Well done. You've found my Jotter. This is where I will be posting some blog-type entries to share my thoughts on random topics, as well as to write some words of thanks to the many people who have helped me succeed in the roles I have held over the years.
I'm working on the first set of entries for my Jotter now. so please visit regularly to find out about new updates, or follow me on LinkedIn where I shall post news of new entries in Colin's Jotter.
Although shared with English, the origins of jot and jotter are considered to be Scots. The Dictionary of the Scots Language (DSL) gives us the definition "to write down hastily and briefly” in addition to “a note, memo, now especially applied to a pupil’s rough exercise book”.
Jotter was originally very informal, as in the following example from Aberdeen in the Reports of Cases in the High Court of Justiciary (1854): “Not book-keeping, only a jotter, only a memorandum; every one keeps a jotter as he likes”. By 1915 the term is being applied to a school exercise book, as illustrated in A S Neil’s 1915 Dominie’s Log: “Neatness of method and penmanship in copy-book and jotter”. During my own school days, pupils got extra marks for the neatest jotters as well as for the covering of their jotter, usually in brown paper or with the leftovers of whatever wallpaper leftovers your Mum had. The lassies sometimes covered their jotters with images of whatever pop star was the flavour or the day.
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