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.

i discovered many years before that when using a keyboard (can't do it on a laptop) that i keep my right thumb pressed against the front edge of the keyboard. No idea why but it is now a habit i can't break.

Oh gosh I wonder what I might do! You’re right it’s been so important in my working life, especially when laptops came along as I could have meetings and just take notes direct. Just as well as my handwritten notes are illegible

Occasionally, I wonder how much higher the productivity is of people who can touch type. Employers certainly get more for their money. I also think about some men not havingkeyboard skills, showing no interest in acquiring them, and getting promoted for sitting in meetings all day and making ponderous pronouncements.

And my favourite: the colleague whose PA had to put staples in his stapler for him. It was a great moment when she strode across the open plan office flourishing the newly replenished stapler and a sandwich and said: 'Here's your lunch, David, and here's your stapler.' This same colleague, who sat back to back with a member of my team, once shouted for all to hear: 'Who's X?', naming the team member, with whom he had sat back to back for over 12 months. These small pleasures are lost when you work at home.

I've never been told I have a super-power before, though it depends on the keyboard as to how quick.

I thought it was the one benefit from having piano lessons as a child.

I think those of us who can touch type take it for granted. Presumably, if you know you have to type 2,000 words with two fingers, it feels like a tremendous chore.

My lovely mum sent me for typing lessons whule I was doing my A levels. She said it would come in useful with all these new computer things becoming popular in offices. And she was so right - nearly 40 years on and I too impress my younger colleagues with the ability to type while looking elsewhere.

In my first office job in the late 80s, one of our clients was based in the Falkland Islands. No email then - we conducted business over the phone (with terrible delays on the line) and by telex - a massive machine that had its own executive desk in the corner of the office. No Microsoft PCs then either - we had computers installed with some sort of standalone WP package - possibly WordStar?? All keyboard commands, no mouse then.

I have a wordstar certificate.... earned just as mouse technology arrived!
Amazing how many technologies have come and gone like floppy disks and fax machines.
When I was doing o levels slide rules were in daily use but calculators were just appearing. I loved my slide rule.

I felt the same about log tables.

I had a typing test in a solicitors office not for speed they just wanted to know if I knew my way around a legal document which I did.

I worked for a newspaper for many years and one part of my job was to take telephoned copy from journalists, our own and freelancers at night. I took copy for sports, criminal proceedings, local politics and local village news. Could be very busy some nights.

It was a really good way to build up your speed as you had to be pretty fast and accurate to get everything down and sent through to editorial.