Quote & Poem Copywork · Aesthetic Cards

Why transcribe on a keyboard

Transcription — copying out good writing word for word — is an old way of learning the rhythm of sentences. Typing it uses keys instead of a pen, but the purpose is the same: no racing, just taking in each line as you go. That is why transcription mode has no leaderboard.

The list holds 24 public-domain works: poems by Yun Dong-ju, Kim So-wol, Han Yong-un, Yi Sang-hwa, Yi Yuk-sa, Kim Yeong-rang and Yi Jang-hui, passages from stories by Hyun Jin-geon, Kim Yu-jeong, Na Do-hyang and Yi Sang, and lines from the Analects, Myeongsim Bogam, Caigentan and the Tao Te Ching. Each date has a transcription of the day, and you can choose any other piece from the list.

When you finish a piece you can save or share a card image with the passage, your speed and your accuracy. Days you transcribe are marked on the transcription calendar, and once you have three or more in a month you can make a card collecting that month's pieces.

Using the card and the calendar

• "Choose from list" opens the first lines and authors of all 24 pieces. The transcription of the day is one of the 24, chosen by date.
• The passage you type runs as a single line, with the poem's line breaks turned into spaces; the finished card splits it back into the original lines.
• The card is a 1080 × 1350 PNG image, with six backgrounds to choose from: Hanji, Night Sky, Sunset, Forest, Ivory and Ink. The speed-and-accuracy line can be switched off for a card with just the passage.
• On devices that support sharing images, such as phones, "Share" opens the share sheet; in browsers that do not, it falls back to a PNG download.
• The transcription calendar lists your eight most recent pieces with date and speed. With three or more pieces this month you can make a "this month's transcriptions" card showing the count and your average speed.
• Transcription results do not affect your grade or the keyboard heatmap; they are kept only in the transcription log and the list of days you practised. That is why you can type as slowly as you like.

How to keep the habit going

• Aim for 100% accuracy rather than speed. A card copied without a single slip is also the best-looking record.
• Read the passage aloud once before typing. The line breaks and commas tell you where to breathe.
• One piece a day, about three minutes, is enough. Watching the empty days on the calendar shrink is the surest motivation.

A tradition of learning by copying

Learning by copying books has a long history. When printed books were scarce, copying was itself the way to own a book, and in Buddhism the careful copying of sutras (sagyeong) was treated as a spiritual practice. In the late Joseon period, Jeong Yak-yong, writing to his sons from exile, recommended choseo: noting down the key passages of a book as you read it.

Typing is faster than handwriting, but any character that differs from the original is flagged as a typo at once, so you end up following old spellings and every comma exactly. Forms that modern Korean contracts, such as 내리었다 in "A Lucky Day" and 쫓기었다 in "Camellias", are kept as written, and typing the habitual 내렸다 counts as a mistake. Noticing those differences is the biggest lesson transcription offers.

Common questions about transcription

Why do the classical passages show an era instead of a year of death?

For classics such as the Analects or the Tao Te Ching, the year the author died is not known precisely, so they are labelled with an era such as "5th century BC" or "Ming dynasty". Modern works show the author's year of death so anyone can check that 70 years have passed.

Isn't the camellia in Kim Yu-jeong's "Camellias" a red flower?

The 동백꽃 of the story is the name people in Gangwon Province used for the spicebush (Lindera obtusiloba), which blooms yellow in early spring. The "yellow camellias" near the end of the story are these flowers, a different plant from the red camellias of the southern coast.

If I finish with typos, do the wrong characters appear on the card?

No. The card prints the original passage, not what you typed. Typos show only in the accuracy figure on the card, so switch the speed-and-accuracy line on when you want a record, and off when you just want to keep the passage.