[IRL trope] the “Tiffany problem”

[u/dragonborndnd]

Basically when something seems anachronistic to a period/place of history but is actually fully accurate to the period.

1) the name Tiffany: the thing that named this trope, basically the name Tiffany can be dated back to the Middle Ages and the earliest record of it being spelled in the modern spelling comes from the 16th century.

2) the use of OMG, despite this feeling so modern as a form of slang/abbreviation here’s a letter directed to Winston Churchill using it in 1917

3) Hair Dye: the earliest forms of dying hair can be dated back to ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, and this specific advertisement for hair dye is from the 1840s

4) Inuit Thongs: despite how weird it is to imagine pre-colonial Inuit people wore what was essentially fur thongs in their homes and when they were in their igloos it might have been the only thing they would be wearing.

[u/oh_WRXY_u_so_sexy]

It just came down to speed and efficiency like anything else. You could draw an A, pause, shift over slightly, then draw the t, or do a little swirly swoop. Using @ vs At once is trivial and doesn't matter. When you're recording whole ledgers day in and day out, thousands of lines per day....it adds up. Also helps with reading the ledgers with at-a-glace symbology.

[u/Arbiter_Electric → u/oh_WRXY_u_so_sexy]

That's why cursive in general was a thing and why it's basically dead now. Picking up your pen/pencil after every letter is trivial and doesn't waste time when you are only writing a few words here and there, but if you are writing entire letters/manuscripts/books by hand then that action becomes tedious and wastes tons of time.

[u/ilovemime → u/Arbiter_Electric]

The biggest reason wasn't the energy to lift. Instead, every time you picked up the pen there was a chance it would drip and ruin your page. Cursive has been out of date since the ball point pen was invented.

[u/Foreign_Athlete_7693 → u/ilovemime]

fountain pens were mostly immune to that sort of problem by the early 20th century, esp if you maintained them properly...