Should we consider the situation in the washing instructions that Miss Havisham took Thursday into to be typical of non-fiction? Do ALL of the written works that lack casts of characters have one (or maybe more) narrators each, "backstage", with their own living quarters in an attached pocket dimension. This seems likely, in my opinion.

Yes, I'd never thought about that...

In the end, that applies to any written things that aren't books, right?
Instructions, ads, notes, letters, traffic signs... gosh, the list is huge!

What about magazine and newspaper articles?

>>that applies to any written things that aren't books, right?<<

What about serial numbers?
There hasta be a department specialising in them.

Also, hasta be a 'lost and found' department for passwords.

Might specific backstage readers for newspaper & magazine articles be used consistently for reading specific journalists' works, and thus trained to (a reasonable degree of) consistency in style?

I suspect that traffic signs and similarly short pieces of repetitive writing (e.g. the labels on the doors of public conveniences...) might be able to function without any such backstage staff, however, because by now the minds of humanity have probably been conditioned to see those terms as "iconic" symbols for whatever they mean without actually needing to read them as words.

Are there crews of suitably-trained generics "within" computers, providing the meanings for whatever text is on their monitor screens?

Surely Martin Jarvis is the narrator for everything !

either him or Stephen Fry.

Nathaniel Parker was good narrating the Artemis Fowl books.

On a vaguely on-topic note, could thursday jump into a website? Possible story for WN?

Why don't you get writing then Dave ??

ah, but there's a little problem I like to call 'plot' that I'm having problems with. That and remembering which SO- would deal with non-text non-book jumping...

Ah but Simon...symbols are simply the short-hand of human experience. Think of the plethora of events, stories, characters and plots that contributed to their evolution. Perhaps a symbol possesses more back-stories than any other entity. Perhaps we are all working our way towards that state. Once any character reached Symbolhood (Oliver, Rochester, Santa Claus) perhaps they have attained the pinnacle of literary greatness. Makes one look anew at stop signs!