Tuesday, April 01, 2008
The mechanics of writing
Having just finished a 45,000 word report, researching, writing, editing and typesetting it, my hands and wrists feel the strain, and it has got me thinking about the physical process of how I get my thoughts into words. I grew up in an age where typing was for girls—the only QWERTY keyboards that I ever saw were attached to manual typewriters, and no boy at school would ever have thought of going near one of these things. However, I did start to develop a pretty fast 2-finger style as a countermeasure to my scrawling illegible left-handed writing, and I typed most of my essays at school and university on a battered old sit-up-and-beg office typewriter that I bought for five pounds at an auction, soon superseded by an Olivetti lettera portable, that I still have tucked away against the day when civilization falls.
I then went onto golfball typewriters, including a wonderful IBM machine I used occasionally at work which had a 1-line memory, used to micro-justify word spacing, and produce text for typesetting. Easier on the fingers than the mechanical pressure needed to flip up pieces of metal to hit paper. And then word-processors!
Ah, the keyboards I have used on my computers. Ranging from the flimsy to those built like a tank. From the complete rubbish to the pretty good (NeXT’s Mk II keyboard, with the command bar under the space bar, was one of my favorites).
I’m rough on my keyboards; since I started working at home as a writer, I guess I’ve got through about a dozen keyboards in as many years. Some refuse to work any more. Some just hurt my hands after too long. Some are just built stupidly. I have recently been presented with a Dell keyboard at one placer where I work, and I have yet to meet a more stupid design. I’m no fan of Japanese 106-key layouts anyway, but this keyboard, although it does have little light up buttons to play music (useless in an office environment) has a space bar the size of a large backspace key. For English language typing, it means that you’re constantly hitting weird keys that automatically convert your spaces into whole-width spaces (don’t get me started on the craziness of typing Japanese on a computer!), start you entering katakana at random, etc. This is a really baaad keyboard. This keyboard is suitable for those poor Japanese who believe that a computer keyboard is a laptop keyboard, having been presented with a 13” screen and a cramped toy keyboard with far too many functions on it, to do their office work on. No wonder opticians have thriving businesses in Japan and shiatsu is a proven money-spinner. Happily, I only edit on this monstrosity, and don’t write using it. If I worked full-time in that office, i would be bringing in my own keyboard - there is no way that anyone should subject themselves to the torture of a poorly-designed device.
I’ve been using the standard Apple (English) keyboard for the past few years, and have been happy with it, but I’ve recently made the switch to a Logitech (Logicool in Japan) Wave keyboard . Yes, it looks weird, but it’s a lot more comfortable than the Microsoft keyboard which also curved round, and the key action is a lot smoother. Furthermore, it’s forcing me into typing better, and I am typing with more fingers, and possibly even faster than before. Anyway, this is the keyboard I will be using to write my blog entries in the future. I’ll be talking about writing - not just the words, but the way to produce them, and to present them. Let me know if there’s anything in particular that you’d like to see.