the use of spreadsheet software as a writing tool. Instead of numbers, text is entered into the cells of a spreadsheet. These cells can then be moved around the spreadsheet's grid as necessary to give the appropriate order.

This allows a two-dimensional freedom which is important. The ultimate aim is to produce a linear sequence of sentences - best achieved by producing a single column of sentence-containing cells - sentences can be placed anywhere across the screen in the early stages. The resulting column, when it is finally produced, can then be selected and exported with the final editing and polishing done in a word processor as appropriate. It is this that, I believe, word processors are best at doing: making text look good on screen and page. They are not ideas processors; they are not good at helping people – least of all dyslexics – express what they are thinking.

Clearly, word processors do not allow any degree of two-dimensional freedom. They use linear strings of sentences placed one after the other. Finding insertion points and particular words or sentences is not always easy – especially for those of us with dyslexia. What is more, as one edits a piece of text in a word processor, the positions of these words and sentences changes and one has to search for them - sometimes over and over again. A small edit early in a piece of text can change the layout further down quite dramatically. That being the case, it is easy to get lost. In a spreadsheet, using the cell-writing technique, finding the one one wants is much less problematic. Sentence containing cells do not shift position with editing; the cell in position C3 is always at C3 unless you decide to move it. Where it goes in relation to the other cells, you know since it was you who decided to move it (not the word processor). Editing individual sentences becomes easier too. Since each sentence is in its own self-contained cell, one is only altering that cell's contents; there is no danger of overwriting or deleting sentences close by.

The aim of cell-writing is very simple: it is to begin with a loose collection of sentences contained in cells on a computer screen and then to give these sentences a meaningful sequence by moving those cells around. By moving these cells, one is turning the sentences they contain from a loose collection of statements to something more structured and meaningful; something that can communicate properly and effectively. These can be polished and edited as necessary.

(Cell-writing was used to produce the original text for this website.)