How?

A post from red­cub caused me to won­der about something.

Back in the dark ages, I took a high school typ­ing class. It was, in fact, the only class that my par­ents ever absolute­ly required me to take.1They actu­al­ly demand­ed a year. After one quar­ter, the kind teacher explained that I was already well over 80 wpm and had all the forms down, so two more quar­ters would be a waste of my time.

For­mat­ting var­i­ous doc­u­ments was part of the class. Block style, mod­i­fied block, indent­ed, etc. Of course, we also did envelopes2I’d still rather use a type­writer than a word proces­sor and print­er for envelopes, but it isn’t prac­ti­cal to keep a type­writer around sole­ly for that pur­pose. I lust after a ded­i­cat­ed label print­er, but can’t jus­ti­fy the pur­chase. and memos. 

Now that typ­ing class­es prob­a­bly aren’t even taught, and most peo­ple I know learn “key­board­ing” by using com­put­ers from an ear­ly age, how do they learn those things? Osmosis?

I’ve run into lots of pro­fes­sion­als who can’t for­mat let­ters or mem­os, much less envelopes, with­out using Word tem­plates. I sup­pose they planned on hav­ing sec­re­taries, but of course, very few peo­ple rate admin­is­tra­tive sup­port staff in most orga­ni­za­tions these days.

Cyn is Rick's wife, Katie's Mom, and Esther & Oliver's Mémé. She's also a professional geek, avid reader, fledgling coder, enthusiastic gamer (TTRPGs), occasional singer, and devoted stitcher.
Posts created 4259

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Related Posts

Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel.

Back To Top