Have a question that doesn't deserve a thread? Have a question you would not be willing to ask a librarian in person? Have just a regular reference question? Ask here!

I, and hopefully others, can try to answer these questions and/or give relevant literature.

Is being a librarian a nice job?

What a great idea for a thread!
I’m about to go to bed, but here’s my question:

Can you pinpoint where/when the substantive participle—meaning, functioning as a noun—“writtens” originated?
Or at least find someone formally defining it?

I couldn’t find any proper dictionary entries for it, but it seems to mean ‘a battle rap organized into writing.’
It’s not a new term—a poster on /lit/ was using it all the way back in 2012:
https://warosu.org/lit/thread/3047063#p3047816
>>implying most dudes don't go up there spitting writtens
But it is still being used today:
https://youtu.be/PEwy4U1OkBA?si=cH1Jagrrc3vA8EgK&t=604
I think it’s a really interesting word because perfect-passive-participle substantives in English are always(?) singular, but this one is plural.
If you can find any more examples of plural perfect-passive-participle substantives, to prove me wrong, that would be cool too.
Alright, thanks!

How does it feel being over 30 years obsolete?

>>24536749
>‘a battle rap organized into writing.’
*battle raps, plural?
Mainly I’m just intrigued/impressed with how the term is “writtens” and not simply “writings”—probably because the IPA of the former sounds so much more fiercer and constrained.

>>24536768
>How does it feel being over 30 years obsolete?
As obsolete (and downcast) as most “conventional” librarians are nowadays, the reference ones are still indespensible.
No matter how much research you do online, at the end of the day, you still need physical books to cite if you’re a nonfiction author, and LCC and Dewey aren’t getting any less abstruse to navigate as time goes on.

>>24536748
I think so. It lets me curate collections that I care about more than I could when I worked in bookstores.
>>24536749
There is precedent for a use that predates the rap-associated use of rappers in a group freestyle. In this use, "rappers will use 'writtens' (pre-written rhypmes) when they are close to falling off." (Alexandra Howson in The Body in Society)

I found the earlier usage in Wesleyan University (Middletown, Conn.). Undergraduate Committee on Wesleyan University (1910), referring to 10-minute writtens, short written tests given by professors.
>It is so easy for a professor to make his "ten-minute writtens" a mere repetition of facts; and so easy for him to mark this kind of paper. On the other hand, a student usually finds it extremely difficult to do any active or creative thinking unless he has a pen in his hand.

>>24536803
Amazing!
Thank you so much!