December 15, 2007

• The quick brown fox.....

  This is so far off any current topic that I think I'll call it "I wandered away from Christmas and Politics, and this is where I ended up..."

  Do you remember my mentioning that I took typing in High School. Well, I did , or, rather, it took me. I was never very good at it and, frankly, I'm still a 'hunt-and-peck' kind of gal. The idea behind this course was to teach college bound kids how to type, for reports, and papers, and job applications. Basically, it was business typing with really long paragraphs. A farce at best, but I did learn how to set up a 'proper' business letter. Some of you have probably never even seen a 'proper' business letter.

  These are my recollections. First you start with your address on the upper right hand margin (street # lined up with town name). FYI: Zip codes had been invented, but no one really used them til the late 60's. Skip a line and then put the date, or, you can center it on the page. Next you skip another line and, lined up on the left margin, you put the Company name and address. Skip another line and on the left margin; "Dear Mr. Whatcherface". Skip a line, 'Tab' (5 spaces?)....and you were good to go. Until you get to the "Sincerely"s. That must be centered. Skip 4 or 5 lines and type your official name (Mrs.- none of this Ms. bull - and your full name). There's a lot more stuff about cc's and encl's, but this is already hurtin' my brain. We spent a whole 2 weeks on envelopes, with measurements and even stamp placement. Can you see now how I almost flunked this course? And that's why they called them secret-aries. They were the only ones who could remember the "Secrets of a Successful Business Letter".

  There have been a lot of changes to the keyboard, since the days of pre-electric. Manual typewriters are the reason for the "qwerty" keyboard we've all come to know and...tolerate. They tried making an alphabetical type keyboard, but the typing whizzes were so fast that the keys kept jamming. They had to space the keys so that the t-h-e's and the i-n-g's didn't clog up the procedure. Moot, now, but, can you imagine if they changed it. I hear you can get your keyboard layout reconfigured...but...Huh! What I really miss (how full must my life be...) is the upper and lower period key and the same for the comma key. Mind you the manual typewriter had no " 1 " (you used small L-l), but it did have a 1/4 - 1/2 key. I just noticed, there're no 'cents' signs anymore! But there are exclamation points !!!! boy, was that one a pain. You had to use the apostrophe and a period. The good news was, "You never use an exclamatory sentence in a business letter."

  I figure this is probably a lot more than you've thought about your keyboard in a long time (if ever) and, really,....Why should you...You have shopping to do...lists to make....meals to plan...political commentary to analyze... just be sure to step "over the lazy dog"

  Take it easy on yourselves...It's only the holidays...They'll be back next year.
  I'm gonna go google the typewriter song, again.....Ta

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  • 10:53 pm
  • 12 Comments