leading to a single tone and attitude to reader and subject 
spread throughout an entire composition. The “man of letters” 
was born. Extended to the spoken word, this literate equitone  
enabled literate people to maintain a single “high tone” in 
discourse that was quite devastating, and enabled nineteenth-
century prose writers to assume moral qualities that few would 
now care to simulate. Permeation of the colloquial language 
with literate uniform qualities has flattened out educated 
speech till it is a very reasonable acoustic facsimile of the 
uniform and continuous visual effects of typography. From this 
technological effect follows the further fact that the humor, 
slang, and dramatic vigor of American-English speech are 
monopolies of the semi-literate.

     These typographical matters for many people are charged 
with controversial values. Yet in any approach to