At one time most of the correction fluid available in the UK was made in Germany. I has this weird theory that the reason for this was that the Germans go in for those very long compound nouns. These words are so long that they forget halfway-through how to spell the darn things. Hence the need for the stuff.
It won’t be long before it’s gone completely. There was a fad in the 90’s where (stupid) kids were pouring the stuff out onto a smooth surface and waiting for it to dry so they could chop it up and snort it.
That’s why there’s a warning label on it.
In the 80s kids were just sniffing the stuff the way you’d sniff glue - I’m pretty sure that’s where the warnings began.
And have you noticed that the bristle brushes that used to be in the correction fluid bottles have been replaced with a bigger sponge that uses much more fluid and makes a real mess? If you still have any bottles with brushes, save the brush for use with future bottles that come with sponges.
Though I did find that Office Depot can still supply ones with brushes. They don’t stock it on the shelf where I live but it has a special product number and can be ordered.
“Wite-Out” is another brand, that, like “Kleenex” has become a usufructure.
My dad’s family used to be friends with the Nesmiths because they went to the same church (they were all Christian Scientists). According to my grandmother, the mother invented the original formula in her kitchen.
The formula’s changed a lot since then. Originally it must have had some kind of really fast solvent in it, but thanks to inhalant-abusing kids and environmental VOC rules they changed over to a water-based formula. As far as I know it consists mostly of water, acrylic emulsion and TiO2. It might also have some filler pigment in it. Chopping it up and snorting the dry product wouldn’t do anything but fuck up your nose. (And there are probably some kids who do it just for that.)
- Correction tape/ribbon: I absolutely hate using that stuff by hand, but my mother’s typewriter used a large ribbon of it to correct mistakes while typing.
- Typewriter tape: Still available at the office supply store I work for.
- Liquid Paper: I usually hear it referred to as White-Out, even if it’s not that particular brand. People use it to correct mistakes in hand writing with pens, because it looks neater than scratching out.
- Sponge applicators: I prefer them. They allow for finer control - you can use just the very tip of a corner and get extremely fine work out of them. Additionally, they never get all crapped up with chunks of dried-out fluid like the brushes do.
I forgot to add that among your choices from the White-Out brand available on my store’s shelves are traditional brush-tip applicators, sponge-tip applicators, ecru and yellow colors, and a special water-based version that, IMO, is far less useful - you need to apply multiple coats of it, which kind of negates the purpose of a quick and easy error correction.
Yup. And composer Richard Rodgers’ wife Dorothy Rogers invented the Jonny Mop.
Another one of those prehistoric products that my mom and Betty Rubble used to use.
I guess people don’t use it for typing mistakes much any more, but it’s great stuff for when you’re writing something in ink and mess up. Much neater than trying to use an ink eraser or scribble out the mistake.
Which leads me to a discourse on the good old days, when one had to use a little pencil-shaped or wheel-shaped eraser to correct mistakes on the stuff you were typing, and had to use a little plastic or metal shield against the paper so you’d only erase the one mistyped letter and not smear up the rest of the page. And we won’t even get into what one had to do to fix mistakes on the carbon copies.
And then there was ink eradicator, back in the days when the teachers used fountain pens. Wouldn’t work on ballpoint ink, but did a dandy job on Quink and Sheaffer Washable Blue. My fourth-grade teacher used to send a kid to the office to get their bottle of ink eradicator on a regular basis, so for Christmas I got my dad to buy some at the college bookstore and I gave her her very own bottle of ink eradicator. She told me it was the best present she ever got, and after watching her face light up when she opened it, I think she really meant it.
It used to be that there were several different kinds of white-out and you had to buy the kind specifically for your purpose. If you tried to use the kind for typewriter ribbon on ballpoint ink, you’d end up with a blue soggy mess. Nowadays, though, there’s some kind of universal solvent in the stuff so you can use it on just about anything.
White-out doesn’t dissolve anything. It just paints over it, and when it’s dry, you write on the white-out instead of the paper. If you scratch the white-out off before it’s completely dry, your original error is still there on the paper.
Toluene can be bought at the paint store in up to 55 gal. quantities…
Tell me, I’m left handed. I might as well just break it open at the start.
Actually, this is typical of a kind of absolute perfectionism enforced by hide-bound, rule-bound organizations (corporations, schools, etc.).
In contrast, take a look at an actual copy of the US Declaration of Independence – there are scratched-out words, and missed words inserted above the line. Apparently, the signers of that important document valued content more than appearance
Yes, but infamousmom’s point was that it used to dissolve the ink, even though it wasn’t supposed to, thus becoming blue not white.
Nowadays, that’s true. But it used to be that the solvent in the original to-be-used-on-typing-mistakes stuff would dissolve ballpoint ink, so if you tried to white-out something you wrote, you’d be worse off than before. You had to get the white-out specifically marked for use on handwriting.
Yup. Anyone who was once taught by a high school typing teacher is going to have that kind of attitude. 