Does anybody here still write using a typewriter?

I used to have one as a kid which I found in a car boot sale, the clicks of the keys were so satisfying. I'm pretty sure there are novelty laptops you can get that come in the shape of a typewriter, if you want the aesthetic and convenience in one sitting.

 

There are!

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/4/7/15221566/penna-retro-typewriter-bluetooth-keyboard-kickstarter

While I might enjoy typing, and am old enough to have done a lot of typing with them, I also remember what a pain it was to correct a mistake, either messy white out or retype the whole damned thing while making new mistakes.

 

Thanks for the link!

I can imagine it was quite a frustrating past time, I was just a kid so mistakes weren't a big deal to me, I mostly did it for fun

 

Ah. Understandable. Being a mouser, I always forget about the key combo folk. (Dyslexic, so key combos could go all kinds of bad.) I'm looking down at my keyboard and the only extras I use regularly are the numerical keypad and arrow keys.

 

I didn't have a computer with a mouse until I built my first real one around 2003. Before then I was almost always using the Unysis Icon computers my school had and they used a pretty much useless (but fun) trackball, so keyboard shortcuts and function buttons was practically a necessity. Back then using a typewriter was actually easier and faster than writing on computer.

 

I had three early and amusing experiences with computers vs. typewriters
1. When I got my MS degree at the Naval PG School in Monterey in the 1970s, the added a "word processing" program to their mainframe IBM 360 to support thesis writing. THis was not a console and keyboard. You typed out the text (and equations with a non-WYSIWIG set of arcane codes) on IBM punch cards, and submitted them for overnight batch processing. The advantage was if you needed to change a typo, or rewrite a sentence, you only had to change one card. The disadvantage was that if you dropped the box containing your several thousand IBM cards containing your thesis, at about one card per line of text, you just scrambled your memory!
2. My next tour I was Training Officer at a squadron on Guam, and we undertook to establish a new training curriculum for ten flight crew positions in the EC-130. Guam had just gotten one (ONE) IBM Selectric Typewriter with magnetic card memory... a memory card about the size of an IBM paper card but containing probably 100K of text. The advantage was you could edit the text without retyping it. We wangled a drug deal with the Base COs office that our YN3 (secretary) would learn how to use it, train his YNs, and we got priority on it for our training project... worked well.
3. Finally, in the mid 1980s I was battle group comm officer on an aircraft carrier, the USS Constellation. We got a Xerox 860, with 8 1/2 in floppy drives, for composing messages. This replaced chunkety-chunk electromechanical teletypewriters that 'stored" a message on paper tape. The 860 had the advantage that, when ready for transmission, it would cut a paper tape of the message that we could "bunny tube' down to Main Comm, with color coded tape to identify our staff messages. This was a real word processor, minus the mouse and track ball, and the user interface looked a lot like Word 15 years later, including the black text on white background. The problem was that everyone on the staff decided that they had an opportunity to become the great American writer. Messages got longer and longer, though they were still leaving the ship at 50WPM teletype over the air! And everyone wanted the opportunity to edit every one of the "happy to glad" changes messages underwent as they were "chopped" through the various departments. I finally had to put a stop to both, the first by having the admiral award "the hog of the month" award to the officer who submitted the longest message. The second by forcing everyone to stick to pen and ink changes, until it was time to submit the message to the admiral or COS for release.

In my non-fiction story in work on TACAMO, my aviation community, the Navy went from looking for a solution to communicating with submarines survivably, to doing something that had never been done before: transmitting high powered, low frequency radio from an aircraft using five miles of trailing wire antenna in just one year. We went from "how to we do this?" in 1963 to flying proof of concept flight testing in 1964, to standing up two squadrons totaling 1000 men and twelve aircraft with built-in comm suites by 1968. I am convinced that if we had word processors, we would have generated a ton of paper work, but no hardware. Likewise, if we would have had modeling and simulation software, we would have generated half a dozen different models of how to do this, but nothing on the air.

 

While I was at university, must have been about '92 or '93, the university library had recycled the old typewriters and made students type their own library cards. That was fun! Imagine a corner of desks with about 20 typewriters, and a bunch of students hacking away on them, and every 10 seconds you would hear a variation of "Where's the smegging DEL key?"

 

Focus writer allows you to type in a distraction-free environment with typewriter sound effects!

 

I like that program. Also, Scrivener has a fullscreen mode, and even Word now has a "Focus" option under its various views that gets rid of everything on the screen but your document. But neither have the typewriter sound effects!

 

There are several aps out there for Mac that will do the typewriter sound thingy in any application. Macs tend to treat these kinds of "in the background" aps as universal (like the dictionaries) so they function in anything, not just specific applications.

 

Ah...I did not know that. Thank you. I may check one out, though when I used Focus Writer on Windows I turned it on only briefly, as a novelty, and then turned it off again.

 

I can recommend other programs for both Mac and Windows, if you'd like. Either way, whereas I like FocusWriter, I've never used it as my main processor. It just doesn't have all the features necessary for me.

 

Upper elementary and middle schools here in the US have keyboarding classes, often combined with teaching in MS Office and, sometimes, rudimentary computer programming. The idea is to get the kids to use more than their thumbs . . .

 

My older brother used to use a typewriter. Granted, he's a raging hipster and I never understood it, but I guess it was fun for him. Maybe? Is writing with typewriters fun for something? I'm actually quite curious.

Also, he seemed quite satisfied with it, so that's a good thing, I guess.

 

And one good rain storm . . .

 

Been there, done that, won't go back!

 

The one reason I wish my electric typewriter still worked is for envelopes. I've had computers and printers since 1995. The earlier printers were erratic about how they fed and printed them, and my current one won't take them at all. I have to address all my envelopes by hand.

 

There's a different pace and rhythm to using a typewriter (ETA: especially a manual typewriter) than with a computer keyboard. Also, editing is extremely difficult with a typewriter, so writers who get too caught up in editing sometimes prefer typewriters to keep the first draft moving forward.

edited because I cannot write today

 

Well, I use both. I draft on manual typewriters and edit by retyping the pages on my MacBook.

 

God, no, but I still own the last one I ever used.

 

I hate printers. At times I think they're specifically designed to be brats and at other times I'm positive of it. I used to have an old Epson bubblejet printer that worked great for printing envelopes, but eventually they stopped selling ink for it, so I started refilling the cartridges, then computers moved from having serial ports to USB, so I had to work out an adapter, but when I upgraded from Windows XP to Windows 7 it just became far too much trouble to even get the thing to connect, so I just started printing addresses on those sticky address labels anytime I need to sent somewhat professional post anywhere.

 

I know for a fact that many offices still have a typewriter just for typing labels and envelopes, because doing that with a printer is such a pain in the ass and a typed address label often lasts longer and more legible than a printed label.

 

My friend's parents got two QwerkyWriter S keyboards. They're really expensive, but my friend's dad was at a tech conference and he may have gotten them for free.

In any case they look, sound, and feel great. Obviously not a *legitimate* typewriter but I'm honestly considering saving up and getting one. It would be cool to have a dedicated keyboard for writing, but has modern functionality (Bluetooth, can be hooked up to just about any device, etc.)

Anything to make the process more fun. Spice things up with a bit of novelty.

 

The last typewriter I recall using was the one my parents had. I was a kid then, and I used to type out all kinds of things on that machine; I loved it.

 

I want a manual typewriter. If EMP attack takes out every single electronic thing, I’ll still want to write.