“In my first job, each document typed included 5 onion skin papers, separated by carbon papers. If one mistake was made, the entire document was tossed and the process began anew. Hence, emphasis was placed on one’s ability to type without error. Of course, once someone announced that no mistakes could be made, a mistake took place and the document was tossed.”
I was one of two boys in my high school typing class. I knew I needed to know how to type. And I did a lot of typing in high school and college after that.
When I was in Basic Training in the Army, one Saturday we were in formation and the Lieutenant asked if any of us knew how to type. Normally you do not volunteer for anything, but I said I did know how to type. I was ordered to report to the orderly room, and for the next two weeks I replaced the company clerk, who was going on leave. The No Errors allowed applied to everything I typed for that two weeks. I soon learned to type error free. But, oh how it would have been so nice to have a word processor then!
And as for the Word Processor not knowing, that is okay, because I know. I regularly over-rule my built-in Word Processor corrections.
I was at Benning in 1983 and whoever had the assignment of getting the company newsletter out got to type it out on a mimeograph thingy. An error required putting some kind of liquid on the stencil, letting it dry, and then re-typing the word. Oh, what fun.
Ah yes, Army & typing. My section chief told the 1SGT that I could type and I became the shadow clerk for the 6 weeks before the annual general inspection retyping all of the battery commander’s policy letters, DFs, & etc. We had just gotten a new commander a couple of weeks before. The 1SGT did offer to have me given a clerk-typist’s MOS as my secondary (I was a 13E, field artillery fire direction center) so that if I decided to make a career of the Army I’d have a 2nd MOS to make it to retirement if my hearing got too bad to continue working with the guns. I declined saying that if I stayed in it would not be in artillery. 3 years later I reenlisted for military intelligence