# Were we a bit foolish to abandon typewriters? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 22, 2015, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-we-a-bit-foolish-to-abandon-typewriters/735471 "2015-10-22T16:54:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Mudshark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f04885/32.png) [@Mudshark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mudshark)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-we-a-bit-foolish-to-abandon-typewriters/735471/41 "2015-10-23T05:41:55Z")
I still use a typewriter whenever I can. I don’t know how to use a PDF conversion thing, and really have no desire to learn. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-we-a-bit-foolish-to-abandon-typewriters/735471/42 "2015-10-23T05:59:25Z")
I taught myself to touch-type in 6th grade (circa 1963), and my parents gave me a (somewhat already used) Royal portable typewriter. This was back in the days when Royal portable typewriters were actually sturdily built with metal frames, not cheapo plastic. I still have that typewriter. I can’t remember when I last used it for anything, even so much as a mailing label. And not that I’ve looked, but does anybody even make typewriter ribbons any more? There used to be umpteen-dozen different kinds of ribbons, since every different make and model of typewriter had ribbons with different spools. Office supply stores had an entire aisle just for typewriter ribbons. ---
**Author:** ![Mudshark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f04885/32.png) [@Mudshark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mudshark)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-we-a-bit-foolish-to-abandon-typewriters/735471/43 "2015-10-23T06:13:58Z")
I don’t know about the new ribbons, but I have a kit that lets you “re ink” the old ribbons. Its probably from the early 1960’s. I remember my grandmother doing it once on her spare manual typewriter, and it was a messy process. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-we-a-bit-foolish-to-abandon-typewriters/735471/44 "2015-10-23T06:44:58Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > If someone hands me a paper form, I’m not going to reward them with a neatly typed product. This. And not many other people are going to type it either. I would write legibly. Though I probably wouldn’t apply to a place stuck in the 19th century. As someone old enough to have filled out a lot of forms on a typewriter, it isn’t that easy to line things up and make sure you don’t have typos. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-we-a-bit-foolish-to-abandon-typewriters/735471/45 "2015-10-23T06:50:16Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > I couldn’t get rid of typewriters fast enough. I typed my PhD thesis on a typewriter 53 years ago and it was gruesome. Have you ever tried correcting an original and 5 carbons? Tried to fabricate math symbols by overstriking one letter with another (e.g. get a theta by overstriking an o with a -) or repeatedly rolled the carriage up a half space to get a subscript? Editing meant retyping, so I never edited it. When I did mine 35 years ago most PhDs were typed by grad student wives making extra money. As a Computer Scientist I wrote mine using runoff for formatting. Having seen a professor revise his by running it through an IBM Selectric terminal twice (once for text and the second time for subscripts/superscripts) I banished everything that couldn’t be easily printed from my thesis. This was before laser printers. Now people have it easy. There is one thing I do miss about typewriters - addressing envelopes. I know you can do them in a printer, but it is a pain, so I do them by hand. A nicely typed envelope looks much better. ---
**Author:** ![bengangmo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@bengangmo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bengangmo)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 7:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-we-a-bit-foolish-to-abandon-typewriters/735471/46 "2015-10-23T07:46:30Z")
New Zealand government requires Citizenship applications to be hand written (or at least they did 5 years ago) ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-we-a-bit-foolish-to-abandon-typewriters/735471/47 "2015-10-23T12:30:48Z")
> [@Balthisar](#): > > Whoah! IT pushed an upgrade from 2010 to 2013 recently and the only thing I noticed was how ugly Office suddenly was. But I just checked Word with a PDF, and now my mind is blown. _Awesome_. Yeah, we had it for at least a year before the word got out about that. Incredibly useful. We have people coming in all the time with their resumes in pdf and they need to make changes - this is really a game changer. ---
**Author:** ![Carryon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9fc29f/32.png) [@Carryon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carryon)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-we-a-bit-foolish-to-abandon-typewriters/735471/48 "2015-10-23T14:51:54Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > Pro tip - Word 2013 can open most PDFs and edit them. Word may allow you to convert the PDF file into a Word document, which you can then edit, but it will not edit the PDF directly which is the main issue. Any PDF I deal with needs to be exact. If you edit them in Word it changes the formatting from slightly to totally and then the original party more often than not refuses it. ---
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-we-a-bit-foolish-to-abandon-typewriters/735471/49 "2015-10-23T14:53:31Z")
We tried to keep our typewriter at work, but after it sat around for 10+ years without being used we finally dumped it. Same with the fax machine, although we have missed that a few times when dealing with government agencies. ---
**Author:** ![Carryon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9fc29f/32.png) [@Carryon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carryon)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-we-a-bit-foolish-to-abandon-typewriters/735471/50 "2015-10-23T14:53:37Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > take a picture of it and email it to yourself. Paste it into Excel or any program that has insertable text boxes. Make one text box without borders and copy/paste it as needed over the form. If you don’t have excel then use the free stuff like openofffce. While that is certainly an option, it is more work than simply printing it and filling it out with a typewrite, which the OP seems to be alluding to. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-we-a-bit-foolish-to-abandon-typewriters/735471/51 "2015-10-23T20:20:22Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > . . . There is one thing I do miss about typewriters - addressing envelopes. I know you can do them in a printer, but it is a pain, so I do them by hand. A nicely typed envelope looks much better. Total agreement…and the printer model I have doesn’t feed envelopes. I use mailing labels, which look…okay. At least semi-professional. But you’re very right: a typed envelope looks classy. ---
**Author:** ![Kropotkin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kropotkin/32/18045_2.png) [@Kropotkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kropotkin)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2015, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-we-a-bit-foolish-to-abandon-typewriters/735471/52 "2015-10-24T00:25:55Z")
> [@Mudshark](#): > > I don’t know about the new ribbons, but I have a kit that lets you “re ink” the old ribbons. Its probably from the early 1960’s. I remember my grandmother doing it once on her spare manual typewriter, and it was a messy process. Any else here a fan of Robb White’s Our Virgin Island? I think I remember he soaked his typewriter ribbon in light machine oil to get more life out of it. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2015, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-we-a-bit-foolish-to-abandon-typewriters/735471/53 "2015-10-24T15:26:26Z")
> [@Carryon](#): > > While that is certainly an option, it is more work than simply printing it and filling it out with a typewrite, which the OP seems to be alluding to. absolutely. I have a typewriter or two somewhere in the attic along with a turntable and a reel to reel. I think I have a new fax machine that’s never been used. Probably lots of typewriters available at flea markets if the op thinks a lot of manual paperwork is a future possibility. But the thread was discussed on a computer over the internet so I’m thinking the practical solution is going to be tied to that technology. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2015, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-we-a-bit-foolish-to-abandon-typewriters/735471/54 "2015-10-24T16:47:10Z")
> [@Kropotkin](#): > > Twenty years ago I bought a 1959 Olympia “portable” typewriter. The original bill of sale was with it: $159. So it is now worth $1,300.11 in 2015 dollars… > > My niece and nephew, then about ten years old, thought it was great: you didn’t have to plug it in, so it was truly portable, apart from weighing 20 pounds, and best of all, it printed INSTANTLY! > > Years ago I read that switching from a manual to an electric typewriter would add about a pound to your weight over a year, so there’s that. A 15 year old watching me type on an IBM Selectric II remarked “That is so cool! You can see what you’re printing as you print it.” A four year old asked me, in a very hushed, reverent voice “Is that a typewriter?” I told her mother, who remarked “I didn’t know she knew the word.” ---
**Author:** ![Belowjob2.0](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Belowjob2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Belowjob2.0)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2015, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-we-a-bit-foolish-to-abandon-typewriters/735471/55 "2015-10-24T19:01:58Z")
We haven’t exactly abandoned typewriters. They’re still going strong in India and other parts of the world. > **[The typewriter lives on in India](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2011-sep-01-la-fg-india-typewriter-20110901-story.html)** > > The typewriter lives on in India Here in the States, there’s an enourmous typewriter subculture, with hundreds of blogs dedicated to using, buying, selling, and repairing the machines. It’s called the typosphere. > **[Typecasting in the typosphere | Boing Boing](https://boingboing.net/2012/06/19/typecasting-in-the-typosphere.html)** > > In Salon Jessie Schiewe writes about the “typewritter renaissance” — the re-discovered delights of working on typewriters, or at least disassembling them for their parts. Max like… > **[The Classic Typewriter Page : All About Typewriters](https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/)** > > All about typewriters: history, > use, collecting, restoring, and more. It seems like a hipster fad, but it’s much more than just the young, urban overeducated types. It’s global phenomenon. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-we-a-bit-foolish-to-abandon-typewriters/735471.md?page=2)