Acclamator
Posts: 257 +0
I type in home row position but I don't always type in the 100% correct fashion.
Does anyone type in 'home-row' position?
- Thread starter InsaneVr6
- Start date
my wife and i were watching some history show the other day - and it showed an old-style typesetting machine.
newspapers, books, etc. used to be printed by a printing press-type machine. each page of 'type' or text had to be assembled for each page.
for gutenberg, the letters were made individually into little plugs or slugs, pretty much like each letter on the old-fashioned typewriters, and pressed into a background thingie that had a coating of wax. Then, this page of type was pressed from the letter side so all letters sunk into the wax 1. to be held in place and 2. to all be at the same level.
when all letters were at the same level, then you could put ink on this plate of type and press it on paper, and have your printed page.
print as many pages as you like.
but the letters had to be placed one-by-one by hand.
evnetually, someone invented a machine that would assemble lines of type.
all you had to do was press a key, one key for each letter, and the machine would go pick up the letter, then put it in the line of type following the previous letter.
so, the job of pressing the letters was 'typecasting.' so you could print the same thing over and over and over. now, when someone gets typecast, they get hired to play the same thing over and over and over.
typecasters got really fast at pressing the keys to order the machine to put the letters into the slug lines of type.
the machines jammed because the typists were too fast.
then, someone re-arranged the keys to make it more difficult to go fast.
this is the qwerty arrangement.
the most common letter, "E," is pressed by the generally weakest finger: the left hand ring finger. And not on home row.
if you wanted a keyboard to go fast, you would not put E under the weakest finger. And you would put it on home row.
and that, my friends, is the rest of the story. good day.
oh - i just was reminded of this by the tv show we saw the other day.
my wife was as bored as y'all are by my story.
why do i know this trivia?
when i wrote for my high school newspaper, we did not have computers.
we typed stories (with typing paper, and carbon paper to have a copy), then sent them to our local printer to cast the pages. they printed out what we had submitted. what they gave us was a long line of print that was like a cash register receipt, but was our story. it was the width like a newspaper column.
we physically cut it, with Exactos, horizontally, between lines, to the length needed, and laid out the school newspaper page on a master layout sheet, printed with light blue ink. the light blue was some blue that was not perceived by the camera they used to make the printing page / the galley.
pics and ads had their own system - you had to grey out the area with this special film, and they were assembled in by the printer - I really don't know how they did it, but I know we had to lable the pics correctly, and "size" a black-and-white pic with a "sizing wheel" to get it to fit the space we set up. I can't remember what we called the film used to blank out the space for the pics.
if we wanted a pic to be 2 inches wide, we had to rotate this sizing wheel to tell us how tall it would end up being.
this was a challenge for newspaper, but was a real challenge for yearbook cuz a year book has so many more photos, and shorter text. shorter stretches of text are more challenging to get perfectly vertical.
we did a good job on the school paper, and along the way we were taught a bunch of the history of type and newspapers. like kerning, etc.
ok now everyone is bored to tears. i will end the story here.
newspapers, books, etc. used to be printed by a printing press-type machine. each page of 'type' or text had to be assembled for each page.
for gutenberg, the letters were made individually into little plugs or slugs, pretty much like each letter on the old-fashioned typewriters, and pressed into a background thingie that had a coating of wax. Then, this page of type was pressed from the letter side so all letters sunk into the wax 1. to be held in place and 2. to all be at the same level.
when all letters were at the same level, then you could put ink on this plate of type and press it on paper, and have your printed page.
print as many pages as you like.
but the letters had to be placed one-by-one by hand.
evnetually, someone invented a machine that would assemble lines of type.
all you had to do was press a key, one key for each letter, and the machine would go pick up the letter, then put it in the line of type following the previous letter.
so, the job of pressing the letters was 'typecasting.' so you could print the same thing over and over and over. now, when someone gets typecast, they get hired to play the same thing over and over and over.
typecasters got really fast at pressing the keys to order the machine to put the letters into the slug lines of type.
the machines jammed because the typists were too fast.
then, someone re-arranged the keys to make it more difficult to go fast.
this is the qwerty arrangement.
the most common letter, "E," is pressed by the generally weakest finger: the left hand ring finger. And not on home row.
if you wanted a keyboard to go fast, you would not put E under the weakest finger. And you would put it on home row.
and that, my friends, is the rest of the story. good day.
oh - i just was reminded of this by the tv show we saw the other day.
my wife was as bored as y'all are by my story.
why do i know this trivia?
when i wrote for my high school newspaper, we did not have computers.
we typed stories (with typing paper, and carbon paper to have a copy), then sent them to our local printer to cast the pages. they printed out what we had submitted. what they gave us was a long line of print that was like a cash register receipt, but was our story. it was the width like a newspaper column.
we physically cut it, with Exactos, horizontally, between lines, to the length needed, and laid out the school newspaper page on a master layout sheet, printed with light blue ink. the light blue was some blue that was not perceived by the camera they used to make the printing page / the galley.
pics and ads had their own system - you had to grey out the area with this special film, and they were assembled in by the printer - I really don't know how they did it, but I know we had to lable the pics correctly, and "size" a black-and-white pic with a "sizing wheel" to get it to fit the space we set up. I can't remember what we called the film used to blank out the space for the pics.
if we wanted a pic to be 2 inches wide, we had to rotate this sizing wheel to tell us how tall it would end up being.
this was a challenge for newspaper, but was a real challenge for yearbook cuz a year book has so many more photos, and shorter text. shorter stretches of text are more challenging to get perfectly vertical.
we did a good job on the school paper, and along the way we were taught a bunch of the history of type and newspapers. like kerning, etc.
ok now everyone is bored to tears. i will end the story here.
peacefulchaos
Posts: 34 +0
I've typed in home-row position since I first learned to type this way in Middle School; however, I am physically unable to control my left pinky while typing so I do have to shift my left hand for certain letters.
SNGX1275
Posts: 10,615 +467
I actually learned the home row stuff back in maybe junior high. But it was until I went to college before I became any good at it. I think though that was mostly out of necessity that I became good. I knew the core fundamentals, just was not proficient at it nor did I really know where all the letters were. But writing papers for college and all my newfound AIM buddies in college made me become pretty good at typing pretty quickly.
So that sort of goes contrary to what some of you are saying. I really don't know how you can quickly communicate online with the hunt and peck method. But then again maybe you guys that use that don't use IM much..
So that sort of goes contrary to what some of you are saying. I really don't know how you can quickly communicate online with the hunt and peck method. But then again maybe you guys that use that don't use IM much..
D
DelJo63
Sure; except on a mobile device with a virtual KB and you can't rest your hand on the screen.
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