Remember these? I never miss the lack of convenience, of course, but sometimes I miss the sounds they used to make: that deep clunk of the letter going down and the schtook-BING! of the carriage returning, not to mention that lovely rhythm of really getting going on a good thought, pounding away before the notion left me.When I was in high school typing class we learned on both the manual machines and the more modern electrics, so that we'd be able to adapt to whatever future offices offered to us. Little did we know!
I held out against computers for a while. I was loyal to my typewriter and all it represented for me. But the first time someone showed me that all I had to do to correct an error was press "backspace," I betrayed the typewriter without a second glance. Never to have to use those annoying white papers again! Never to have to scroll up the paper to fix an error and then scroll back down, trying to get back on the exact same line (and never succeeding)! It was too much temptation.
Now thoughts of my old typewriter are similar to those one has for a far-distant lover. I smile fondly--but I'd never go back.
(Please excuse this re-post of an old blog from 2006, but I am still grading research papers. I fear at this point I will never be finished. :)
5 comments:
The passage from manuscript to typewriters to computers and the near-infinitely easy ability to correct errors may have encouraged a neurotic attachment to an ideal of grammatical and orthographic perfection. And yes, I am a copy editor by profession.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
But for whom has it caused neurosis--all of us, or just you? :)
All of us, I think. And maybe I should have referred to a neurosis not for perfection, but for a clean page.
Think of your days at the typewriter: Like me, you probably had the experience of having to throw out an entire page because you left out or misspelled a word. But Dickens, say, not to mention writers before him, probably found an occasional blotted- or crossed-out word no barrier to an acceptable manuscript. Nor, I assume, did his publishers.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Ah yes--I remember the strict research paper rubrics. No strike-outs, and the teacher would hold it up to the light to make sure nothing had been whited out. Yikes. Sometimes I had to re-do three and four times.
That sounds to me like the definition of a bad teacher whose methods might as well have been calculated to repel students from learning. I have any teachers who were that much of an ---hole. Rather, I internalized the abhorrence of strikeovers.
===================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
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