Little House How-To Links
The Little House and Technology
The Technical Writing of Laura Ingalls Wilder, by Mary Ecsedy, 2/26/2010.
Abstract
Laura Ingalls Wilder is an extremely popular author, whose Little House books have sold millions of copies world-wide since they were first published in the 1930's.
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Her books have been thoroughly integrated into popular culture, and they have been written about and critiqued extensively by literary academics and biographers.
However, there is one important aspect of Laura's work that has not been examined or studied in-depth. To my knowledge, nobody has written about the quality and quantity of Laura's technical writing. Yet her work is a stunning achievement in technical communication that deserves recognition.
I am a professional technical writer and web consultant with a BA in Anthropology. This article describes a research project I began several years ago, analyzing Laura's books from the perspective of their value as technical documentation.
The purpose of this article is to focus attention on the technical aspect of Laura's writing by describing my research and resulting data, and discussing the results.
Laura provides a wealth of information about how people lived before the power grid, the internal combustion engine, indoor plumbing, and industrialized agriculture. She has a great deal to teach us about the basic technology and methods of self-sufficient aggriculture. Her long-term legacy is not just the charming entertainment of her stories, but the critical, detailed technical information on how to live a civilized, sustainable life at the subsistence level.
The Little House books are a remarkable achievement in technical writing. Laura describes the tasks and objects of daily life on the american frontier so well, that her books provide a basic user's guide to subsistence living.
Introduction
Like millions of other readers world-wide, I've loved the Little House on the Prairie books by Laura Ingalls Wilder all my life. Laura's books tell the compelling story of growing up on the American frontier in the nineteenth century after the Civil War. They are autobiographical fiction and have been extremely popular ever since they were first published decades ago. I don't think they've ever been out of print.
Little House on the Prairie
The books inspired a loose translation that became a hit TV series in the 1970's and 80's, complete with spin-offs and sequels. They have also inspired a significant Little House cottage industry – spinoff fiction, arts and crafts books and projects, games, cookbooks, period costumes, biographies, and heritage centers and museums across the country. The books are the subject of literary criticism and even controversy, as academics argue about Laura's relationship with her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, and how much of the Little House books were actually written by Laura and how much by Rose, who was her editor.
However, there is one major aspect of these books that has never been adequately recognized, and that is the quality and quantity of Laura's technical writing.
Technical Writing
Technical writing is defined as writing that conveys technical information to a specific audience.
Reaper, 1865
I've been a technical writer and systems analyst for over 15 years, working on complete life-cycle software development projects in a variety of industries – writing requirements, functional specifications, technical reference manuals, user guides, and online help systems. I am a senior member of the Society for Technical Communication, and a past-president of the Pittsburgh chapter.
Writing documentation that clearly describes a technical process or object to someone without prior knowledge or experience of the subject is one of the most difficult types of writing to do well. We all have enough experience with bad technical writing, such as incomprehensible product manuals (think VCR programming instructions),to appreciate how hard it must be.
Laura does it beautifully.
Types of Technical Information
Technical writers generally employ one or more of the following types of information:
Classification
Classification is the arrangement of material into groups or hierarchies, in a way that is useful to your readers.
The Little House books are organized by periods in the life of the main character, Laura. Except for Little Farmer Boy, each Little House book covers a phase in young Laura's life. What is truly remarkable about the text is that the author matches her language to the cognitive level of each stage in her character's growth. The sentence structure, words, and information presented in Little House in the Big Woods, in which Laura was a small child, are very different from the language she uses in the later books when she is a young woman in her mid-teens.
More importantly, the narrative in each book follows the cycles of the seasons. Agricultural and domestic tasks, which complement one another and keep a household fed and clothed and sheltered, are categorized by season within each book. As a result, we not only learn how to do each task, but when, and often in what order.
Partition
Partitioning means to describe an object, generally guided by the location and function of the various parts. This type of technical information is common throughout the Little House books.
Segmentation
Segmentation is the description of a process, explaining the relationship of events through time. In other words, describing how something is done, or how something works. Step-by-step instructions are an example of this type of documentation.
This is by far the most common type of technical information in the Little House books. The following are just a few of the processes that Laura describes:
- How to make bullets
- How to clean a long rifle (see below)
- How to make lard, headcheese, mincemeat, and sausage
- How to plow, how to plant, how to harvest
- How to make a braided rug
- How to make a button lamp
- How to make a pair of boots
- How to make maple syrup
- How to train a team of oxen
- How to store ice
- How to burn hay for warmth and fuel
- How to build a railroad
Comparison
Compare two or more things. This is generally used to help readers make a decision, or to help users understand something by means of an analogy.
Laura makes many comparisons, but in her case comparison is used primarily to describe the physical environment or human culture. The world was changing very quickly, and there are many instances where she makes comparisons between the world her parents grew up in, and the world she and her sisters grew up in. The generation gap has been around for a long time.
I think the most common, and interesting, comparison Laura makes is between everyday homemade objects and "boughten" things, i.e., objects that have been mass-produced. Laura expressed admiration for the even perfection of stitches made by the sewing machine; the fineness of machine-made cloth and lace stockings; boughten brooms; Almonzo's boughten hat with the cunning ear flaps; the beauty of the varnished wood and wrought iron desks in the schoolhouse.
Cause and Effect
[DRAFT - IN PROGRESS]
Problem and Solution
"We wouldn't do much we didn't do anything that no one ever heard of before." – Ma
The iconic examples are from the Long Winter, when they used the coffee grinder to grind wheat into flour for their daily bread, and twisted hay into sticks that would burn. Also blackbird pie and green pumpkin pie.
A Shift in Perspective
My perspective on the Little House books shifted in the late 90's. Until then they were just the wonderful books I'd loved and read since childhood. I was reading The Little House in the Big Woods, and came to her descriptions of how to make bullets, how (and why) to clean a long rifle, how to load it, and where it was kept.
By then I'd been a technical writer for several years, and I was really struck by the quality of her documentation of all those tasks. Laura's step-by-step instructions are so clearly written that they could be followed by someone with no prior experience, and they would probably be able to complete the task successfully.
Step-by-Step Instructions
Of all the different types of technical documentation, step-by-step instructions are the most difficult to write. To do so well requires both art and craft. The information needs to be detailed and complete, but within limits that the writer must determine.
For example, in documenting software, a tech writer would normally write something like "Click OK" to tell users to click the OK button. We don't write: "Grasping the computer's manual input device firmly in your right hand, move the cursor on the monitor so it is placed over the small square button labeled OK, which is located in the lower-right corner of the window, and depress the button on the left side with your forefinger ."
At least I hope we don't.
The tech writer must break down the essential steps in the process she is documenting. Each step should define a single task. The steps are often numbered. Long processes should be broken down into groups of smaller tasks. The instructions should be written in an imperative mood. They should be simple and direct, with articles. The information should include the why of the task, safety matters, and the required tools and materials.
How to Clean a Long Rifle: an example of Little House technical writing
The following example is from the Little House in the Big Woods. It's part of a longer section that describes how Pa made bullets, cleaned his gun, and loaded it for use again. It's a typical example from the books and illustrates my point.
Little House in the Big Woods, pp. 47-48
After the bullets were made, Pa would take his gun down from the wall and clean it. Out in the snowy woods all day, it might have gathered a little dampness, and the inside of the barrel was sure to be dirty from powder smoke.
So Pa would take the ramrod from its place under the gun barrel, and fasten a piece of clean cloth on its end. He stood the butt of the gun in a pan on the hearth and poured boiling water from the tea kettle into the gun barrel. Then quickly he dropped the ramrod in and rubbed it up and down, up and down, while the hot water blackened with powder smoke spurted out through the little hole on which the cap was placed when the gun was loaded.
Pa kept pouring in more water and washing the gun barrel with the cloth on the ramrod until the water ran out clear. Then the gun was clean. The water must always be boiling, so that the heated steel would dry instantly.
Then Pa put a clean, greased rag on the ramrod, and while the gun barrel was still hot he greased it well on the inside. With another clean, greased cloth he rubbed it all over, outside, until every bit of it was oiled and sleek. After that he rubbed and polished the runstock until the weed of it was bright and shining too.
It was the detail Laura included about using boiling water when cleaning the rifle, and the reason why – to prevent rust – that really caught my attention. After that I was alert and began watching for more examples as I read. There were plenty.
The Laura Project
[DRAFT.] That was the start of my Laura Project. I decided todo a quantitative analysis to test my impression that she provides enough detailed technical information to be materially useful in a crisis. My results were so conclusive that I decided to write an article about the project. I think Laura deserves recognition for the technical aspect of her writing, and my goal is to highlight it. The quality and quantity of her documentation is the thing that really sets her books apart, and the thing that her readers really love.
You learn a lot when you read Laura!
Method
My research method was very simple: I read the entire series from beginning to end. As I read, I tracked Laura's descriptions of how to make something or how to perform a task, by making a note on a post-it and sticking it on the margin.
My set of Little House books quickly began to bristle with yellow post-it notes, the visual effect alone confirmed that Laura does indeed provide a huge amount of detailed technical information. My database contains more than 250 references and continues to grow as I re-read the Little House books more closely.
Book References
All references are to the "classic" yellow box set of books that I received for Christmas long ago. Published by Harper & Row. Text copyright 1935 by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Pictures copyright 1953 by Garth Williams. First Harper Trophy Book printing, 1971.
