Cross writing demonstration
by Polly Spring: History
Before the invention of printing and affordable paper, people had to get creative to conserve both paper and postage costs. One technique they used was cross-writing: you'd fill a page with text in the usual orientation, then rotate it and write across the same sheet in a different direction, packing in far more words. 📹 Verse & Sip
Transcript (en)
This is crosswriting. Also called crosshatching or simply a crossed letter, this practice was common in the 18th and 19th centuries when postage and paper were expensive. At the time, the cost of sending a letter often depended on how many sheets of paper were used. So writers would fill their page normally and then turn their paper 90 degrees and continue writing directly over the original text. The result looks almost impossible to read today, and it almost looks like a coded message. But it allowed people to fit far more onto a single sheet of paper. Would you try writing a letter like this?
