On Friday, October 11, 2002, at 11:42 , Jack Russell wrote:
> Just think of your e-mail as
> being written on a typewriter. No italics, no bold, no underline. Just
> old fashioned diacritical marks for emphasis.
Actually, to be fastidiously accurate, it WAS possible to underline
passages of text on manual typewriters (I learned typing on manual
typewriters in high school). There was an underline character on the
keyboard. On my grandfather's typewriter, it used to be SHIFT-6.
All I had to do to underline a word or passage is backspace until I was
at the beginning of what I wanted to underline, then type SHIFT-6
repeatedly until I was at the end of what I wanted underlined. Each
strike would draw one "segment" of the underline positioned perfectly
under the text. The character was even wide enough so a series of them
appeared to be a SOLID underline.
Also, most manual typewriters didn't have an exclamation point (!) key,
either. To make an exclamation point, you'd type a period (.),
backspace, then type an apostrophe (') over it. This is why the
apostrophe on manual typewriters is straight up and down and not slanted
or curly so it would look right over the period for an exclamation point.
Most manual typewriters didn't have a number "1," either. You created a
"1" by typing a lowercase "l." Actually, take a look at the lowercase
"l" in Courier font. It DOES look a bit like a number one, even
today. ;) It wasn't until computers came along that an ACTUAL number
"1" became necessary, since a computer needs a separate character to
distinguish from one to the other. Computers can't "see" the fact that
one character might look like something else. :)
Some typewriters didn't have a "0," either. You used an uppercase "O"
for that (my grandfather's typewriter, however, was a very high quality
model that DID have an actual "0" in the top row).
Actually, there was reference to this in the early VIC-20 and Commodore
64 instruction manuals. They cautioned users who were used to manual
typewriters to make sure they use the "1" and "0" keys on the keyboard
instead of the lowercase "l" and uppercase "O" as they were accustomed
to, explaining that using letters where numbers were expected by the
computer would probably cause an error. :)
Sorry for the rant. I've been in a nostalgic mood recently, and I've
been thinking a lot about the old manual typewriters, VIC-20, 64 and
other stuff from my childhood. The original comment kinda sent me off
on a tangent. :)
John A. Ardelli
Owner/Moderator
BIFIDA-L: The Original Spina Bifida Discussion List
The Crystal Corner - The Original Dark Crystal Discussion List
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