Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, 1920-07-28

Excerpt

A CRIMINAL TYPE.

To-day I am MAKing aN inno6£vation. as you mayalready have gessed, I am typlng this article myself Zz½lnstead of writing it, The idea is to save time and exvBKpense, also to demonstyap demonBTrike= =damn, to demonstratO that I can type /ust as well as any blessedgirl 1f I give my mInd to iT"" Typlng while you compose is realy extraoraordinarrily easy, though composing whilr you typE is more difficult. I rather think my typing style is going to be different froM my u6sual style, but Idaresay noone will mind that much. looking back i see that we made rather a hash of that awfuul wurd extraorordinnaryk? in the middle of a woRd like thaton N-e gets quite lost? 2hy do I keep putting questionmarks instead of fulstopSI wonder. Now you see i have put a fulllstop instead Of a question mark it nevvvver reins but it pours.

the typewriter to me has always been a mustery£? and even now that I have gained a perfect mastery over the machine in gront of me i have npt th3 faintest idea hoW it workss% &or instance why does the thingonthetop the klnd of overhead Wailway arrrangement move along one pace afterr every word; I haVe exam@aaa ined the mechanism from all points of view but there seeems to be noreason atall whyit shouould do t£is . damn that £, it keeps butting in: it is Just lik real life. then there are all kinds oF attractive devisesand levers andbuttons of which is amanvel in itself, and does somethI5g useful without lettin on how it does iT.

Forinstance on this machinE which is A mi/et a mijge7 imean a mi/dgt, made of alumium,, and very light sothat you caN CARRY it about on your £olidays (there is that £ again) and typeout your poems onthe Moon immmmediately, and there is onely one lot of keys for capITals and ordinay latters; when you want todoa Capital you press down a special key marked cap i mean CAP with the lefft hand and yo7 press down the letter withthe other, like that abcd, no, ABCDEFG . how jolly that looks . as a mattr of fact th is takes a little gettingintoas all the letters on the keys are printed incapitals so now and then one forgets topress downthe SPecial capit al key. not often, though. on the other hand onceone £as got it down and has written anice nam e in capitals like LLOYdgeORGE IT IS VERY DIFFICULT TO REmemBER TO PUT IT DOWN AGAIN ANDTHE N YOU GET THIS SORT OF THING WICH SPOILS THE LOOOK OF THE HOLE PAGE . or els insted of preSSing down the key marked CAP onepresses down the key m arked FIG and then insted of LLOYDGEORGE you find that you have written ½½96% :394:3. this is very dissheartening and £t is no wonder that typists are sooften sououred in ther youth.

Apart fromthat though the key marked FIG is rather fun, since you can rite such amusing things withit, things like % and ГўЛњВє and dear old & not to mention = and ¼ and ¾ and!!! i find that inones ordinarry (i never get that word right) cor orresponden£c one doesn't use expressions like @@ and % % % nearly enough. typewriting gives you a new ideaof possibilities of the engli£h language; thE more i look at % the more beautiful it seems to Be: and like the simple flowers of england itis per£aps most beauti£ul when seeen in the masss, Look atit

% % % % % % % % % % % %

% % % % % % % % % % % %

% % % % % % % % % % % %

% % % % % % % % % % % %

how would thatdo for a BAThrooM wallpaper?...