Typewriter

A typewriter is a mechanical, electromechanical, or electronic device with a set of "keys" that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a document, usually paper.

Typewriter legacy

In the developed world, with the proliferation of the personal computer with word processing software, typewriters have faded into near-obscurity and are now used mainly by people without access to, or the training to use, a computer, and for specialized applications such as filling out paper forms. The monospaced, stark, and slightly uneven look of typewritten text can have some artistic appeal, and some people, young or old, prefer to use a typewriter occasionally.

Related Topics:
Personal computer - Word processing - Software

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In some countries where personal computers are not ubiquitous, one may go to the public square and find individuals who gather there with their old but sturdy typewriters. These individuals rent out their services as on-the-spot letter writers, accepting dictation from their customers, who may be illiterate or who simply do not own a typewriter.

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Keyboard layout

The 1874 Sholes & Glidden typewriters established the QWERTY layout for the letter keys. During the period in which Sholes and his colleagues were experimenting with this invention, other keyboard arrangements were apparently tried, but these are poorly documented. The tanatalizing near-alphabetical sequence on the "home row" of the QWERTY layout (d-f-g-h-j-k-l) suggests that a straightforward alphabetical arrangement may have been the original starting point. The QWERTY layout of keys has become the de facto standard for English-language typewriter and computer keyboards. Other languages written in the Latin alphabet may use variants of the QWERTY layouts, such as the French AZERTY and German QWERTZ layouts.

Related Topics:
QWERTY - De facto - Latin alphabet - AZERTY - QWERTZ

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The QWERTY layout is thought by some to be an inefficient one, since it requires a touch-typist to move his or her fingers between rows to type the most common letters. A popular story suggests that it was used for early typewriters because it was inefficient; it slowed a typist down so as to reduce the frequency of the typewriter's typebars from wedging together and jamming the machine. A more likely explanation is that the QWERTY arrangement was designed to reduce the likelihood of internal clashing by placing commonly used combinations of letters farther away from each other inside the machine. This allowed the user to actually type faster without jamming. Unfortunately, no definitive explanation for the QWERTY keyboard has been found, and typewriter afficianados continue to debate the issue.

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Interestingly, the word "typewriter" is one of the longest single English words that can be typed on a single row (namely, the top row) of a QWERTY keyboard ('proprietory', 'protereotype' and 'rupturewort' are longer). One plausible story behind the unusual layout is that it was designed so that the salesmen could quickly type the word ?typewriter?, thereby impressing their prospective customers. It seems unlikely however, that the engineers would have designed the keyboard layout around a simple sales gimmick.

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A number of radically different layouts, such as the Dvorak keyboard, have been proposed, but these have not been able to displace the QWERTY layout; their proponents claim considerable advantages, but so far inertia has prevented any mainstream adoption.

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Many old typewriters do not contain a separate key for the numeral 1, and some even older ones also lack the numeral zero. Typists learned the habit of using the lowercase letter l for the digit 1, and the uppercase O for the zero. Some still carry the habit of using the letter l instead of the numeral 1 with them when typing on a computer, sometimes leading to errors, especially when working with numerical data.

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Computer jargon

Several words of the 'typewriter age' have survived into the personal computer era. Examples include:

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• carbon copy – now in its abbreviated form "CC" designating copies of email messages (with no carbon involved, at least not until potential printouts);
• cursor – a marker used to indicate where the next character will be printed
• carriage return (CR) – indicating an end of line and return to the first column of text (and on some computer platforms, advancing to the next line)
• line feed (LF), aka 'newline' – standing for moving the cursor to the next on-screen line of text in a word processor document (and on the eventual printout(s) of the document).