221. Typewriter

While I know I spoke somewhat disparagingly about typewriters in my last entry, I have thought about it a bit and realized that even though I easily gave mine up for word processing I still have a deep and abiding appreciation for what the typewriter has done for our country. It was almost as revolutionary as the printing press. While typewriters may have removed the artistry of handwriting, they certainly improved the speed with which one could commit their thoughts to paper and the word processor has done little to improve upon that. I can’t compose by hand a letter at 100 words per minute, but I certainly can give it a go on a typewriter. When I learned how to type in high school, I quickly set out to purchase a typewriter for college. I know that here in the United States college professors would expect my papers to be typed because they neither had time nor inclination to recognize the artistry in my handwriting. As a secondary English teacher of 35 years I can fully appreciate that sentiment. I was quick to require my students to type their papers when word processing became available to all of them unlike the typewriter, which never did.

All of my undergraduate papers were either composed or finalized with a typewriter. I owned a portable Sears electric typewriter that I still have stored away in my closet. Even though I don’t use it anymore and the ribbon has long dried out, I couldn’t possibly part with it for the landfill. Maybe someday I can bequeath it to an antique dealer or my son as a relic from times gone by.

When I went on to graduate school, just after a one-year hiatus from the undergrad life, I quickly transitioned to word processing, even though I, as of yet had not purchased a personal computer at home to replace my typewriter that I was still using to compose letters and the odd poem here and there.

But then, as a part of my graduate training in English, I went to study at Oxford University. Not only were they not using word processing, they had never used the typewriter for student papers at any level. I was astounded to find that no one there seemed to know how to type, let alone see a need. I and some American friends found a word processor that we all pitched in to rent for the summer, but I ended up giving it little use because time had to be scheduled which was terribly inconvenient and my don would not accept typed papers because he felt one wrote differently when typing. That is possible since you can write much more quickly by typing. He actually wanted to see my handwriting, which, luckily, is legible due to my advanced age and the fact that we were forced to be legible unlike now when we promote keyboarding. At any rate, I learned how to not only compose long papers by hand on A4 notebook paper, but to also draft finals on the same sort of oddly shaped paper. Someone tweeted at me the other day in a snarky response to my own tongue in cheek tweet about being bilingual in English because I can speak both American and British English. They told me that that difference is merely of accent, not language, but, as any person who has lived in both countries knows, it is far more than accent. They are distinct dialects. And our attitudes toward typing are also distinctly different. The year I spent as an exchange teacher in England taught me that. When I suggested to my fellow computer teachers (yes, I taught ICT!) that we teach keyboarding skills they were certain that there wasn’t time in the day to teach that along with the pertinent computer skills. I couldn’t convince them that keyboarding would speed those other skills up. My American knowledge of the typewriter and its keyboard is a boon to my own skills and why I still love a good typewriter.