For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for November 07, 2021

There is a learning curve at the start

How simple can it be to use a computer after endlessly using a typewriter?

It looks like Mike is not going to have a career in IT if that’s the best he can do explaining things to his mother. He should start off with: “You know the newspaper that you are writing these book reports for is just going to retype this on their computer.” OR maybe something a little more basic like, “You will make a lot fewer mistakes if you type with your eyes open and not closed.”

Sticking with what you know.

As a kid I wrote my stories out longhand, but my ideas would race ahead of my pencil and I would get frustrated and leave the story unfinished. Then I learned to touch-type, but my old manual was too slow, so I got an electric typewriter, but it was too hard to make corrections or edit and I would get frustrated and leave the story unfinished. Then I got a primitive computer and an equally primitive word processor and things started looking up and I actually finished a short story, but it wasn’t portable and I lost it when I got a real computer (I still have the printout, but I haven’t felt like retyping it). Then I got hold of a full-featured word processor, and it was like a caterpillar sprouting wings! Finally my typing/correcting/editing could keep up with my ideas, and I ended up writing about a million+ words of fan fiction and an unpublished novel (that I’m too scared of rejection to shop around to a publisher). When I was “in the groove” I averaged about 500 words an hour for a 4-hour session, and once managed 8000 words of an intense narrative sequence in a feverish marathon of 12 hours. I love my word processor!!

LeslieBark I had one of those too at one time too!

And a generation prior that of the old hippie, it was “Let me show you how to get in a car without a running board” or “You just sit in the house and watch that dad blamed TV all day. Back in MY day, we’d go outside and play!” Never understood why being from a given generation meant that you automatically cut yourself off from any subsequent technical developments.

Nah. I’d just say, go ahead and type on the typewriter, we’ll use OCR to read it into a file…

In a lot of ways word processing is easier than a type writer. No more white out, no more fussing with a ribbon or putting in a new page ever time you fill one, and it’s way easier to copy/paste text to rearrange it. But most people need to take a class to get use to using the software and a class really comes in handy for learning about all the software can do. Now they have dictation software – you can speak to get your words into text and then you can format the file later.

My firat job was before PCs became widely available. We would write stuff out by hand and have our secretary type it. Then (if properly proofread—rarely needed) it was done.

There are more keys on it since the last time you sat down with that thing.

Back in the day you had to buy chips for the computer for different printers. I was in a computer store where a woman was ranting about how her husband told her a computer would be easier than a typewriter. She wanted to smash him on the head with it!!! LOL!!

Lynn’s Comments:

Word processor. We don’t say that anymore!

Most of you, including Mike, are missing the point. Elly has to become used to the computer first! I started my MIL as well as my husband on games of solitaire to get them used to the mouse. The hardest part of learning to type into a document is getting used to moving the cursor. You can’t just place your cursor anywhere because the document ends at the last typed word. Spell check and formatting comes later and right after learning to save.

This comic should be re-named: FBoFW 1992.

The first electric typewriter I had was a Casio. It had a small display window above the keys. You type a whole line, then pressed Enter, and it printed the whole line. If you made a mistake, too bad. You couldn’t fix it with liquid paper.

I’m pretty sure word processors saved my job for me. I was NOT a good or fast typist.

She is in her comfort zone- – clackity clack!

Old dogs and new tricks. I learned long ago that the best way to teach someone to use a computer is to let them sit in front of it for a while. When they ask “how”, is when I start teaching. Not until. …unless I’m getting paid.

A couple of things. If the green people have it their way, we may even go to a time pre-typewriter. OMGosh…people might have to learn to write with pen and ink again???Another thing, how many people remember the typewriter? I took it in high school. My parents had one. I used it a lot until it was stolen. But I remember the very first computers installed at my school. I remember the secretaries using typewriters and word processors (remember the little computer monitor on a pole?). Lastly, they must be using Word Perfect 5. Remember that one? No menus, no buttons, or icons. I really disliked it.

When you’ve done seven copies with a bad dictaphone for doctors and can’t understand the bleep word they just dictated and have to get your work done and can’t wait 1/2 hour for them to get done with a patient, and this involves getting it out of the typewriter only to reinsert it later with all of the carbon copies and squeeze a 17 letter word into a 12 letter space for all seven copies…believe me, you’ll appreciate the PC and copiers!

It’s rare that I can learn something by only hearing it described, or even by watching someone else do it.

I have to do it myself… e.g., while it’s being described step by step, and not faster than I’m actually doing it.

When I was in high school I was typing – a laborious thing for me even now – a ten page English paper. At one point I stopped (too infrequently, it turns out) and found that on the previous page I had left out a paragraph. Raskolnikov! (Epithet courtesy of Dostoevsky by way of Boris Badenov.)

Picked up an IBM Selectric III on eBay for when I’m in the mood..

Habits are really hard to break.

I miss my typewriter. I love the sound and feel of the keys striking the paper. My favorite paper when using a manual typewriter was the carriage return sound. then came the electric typewriter and the portable word processor. Now I use a laptop and it isn’t as easy to type on, sure doesn’t have the same feel of the good ’ol days.

Back in the 70’s, my mom gave talks to the local schools on countries she had visited and she lead the 4-H horse club. She would type out her lecture notes and hand-print note cards for the kids in her 4-H club who were practicing for the ‘horse bowl’. 100 cards with questions and answers for 20 kids. So I got her a ‘word processor’ so she would only have to write up things just once and could edit and correct them easily. I showed her how to start it, load the paper, adjust it for size, change the size of the font, edit and save the content. What I didn’t show her how to do was to locate her saved content, so every time she used the machine, she would print out what she had, edit it on paper, and then retype and save to a new name. It took a couple of more visits to straighten things out, but she eventually grew to like it. But when I suggested switching to a computer a decade later, she was adamant — No!

It’s 2021 and she still doesn’t know how to use a computer?!?!Does she still have a wall phone too?

I still use my typewriter, to fill out forms and write checks. (Nobody could read my handwriting.)

Once you’ve done it several times, it won’t seem so hard!

I typed my thesis on a manual typewriter. Eighty-nine pages with footnotes. Kids with word processors don’t know how good they have it.

I remember the first computer I had, a Tandy 1000, the IT person told me to take it home and get use to it couldn’t hurt it, this was on a Friday….. Monday morning I was at the store with unit in arms. The IT person said it shouldn’t take long so go get a cup of coffee which I did, went back about an hour later and he asked if I had some errands to do around town as they had to completely erase the HD and reload everything. Later that day I got it and he told me to “CAREFULLY” get use to it …………….. that was my first encounter with computers 1985 (needed it for a job I had) ….. since then I’ve learned a lot about them ……. one thing for sure is that computers and I don’t really get along ……:)

I remember this one when it first ran. I wanted to smack Elly silly then, and I still do now!

Elly is such a luddite, I’m surprised she’s not using a pencil & paper.

I miss my trusty, faithful, dependable typewriter that doesn’t talk back when it thinks I made an error.

Elly does not want to change, Mike mistake he did not have mom sit there and let her try while he instructed.

Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t an earlier strip get updated by Lynn to show Elly using a PC rather than a typewriter for something? I do not remember when or the situation, but I do have a vague memory of the update.

My mother has been using a computer for nearly 40 years and she still does not know how to use them. It is always “I don’t know how to close stuff!” Try to show her how use the menu at the top of the screen and she gets all frustrated. “I don’t know how to do that!” Yep. You are right: if you say you don’t, and continue to say it, you never will.

So. I should stop getting frustrated when she asks for help, right?

There are too many comments for me to look over, to check, so, if I copy someone else’s comment, I’ll apologize ahead of time…

Given the learning issues I have, especially where computers are concerned, the best way Mike could teach Ellie would be to let her “drive,” and explain what to do, as they go along. “Hands-on,” is often the best way for people to learn, not just “do this, then that, then, the other…”

I found my Mom’s old 1915 Underwood Standard typewriter which she had bought used to use in her florist shop in the 1940’s and 50’s. I was 10 and it was 1966. I then found an old typing manual (where I discovered that underlines are a typewriter convention for italics) and taught myself the proper fingers for the keys. Soon I was typing 60-70 wpm. In high school my guidance counselor recommended typing class but I refused and demonstrated that I could type better than the class graduates. In 1983, I went to work for the Alabama company that was building the IBM AT (the first IBM PC with a hard drive) and started using a computer. Wow! My typing ability came in so handy and my speed went up exponentially. I was using WordStar which will always be my favorite nostalgic word processing software but today use Word since it has so many features which were non-existent then and is updated and patched every Tuesday.

Long ago I worked at a very small company and they were first adopter of Apple computers. I asked the secretary (pardoned me, Executive Assistant) to type a memo. She sat me down in front of an Apple Macintosh and said use this and then she left! Within 15 minutes I was done and I had a printed memo on the printer.

Erasable bond paper….would never have made it through school without it.