Code for Writing

August 4, 2025

Code is the new ink. Setting aside pen and pencil, code has become the way people put writing onto paper.

Yes yes, you say, Microsft Word and all that.

No no, I reply, look behind the software to the codes we embed in our text, the instructions telling software how render what we write.

What codes are those? I am glad you asked. Let me give an example.

Suppose I want a word to appear in bold face on a web page. I would (did, actually) surround it with codes this way:

<strong>bold face</strong>.

The codes go right into the flow of the text. The software (such as the browser rendering this page for you) does not display the codes but rather interprets them as instructions to change the font style.

Something similar happens in Microsoft Word. Its user interface provides a bold-faced capital B you can click to make some text appear in bold. Deep down inside, Word places some code near the text, instructing the software to render that bit in bold-face type.

Software such as Word relieves you of the task of typing the code yourself. You do not even get to see the code, only the result. But the code has to be there. How else would someone else’s copy of Word know how to render a file that you share with them?

Think back to pen and pencil writing. When I want to EMPHASIZE some word I might write it larger, or underline it, or overwrite it several times to make the letters thicker. To get the same results from software requires embedding suitable instructions as codes adjacent to the text we have in mind.

I spent the past two weeks diving deeply into the Sea of Codes for styling text. Every software seems to have its own system. Web browsers support a vast number of codes in two, broad categories: html for structuring the contents and css for styling its appearance. Readers can follow my adventures with these codes at another web site I write: iowadave.neocities.org.

Professional writers often use specialized writing software that still requires them to type codes into their text. One example is LaTeX, a system widely used for academic publications and textbooks. A LaTeX document can produce a nice-looking PDF file. More importantly, it can feed more or less directly into a publishing company’s computerized printing press. Another system giving a similar result is called groff.

Much of my time the past two weeks went into studying css and groff. I wrote about groff in the previous post and shall have more to say about it. Now you know my excuse for neglecting this Diary since mid-July: I was Lost in the Land of Learning.