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.

Yes I was an audio typist. Used those horrible little plastic white ear plugs. Really unhygienic.

Also completely different but I remember when you could walk into an insurance company and get insurance cover for your car and they would write you a cover note for a month which they kept a carbon copy of, until they typed up your insurance certificate.

Yes,I think it was called Tippex paper. Making a mistake when you were typing was an absolute pain in the arse back in the early 80s, especially if there were carbon copies involved,as you couldn't use Tippex paper or the Tippex liquid on them, you had to use an eraser,which inevitably ended up tearing the paper.

Who remembers Tippex thinners? They got your right off your box at the back of 4th form Geography 😆

That’s a lovely vision ❤️

I know! I once sat in an office of 8 secretaries, 50% smokers, fags got left burning away if the person left their desk. Hanging out of mouths whilst sorting the photocopying is a memory and going home reeking of smoke 😱

Yes, used it a lot, as well as all the different colours of Tippex (blue and pink and maybe even green, for different coloured paper).

There was also a white tape for handwriting too where you rolled it over the mistake to hide it and then wrote the correct thing onto the white tape in pen.

Do we all remember the Tippex thinners? You could get high on it if you used it too much, and even more so if you sniffed it from the bottle!

Yes, I used an IBM Golfball typewriter at work (revolutionary in its day) and I think that had a reel of correction tape. The typewriter was eventually written off as it became too uneconomical to repair, so I was allowed to bring it home and keep it. I still have it now! I think it's somewhere up in the loft.

Oh yes the thinners!

Can still do shorthand - it still comes in handy sometimes.
And have sent telexes.
I also type Very Loudly.
Gawd I feel old!

back in my YOP days i would be allowed to take my manual typewriter home on a Monday (on the back of my pushbike) because i used to go to typing lessons that evening. I passed the first exam but never learned to touch type until i went into the army, in the signals. We learned to type on converted electric typewriters which had no letters/markings on the keys. There was a giant keyboard above the blackboard at the front of the classroom with all the keys, they lit up in turn and you just had to put your hands on the keys and keep up... asdf asdf asdf etc etc

if you looked at your hands the sergeant used to put a box thing over them so you couldn't see your fingers. When you got up to - whatever it was, 16 wpm i think - you went into the big room full of teleprinters and learned further (faster) on them. We had to be 100% accurate, because we also had to type 5 figure cypher (blocks of 5 characters... pages and pages of them. They checked them by checking the paper tapes (matching up holes)

Yes, Tippex correction paper and Snowpake. I worked in a solicitors office and had to type Wills. No errors or corrections allowed! You could get to the very last paragraph and if you made a mistake you’d have to start typing the whole thing again. I became adept at hiding errors!!!

Yes I remember this in the early 1980s, much neater than Tippex and less messy to use.
I progressed to an electric typewriter which had a correction tape on it.

Yes! And typing with three sheets and two carbon papers between - so, in triplicate - so you had to get the all the correction papers lined up to correct all 3!

I remember one year on my birthday spilling Snowpake all down me. I had to try and get it all off using thinners, then going out with the office to have a birthday drink with everyone. That day of all days.

Oh yes and TIPPEX...!

Yes! I remember using it when I did my RSA level 1 typewriting whilst at school! Don’t think I’ve used a typewriter since🤨

I sat besides someone who typed wills and the speed and accuracy was incredible as it has to be. She could also correct the odd mistake meticulously, as obviously essential in Wills.

She also has a candle, tape, and seal for wax sealing the Will. Quite a work of art! Again no health and safety fire considerations but the whole office was smoky so it just wasn’t an issue. (I was stuck with making my cases to counsel look perfectly lined up, folded, and tied with pink tape(I think that is still used today but could be wrong).

The other thing I remember is marking up changes in documents by hand and with coloured pens, and manually colouring in photocopies of maps as colour copiers didn’t yet exist.

Office work was fairly varied...I worked in a company where the directors had very glamorous secretaries who always seemed to be taking dictation and making phone calls.
I was scruffing around on the shop floor! Quite a few people I worked with went off to do graduate secretarial courses and became PAs which seemed even more glamorous!

Wow, yes, I'd forgotten the wax seals and ribbon. Same with accountancy, we used to have to use wax and seals to authenticate share certificates, share transfer forms, etc. Each limited company we acted for had their own "stamp" and seals which were kept under lock and key and each had a register for us to write in to account for every seal we used so none were used for "irregular" purposes. Very embarrassing if we messed up and had to "sign out" another seal and we had to keep the "damaged/mistaken" share certificate or share transfer form to be countersigned as cancelled by the senior partner!

Same with accounts - rather than stapling several sheets, we'd tie them together with a piece of ribbon and seal the knot with wax and a stamp with our company name on so no one else could "manipulate" the accounts by removing a page and replacing it with different figures etc.

A very different World back then when it came to formal/important paperwork.

Re photocopiers, the place I started working got their first photocopier whilst I was there. The senior partner didn't "believe" in them being accurate so insisted everything we copied was "called over" by two staff who then had to both initial each copy to confirm it was a full copy with nothing missing nor changed!! It was exactly how they used to "copy" other documents before photocopiers, i.e. they'd literally type out every document as copies, call over and initial, for things like tax certificates, bank statements, important invoices etc - before photocopiers there was no other way to make copies of documents so it had to be done manually.

Yes. Carbons, stencils, Telex, Pitman Shorthand, Tippex liquid, typewriter eraser pencils)don’t forget you had to correct several copies. If you were cutting a stencil you couldn’t make any mistakes or if working in a Ministry. Financial schedules (tables) on special long platen machines involving large amount of money and touch typing these. (You had to add the number of characters in the columns up and down and subtract from the lines and spaces, divide to get even columned table and THEN carefully type in all the lines horizontally, remove paper and copies from machine and carefully insert again checking very carefully it was absolutely square). Then ensuring all the figures and column titles were centred (more maths).Having nervous breakdown with awful half broken electric typewriters after being super fast on manuals but being saved by golfball (typewriters)and shortly thereafter electronic typewriters with a paragraph’s memory (so you could proof read as you went more easily and correct before it printed), then computers with black background screens and computerised telex.
All this for a princely pittance based on living with parents or living off husband’s salary. Never mind, paid N.I disproportionate taxes on tiny pittance of salary and then told State Pension is now a Benefit🤨

Oh yes wax seals! We had an artful older “treasure” at one workplace who used to pretend to be hopeless so us youngsters would have to do them😉

Yes can look elsewhere but gets us into trouble with modern ahem, “autocorrect” on today’s tech. Within a short time I could read the holes on the telex tape too which came in very handy, as well as touch typing (sometimes very large numbers) on financial schedules (thanks to another poster for reminding about setting tabs!).Think this all comes from the language part of our brains.

Did anyone else find them selves waiting for the person dictating to compose what they were saying as they went along when taking shorthand dictation? Often you could copy in longhand if you’d wished. Shorthand still useful. Copy and audio typing could be a pain querying unclear parts of tape or copy. Remember double spaced “drafts”? This is where one’s editing and creative skills came in when author was unavailable.

Oh yes I found it so frustrating to have to “sit there with my book” when I could have been doing something else while boss pondered. And yes double spaced drafts!!!

I never kept up with my shorthand ( probably because of the boredom I’d experienced) - I was quite fast at Pitman new era I think it was.

I found touch typing skills brilliant for my later shift of career that included health and safety system auditing, great to be able to maintain eye contact whilst still making useful, legible, notes.

In my 30s, I moved cities and took a temporary PA job in a small business to tide me over. The other PAs were young school leavers (16+) and were aghast at my assertiveness with the director I worked for, who would say in front of everyone 'How can you have an English degree and not know how to spell (sector-specific, obscure word)?' I would reply: 'And how can you not know, after 20 years of talking into a dictaphone for 20 years, that you should identify specialist vocabulary and spell it out for someone who has not worked in this sector before?'

One of the PAs was obviously going places. 30 years on, she has administrative oversight of all five of the companies offices, director status, and has completed a business studies degree part-time while pregnant with the first of her three sons.

Touch typing is a super-power. Thanks to my daughter, I realise I stick my tongue out when clicking away on my keyboard.