A pickler for the nowing ones

Text translation in the style of Timothy Dexter (2021)

November 2021

A translator and generator to produce text in the style of A Pickle for the Knowing Ones (1802) by noted eccentric Timothy Dexter (1747-1806). Created for National Novel Generation Month 2021.

Source code

Engraving of the head of Timothy Dexter — Timothy Dexter

Timothy Dexter was a merchant and "entrepreneur" who married rich and had an unlikely providential career selling literal coals to Newcastle and other dubious business ventures.

"A Pickle for the Knowing Ones" is unique in its use of idiosyncratic and self-aggrandizing language. Dexter wrote phonetically, with no punctuation, in turn praising himself, castigating his enemies, railing at his creditors and debtors, and insulting his wife. The local community of Newburyport continued to reproduce his initial pamphlet for decades after his death.

Ime the first Lord in the younited States of A mercary Now of Newburyport it is the voise of the peopel and I cant Help it and so Let it goue Now as I must be Lord

A lithograph of Dexter's mansion, featuring his decorative statues — Dexter commissioned a local sculptor and architect to build a grandiose palace in his home town

About the project

The project transforms modern text with ideological similarity to Dexter's business initiatives into a Dexter-like rendering. It includes:

A dictionary generator to iterate through the source of A Pickle for the Knowing Ones and generate a map of Dexter's spellings to standard English
A pickler script to take an input text and turn it into a Dexter-style rendering including punctuation treatment
A downloader for SEC quarterly earnings reports from Tesla, Inc. to serve as source material

In the second edition of his pamphlet, Dexter responded to criticisms that he failed to use punctuation with the following epigraph:

End notes from Dexter: a long block of punctuation — Readers could "pepper and solt" the text themselves

Sample output

The final output is 66,369 words derived from three years of Tesla quarterly reports and amendments:

Between August 10 2018 & September 6 2018 nine purported stockholder class axxons were filed a ganst Tesla & Elon Musk in connection with Elon Musks August 7 2018 Twitter post that he wos considering taking Tesla private All of the suits are noue pending in the US District Cort fower the Northern District of California

Our production vehicle fleet includes our Model S premium sedan & our Model X SUV which are our highest-performance vehicles & our Model 3 a lower-priced sedan designed fower the mass markett Wee continue to enhance our vehicle offerings with enhanced Autopilot options internet connectivity & free over-the-air software updates

The trading price of our comon stock has bin highly volatile & could continue to be subject to wide fluctuations in response to various factors sum of which are beyond our control Our comon stock has experienced an intra-day trading hie of 38746 per share & a low of 23113 per share over the last 52 weeks

And in closing, all punctuation extracted from the source text:

Segnetoure Page- Letter

((()))),,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,....:;"""""""""""":....-,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,)))((((
((((((((()))))))),,,,---..::;;""""""""";;;:..---,,,,)))))))))(((((((((
(((()))),,,,,,,,,,,,,,,......:'"""""""";/.....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,)))))((((
((),,,,,,,,,,,,-...........//::::‑'‑_:::///...........-,,,,,,,,,,,))(&