WHEN COMPUTERS SUPERSEDED TYPEWRITERS, SPELLCHECK superseded the dread of whole-page retyping — and encouraged laziness.
Those Who Know, Chuckle.
WHEN COMPUTERS SUPERSEDED TYPEWRITERS, SPELLCHECK superseded the dread of whole-page retyping — and encouraged laziness.
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I miss White-Out.
This topic arose from a discussion Ann & I had re that without the dread of having to Type It All Over Again, there’s little incentive to get something right the first time. Practically, that’s not a bad thing at all — especially in creative writing, where one sometimes has to “blow out the chunks” to get started — but it depresses me philosophically for some reason.
I went to Heald Secretarial College. I learned the true joy of being able to type 65 wpm – not as fast as I think, but I can sort of keep up. And I learned the pain of having to retype the same letter 7 times because I made a triplicate carbon-copy typo, which had to be corrected by an eraser pencil with a stiff little brush. Because I have perfectionistic tendencies, the shadow of the typo bothered me so much I just. could. not. let. it. GO. This was just after the WANG word processor came on the market. I went into the secretarial cesspool and barely used a typewriter thereafter.
Let’s talk typing: My first job: 1964: ltr in (can’t remember how many copies), they all came apart when I tried to erase the typo. Erased each copy individually, then put each copy individually back in typewriter and typed the letter exactly where it went. Went over it many times to get it dark enough. And, I still have white-out (with a bristle brush-not foam brush), and I still have pencil eraser with a bristle brush at other end (not made any more). When I left HS, took steno over 100 wpm, and typed 96 wpm – took a “Regent” in it. I was totally into it. I loved the challenge!!