📜 A History of Combinatorial Grammars

Combinatorial literature treats writing as a system: a small set of parts that can be permuted into a vast number of texts. The modern grammar generators that power tools like Story Grammar descend from a long lineage — from permutational verse and mechanical print toys, through avant-garde chance procedures, formal mathematical constraints, and finally software. The pages below trace that lineage across four eras, each with academic references and citations.