Does anybody remember typing correction paper?

[HmmmCat]

Does anybody remember using typing correction paper? I think it may have been called snowpake paper. It was like chalky white carbon paper. If you made a mistake typing, you aligned the mistake back in the typing space, slipped a piece of correction paper behind the guide but in front of the mistake, and then hit the same wrong key. If you were lucky, the letters aligned perfectly and you overtyped the incorrect letter in white. Then you could overtype it again with the correct letter. Fiddly, but neater and quicker than painting Tippex a few years later.

PS. I never knew before today (48 years later) what banda stood for. Thank you!

i used to have to type a weekly newsletter on those "skins" and if you made a mistake you had to use neon pink "correctine" fluid that basically repaired the hole so you could type over it again. Aligning everything if you'd already taken it out of the machine was a huge pain.

and that thick, toothpaste consistency ink you had to squeeze into the machine. Got everywhere. Washed out of nothing.

(i started in an office right out of school, on a YOP scheme, and there was a manual and one electric typewriter. I was not allowed to use the electric one - but one day the big boss wanted me to type a letter using it. I finished the first line, and had no idea how to make a carriage return. Nor did i know that you had to use a lower-case L as a 1

I still have a full bottle of correctine, glowing in the bottom draw of my desk, totally useless today of course!

Crikey, this is a blast from the past.

I can type really fast looking in the other direction too, always amazes the youngsters i work with. Also with high accuracy, and using the number row rather than stopping to use the number pad.

Used "telex" machines a lot in a former job, and used to read the tape as a party trick. I saw one the other day and could remember a few of the letters on the tape. Dead skills!

Does anyone have memories of the audio tape machines? I was a junior audio typist in 1972 for a company, mainly sales men and engineers made the tapes and it was operated by your foot to play it.

Oh happy days ... 😆

I was also a legal secretary started 1978 doing shorthand, audio, and copy typing. I hated the request “can you bring in your book for dictation” as I thought it was such an inefficient way to work when he could be dictating into the audio tape whilst I was tapping away

The typists doing wills stuff were incredible as to make any mistake on a will either meant re-doing the page, or using a rubber with such care and precision that it was unnoticeable.

I was the last year group at school to have typewriter lessons. The next September, that room became a computer room.
My hands were too small for typewriters and my fingers would often bounce off the keys from the force required and slip in the gaps that then hurt to pull back out.
I still can't truely touch type as my little finger can't reach P from the correct positioning. However I was decent enough to get an RSA certificate to add into my Record of Achievement

I remember my biology teacher lamenting the end of an era as she handed out the last of the banda sheets from her stock.

Recently I had the car at the garage and fondy commented on their paperwork being on perforated printer paper for the dot matrix printer. It's clearly doing better than finicky modern printers

Yes, I was good at that. As long as I was not in an open-plan office!

Absolutely used this in Secretarial Studies at school in the 80’s.
Can’t recall using it in the workplace though

First typewriter I had was one my grandma gave me. One of those old fashioned ones with the high circular keys rather than square ones and you had to really put some welly into typing!

So when I started being taught on the electric ones at school I didn't half bash the keys 🤣 took me bit to learn to be gentle.

Compared, I mean. Nowadays you barely have to stroke them. Back they you used to have to bash the keys like you were trying to kill them.

But I did love the noise as you sent the thing back to the start to begin the next line. Very satisfying.

When I started office practice course at school, age 15, the typing teacher taught us with a record. It had a very steady, very repetitive beat and that is how we learned to type by touch when we first started learning. It sounds really odd and archaic now that I remember it but those of us who left school as touch typists were all very fast and accurate.

I did do Pitmans shorthand, I never used it, I didn't really enjoy it and to be honest, I wasn't that good at it either.

I was very good at audio typing though and did quite enjoy that.

I work beside an accountancy firm. The senior partner is 80. He comes in on Saturday morning to record his mail which the receptionist types from audio.
My parents were impressed when a friend's dd became a punch card operator.

Yes. I used to smoke 40 a day on a bad day. Unimaginable really but I wasn’t unusual at the time.

Smiling as I RSA office practise and audio typing. The teacher used to whack our hands with a ruler if we looked at the keys. Can’t say it helped as I never became a proficient touch typist, although I still typed quickly but I think it would have been better for my posture touch typing.

Yes. I used to smoke 40 a day on a bad day. Unimaginable really but I wasn’t unusual at the time.

In one job I sat next to someone who smoked a pipe. He would light it up and massive clouds of old shag used to fill the air.

As so many jobs allowed smoking, I'm surprised that I haven't suffered any sort of ill effects from, my parents both smoked at the time too.

I still use my shorthand sometimes when jotting down addresses/messages/tests, etc or writing my passwords (hopefully no criminals who can read my shorthand). Dictation on tape only ended completely in private medical practice about 10 years ago. Now it is digital and very much more difficult to reverse with foot pedal accurately to the right part to rehear a phrase than tapes used to be. When I worked first in the NHS you could get an extra payment on your wages if you had achieved RSA 120 wpm in medical shorthand (which is rated equivalent to 140 wpm normal shorthand, as the words are longer and more difficult). I felt quite pleased with myself until an old Scottish actress (Molly Weir for other ancients that might remember) was on This is Your Life and it turned out she had been a 300 wpm shorthand writer. I also met a senior med sec who had been able to write shorthand at 200 wpm in her youth.

I used the Tipp-ex brand of correction paper.

I am ancient...when I am organising my speed mop I always think of Flash cleans floors fast with no rinsing. In a Molly Weir voice. I can also smell 1960s Flash 😀

I learnt to type in the 6th form. In the Commerce classroom none of the typewriters (all manual!) had letters on the keys. There was a giant poster at the front of the room showing the keyboard and letters, so we used that to learn how to touch type. I seem to remember typing a lot of 'abe paid the bill' type phrases to learn where the keys were!

After I graduated I did a post-grad secretarial course, and learned Pitman shorthand. Managed to get up to 120wpm in the 6 months but never used it. Shame to forget it as it could have been very useful.

Seeing comments about shorthand, I still use it just about every day. A large part of my work is taking near verbatim minutes and it would be impossible to do this without using shorthand. I learnt Teeline shorthand on day release from work when I was 16 in 1974 and it was so easy compared with Pitmans. My mum amways thought it was very inferior, and I don’t think you can get to the sort of speed in Teeline that is possible with Pitmans. She was always very proud that she held the speed record for the Manchester Pitmans College of 220wpm. She was still writing things in shorthand when she died in her 90s.

If I'm typing now and make a mistake my brain immediately stops my fingers going any further so I can correct it.

Thank-you for this thread 😊 It's unearthed lots of memories.

Tippex paper always makes me think of typing up my long essay when I was studying English at university in London. I was alone in my room at the top of a three-storey house between Christmas and New Year, all my housemates still away.

My mum used to drive my brother and me mad by writing lists in shorthand. When I was 15, in 1975, she made me learn to type. I learnt with a company called Scheidegger. The keys of the typewriters were covered in coloured caps. Each finger had its own colour. I didn't want to learn to type for the snobbish reason that CSE girls did typing, not O level girls like me. However, I thank my mum now because being able to type fast (78wpm) has meant I was never without temp work between full time jobs and have been able to not rely on anyone else to do my typing in career jobs.

My first job after graduating was in the technical service department of Gestetner, sending out engineers to fix broken photocopiers, stencil machines and offset litho machines. That job taught me so much: how to handle furious people on the phone, how to schedule work for other people, how to politely stand up for myself, and, sadly, that racism, sexism and homophobia were aspects of real life that university had shielded me from in the early 1980s.

@titchy "How about NCR paper (No Carbon Required - type once, get up to four copies!)"

Remember it well. I had a job in the 80's that required several copies of one document (think customer copy, contract note and file copy) all achieved at once with NCR paper. It was fine whilst we still used electric typewriters but then they installed word processors with a central printer and the NCR would constantly jam up.

I applied for a temp job in 2011 and had to go in to do a typing test. It was like going back in time.

I passed the speed part and also the accurate spelling bit too. I got the job and later was made permanent.