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Comment by stronglikedan | Hacker News Reader

I can write a poem in my head without ever writing it down on paper. I still wrote a poem, even if I just pass it along orally.

If I write a song for my girl, I'm not going to hand her a piece of paper with sheet music and lyrics, I'm going to perform it for her. I may write it down, or I may not.

Of course, composed is a more precise word, but everyone still knows what I mean if I replace it with write.

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You can take note. Writing is a physical action, e.g. performing output.

Writing is an action. You can memorize, take a mental note, but you are not writing.

(Someone else mentioned Camōes, a portuguese who famously/allegedly saved his writings from a shipwreck by swimming with one arm and using the other to keep the book above water; your interpretation of "writing" is an insult)

> I can write a poem in my head without ever writing it down on paper. I still wrote a poem, even if I just pass it along orally

This is generalising the term writing to the point of uselessness. In your example, you thought of a poem and spoke it. You didn't write it.

I don’t think so. The colloquial usage exists as grandparent commenter describes. I can be a “songwriter” without literally writing the lyrics to my song down.

Disagree, I think it's analogous to how we today use "fire" to describe the action of loosing an arrow or whatever the technical term is for a trebuchet, even though neither has gunpowder.

Are you also calling it literature if it's not written down?

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