Zotero Blog » Blog Archive » Zotero 10<br /> accessed on 2026-11-15T00:14:06
10,000 Matching Annotations
- Last 7 days
-
www.zotero.org www.zotero.org
Tags
Annotators
URL
-
-
maggieappleton.com maggieappleton.com
-
Ambient Co-presence<br /> by [[Maggie Appleton]] @maggieappleton<br /> accessed on 2026-11-14T22:48:35
as of 2026-11-14 search for "ambient co-presence" primarily brings up this article and little else beyond Mirca Madianou's 2016 paper in Global Networks.
What is it's relationship to body doubling? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_doubling
I'm reminded of some of Kevin Marks' work on phatic communication on the web here as well as Amber Case's early calm technology work tangential to the IndieWeb.
I wish I could recall the name of the stand up comedian in the early 2000s (HBO special?) who mentioned that two dudes could sit on a couch together watching sports or a movie and say absolutely nothing to each other and that was considered bonding. It was the presence that mattered far more than any communication. The same comedian noted that the same thing typically didn't apply to women who required explicit verbal communication for bonding with each other.
-
The notoriously walled-off publishing platform Medium shows you the single most highlighted line from other users on article.
I'm also reminded of the use of webmentions to show highlights and comments/notes on individual sections of someone's site. In particular, Kartik Prabhu's implementation of fragmention.
-
It’s a soft starting point for layering on more attention-heavy interactions; leaving inline comments, making connections with people who always show up in the same spaces as you, or creating trails for others to follow.
Appleton uses the idea of "creating trails" which is similar to V. Bush's 1945 work.
Perhaps social online tracking apparatus could also leave pointers which indicate which article a friend had read either before or after the current one, especially when those articles were related?
In academia, could one use meshes of links between referenced papers to rank or order more explicit paths through academic literature based on citation weights?
-
This second approach is much calmer and allows us to show the presence of a large number of people in a space – hundreds or thousands – without it feeling chaotic.
This reminds me of Amber Case's calm technology work in the early IndieWeb space.
-
Cursor Party is a one-line script that gives every visitor to your webpage their own cursor, country flag, and chatbox.
-
As far as I’m aware, Google Docs was the first to implement this
I remember commenting, likely around 2016 about the use of Hypothes.is' counter on their bookmarklet to indicate the number of annotations on a particular page. This is a more passive sort of indicator of presence.
I used to get a little thrill to see people who'd either been there at the same time, or just before me.
It's also reminiscent of Vannevar Bush's "associative trails" in As We May Think (The Atlantic, 1945).
-
Our current digital attempt at this is multiplayer cursors and selection. Other people who have access to your file are visible in the interface as small, pointy, colourful cursors or text markers within a document, canvas, or spreadsheet. Sometimes with little names or floating profile pictures next to them to help identify people. As far as I’m aware, Google Docs was the first to implement this
-
The others rarely demand your attention or strike up conversations. They just exist nearby, unobtrusively doing whatever they’re doing.
second life used to create this sort of third space and social presence for some in the early 2000s
-
Ambient co-presence is the sensation of sharing a space or context with other people, without directly interacting or continuously communicating with them. You’re all aware of each other through peripheral vision, ambient noise, and embodied sensations but aren’t necessarily doing the same tasks or directing your attention to the same things.
-
We are missing out on a fuzzier, softer sense of the shared web.
Tags
- fragmentions
- cultural anthropology
- IndieWeb
- avatars
- extended mind
- Amber Case
- multi-player
- definitions
- asynchronous activity
- calm technology
- Medium
- synchronous activity
- presence
- profile pictures
- third spaces
- multi-player cursors
- ambient co-presence
- Second Life
- single-player
- calm design
- Vannevar Bush
- digital humanism
- web presence
- social media
- Cursor Party
- Hypothes.is
- highlights
- identity
- Gather Town
- Kevin Marks
- associative trails
- user interface
- citation rankings
- Google Docs
- citation trails
- phatic
- annotations
- body doubling
- open questions
- social presence
- Webmentions
Annotators
URL
-
-
en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
-
Research on body doubling is lacking since it is a new area of study, with most being limited to master's theses.[11][12][13]
-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_doubling
The term "body doubling" was coined in 1996 by Linda Anderson, an ADHD coach and former president of the Attention Deficit Disorder Association (ADDA).<br /> "The Body Double: A Unique Tool for Getting Things Done". ADDA - Attention Deficit Disorder Association. October 24, 2022.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
hypothes.is hypothes.is
-
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
-
Remington Typewriter Type Alignment Adjust Typebars by [[Phoenix Typewriter]]
When adjusting typebar slugs, it's much easier to bring a letter up higher on the page than to bring a letter lower.
-
-
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
-
"A" Too High ! Type Alignment Smith Corona Vintage Typewriter 5TE , Adjusted Height, Lowered<br /> By Duane Jensen as [[Phoenix Typewriter]] on YouTube
Single character too high or too low.
-
-
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
-
Josh and Donna Do Philosophy <br /> From The West Wing, Season 4, Episode 4 "Red Mass"
"the fortune cookie candidacy"
While reading Jimmy Carr's Before and Laughter (Quercus Editions Ltd., 2021), I was reminded of this scene and how Carr has excerpted philosophy and popular psychology for his book.
-
-
blog.readwise.io blog.readwise.io
-
Readwise Books: Step Three of Our Master Plan<br /> by [[Daniel Doyon]] and [[Tristan Homsi]]<br /> accessed on 2026-11-14T11:08:09
-
Daylight Computer
-
Instead, it triggered a behavior where users engaged more deeply in their own reading simply by being around others doing the same. We later learned the phenomenon has a name: ambient co-presence.
-
Like many of you, we've always been skeptical of so-called "social reading."
@dwhly @judell @remikalir might all appreciate this article (especially the second half about social reading and health/wellness):
Readwise Books: Step Three of Our Master Plan<br /> by Daniel Doyon and Tristan Homsi of Readwise accessed on 2026-11-14T11:44:15
-
This the taxonomy we've developed, but we hope to work real scientists to dial these in!
Readwise Books breaks reading down into five categories: immersed, active, light, quick, and interrupted.
They seem to imply, by position, that immersive reading is "best". I might argue that active reading (highlighting and annotating) is best.
-
as the adage goes, that which is measured is improved.
-
Reading simply hasn't had its wellness moment yet, but we're betting it's close.
-
Here are just some of the benefits above and beyond the inherent entertainment and betterment value of books:A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine followed 469 adults over 75 for five years and found that frequent readers were 35% less likely to develop dementia than infrequent ones.A Yale study in Social Science & Medicine followed 3,635 adults over 50 for twelve years and found that those who read more than 3.5 hours a week were 23% less likely to die. Put in pithy terms, a chapter a day keeps death away (for about two extra years).A Rush University study in Neurology followed 294 older adults until death and found that the most mentally active among them, with reading chief among their activities, showed 32% slower cognitive decline than their average peers.A New School study in Science randomly assigned people to read a few pages of literary fiction, popular fiction, nonfiction, or nothing, and found that the literary fiction readers were better at judging emotion from photographs of strangers’ eyes, a standard test of theory of mind and the basis of empathy. (Although this empathy claim is the most debated science of the bunch.)
-
To see the connection, consider how one practice after another, whether physical or mental, has crossed the chasm from fringe curiosity to mainstream wellness movement over the past two decades.Resistance training. Meditation. Cold plunges. Sauna (Finnish and infrared). Sleep tracking. Zone 2 cardio. VO2 max. Recovery. Ten thousand steps a day. Closing your rings. Standing not sitting. Continuous glucose monitors. Light exposure. Light blocking. Weighted vests. Creatine. Protein. Protein powder (whey post-workout, casein before bed). Nootropics. Neurotransmitters. Nicotine pouches. Breathwork. Talk therapy. Mobility. Fascial release. Mouth tape. Nasal strips.
Tags
- Readwise Books
- Dan Allosso Book Club 2026-11-14
- social media
- social annotation
- digital books
- e-books
- reading practices
- longevity
- Hypothes.is
- self-improvement
- e-readers
- reading research
- Readwise Highlights
- measurement
- social reading
- zeitgeist
- Readwise
- Daylight Computer
- annotations
- adages
- health and wellness
- ambient co-presence
- aphorisms
- read
- improvement
- fads
- e-book markets
- body doubling
- reading
- active reading
- sociology
Annotators
URL
-
-
Local file Local file
-
Humour is by far the most signi cant activity of the human brain. — Edward de Bono
-
Carr, Jimmy. 2021. Before & Laughter: A Life-Changing Book. London: Quercus Editions Ltd. https://link.amazon/B0j1cK9BQ.
-
nd meaning in laughter, joy, connection, dick jokes – in that order – but those are just my touchstones.
"I find..."
-
e it’s all about the journey, not the destination (I see we’re already ahead of our quota for self-help clichés).
-
After all, without timing all the pizza delivery guy’s got is cold pizza.
-
All failure is just feedback.
-
Audiences keep comedians honest. An audience’s laughter is brutally honest. I can’t think of another art form like it. Is my painting any good? It’s hard to tell. Does my music connect? Maybe . . . Are my jokes funny? Well, did they laugh or not? It’s binary.
-
Observational comics’ whole attitude is the embodiment of honesty. They look at the world and they’re bemused by how crazy life is. But ‘have you ever noticed’ – their starting point – is always how things really are.
-
transgressive
this feels like one of the keywords of the book
-
It’s like telling someone, ‘You know there’s only twelve notes, so, I guess we’re done with music.’ Yeah, dummy, but with those twelve notes you can make anything.
-
I’m going to argue there are ve superpowers that all comedians have, things that we do better than regular folk.
The five superpowers of comedians according to Jimmy Carr:<br /> 1. Communication<br /> 2. Timing<br /> 3. Pattern recognition <br /> 4. Honesty <br /> 5. Failure
-
I hope I’m not puncturing too many illusions when I say, none of it is magic; it’s all in the preparation.
by analogy, this also goes not just for comedy or even magic, but life itself.
-
But just to be super clear in case you’re reading this and you’re ‘hard of thinking’, ‘stand-up’ is a metaphor for life.
-
We all prefer comfort and pleasure right now, but we also understand whatever we do today, we have to live with tomorrow. And so the stronger your preference for the future, the better.
-
Whatever I do ‘now’, I know I’m going to get back ‘then’.
This is part of the value of note taking for your future self.
-
Covid was a sort of half-time whistle on life. An enforced break that made us all do a little audit: what am I like? What do I like? What’s useful? What’s next?
-
Spoiler alert: all self-help books say the same thing – prioritise later over now.
-
I’m making a case for laughing your way through life – for seeing the funny side wherever possible
-
Everything I needed to be happy I learned from dick jokes.
Out of context this is interesting, but in the context of him saying just before it:
I know about me and I know about comedy and I know how to help myself.
Combine this with what he calls his touchstones later in the text: https://hypothes.is/a/tuliRt_jEfGLCyuclf4lRQ
-
When I read an autobiography, my takeaway is always, ‘Wow, this guy talks about himself a lot.’ So I thought we might mix things up a bit. You might be a little interested in me but I’m damn sure you’re a lot more interested in yourself. This book, then, is about both of us.
-
often get things wrong because I’m dyslexic (this book is co-authored by spellcheck).
He also uses this spellcheck joke at the opening of the audiobook.
-
It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled. – Mark Twain
-
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see. — Arthur Schopenhauer
source?
-
What’s my edge? Who am I exactly?’,
-
I was from the circuit and there you just didn’t do other people’s material. It’s like a golden rule of stand-up comedy. We get very judgy about that.
-
We call it a ‘big break’ (clearly, we are not scientists, it’s not even in Latin).
-
Beauty, energy, optimism. Whenever old people are jealous of youngsters, that’s what it’s about.
-
Here are three questions to get you started: What do people say is hard for them, but you nd easy? What is something other people value that you can do? What would you do anyway, even if no one paid you?
-
Nobody can compete with you at being you.
Not far from my quote: <br /> "Not everyone can be me, but at least I try."
-
I’m no Scientologist, but this is an audit. The good news is, instead of it costing you £50,000 and your family, I’m only charging you the price of a book. Beat that, David Miscavige.
-
So, a lesson I learned is, if you have a friend going through hard times, call, text, reach out. People don’t forget the friends who do that. And if you don’t know what to say, just say, ‘I don’t know what to say.’ It’s all good.
-
Jay Z said in an interview, ‘I’m not the worst thing I ever did.’ A
-
We cannot forgive what we cannot punish . . . — Hannah Arendt
-
There’s a story about a prank Arthur Conan Doyle played. He sent out a letter to ve of his friends saying, ‘We are discovered. Flee.’ One of those friends disappeared and was never seen again.
-
Now, I’m not a doctor but here’s what I’d do with your panic attack: write a list. Boring, right? But boring can be good. Boring will calm you right down. Write down what you have to do and keep writing. Re ne the list, make it ever more speci c, until the huge looming disaster becomes a series of manageable bite-sized tasks. Take a breath and then go take care of business. Item number o
-
Anxiety is the ip side of creativity – it’s a gift. A gut-wrenching, pain-in-the-arse, nightmare gift. But it’s the thought that counts. If you’re su ering with anxiety, great news: you’re a creative person. The downside to a creative mind is that it’s always on. Anxiety: it’s your creativity with nothing to do. Give your creative mind something to do or it’ll drive you crazy.
-
The brilliant Clive James made this gorgeous observation: Common sense and a sense of humour, are the same thing, moving at di erent speeds. A sense of humour, is just common sense, dancing.
-
You have anhedonia: the inability
"the inability to feel joy"
-
‘Grief is the price we pay for love.’
-
The Sad Clown Paradox is where mental disorder meets comedy. It’s the ‘cyclothymic temperament’ (me neither, thank God for Google), a ceaseless instability of mood, thinking and behaviour. It’s a never- ending cycle where a child takes on additional responsibilities, which evokes a need for acceptance and creates mental health issues, which in turn leads to a need to self-medicate with humour. Rinse and repeat enough times and what you get is a comedian.
Tags
- targets
- combinatorial creativity
- planning
- auditing
- Getting Things Done (GTD)
- comedy writers
- feedback
- thinking
- plagiarism
- laughing
- life
- fools
- being present
- aptitudes
- dividends
- comedians
- Edward de Bono
- self-examination
- Hannah Arendt
- Clive James
- definitions
- talents
- scientists
- Trump Administration
- joy
- beauty
- transgression
- panic attacks
- failure
- future self
- audit
- journey
- genius
- punishment
- honesty
- Latin
- communication
- magic
- purpose
- Sad Clow Paradox
- mental disorders
- anhedonia
- listening
- hard times
- Arthur Schopenhauer
- philosophy
- pattern recognition
- conspiracy
- Chris Aldrich
- talent
- judgement
- midlife crises
- aging
- friendship
- sense of humor
- other people's material
- pranks
- to do lists
- stupid people
- aphorisms
- spelling dictionaries
- observational comedy
- unhappiness
- note taking
- happiness
- Jimmy Carr
- energy
- Dan Allosso Book Club 2026-11-14
- Arthur Conan Doyle
- COVID-19
- standup comedians
- humor
- your edge
- words
- opposites
- Dan Allosso Book Club
- common sense
- David Miscavige
- optimism
- youth
- audits
- self-help books
- forgiveness
- music
- project management
- grief
- laughter
- preparation
- hedonism
- creativity
- priorities
- superpowers
- acceptance
- senescence
- dick jokes
- later
- hard of thinking
- Scientology
- brains
- comedy
- autobiographies
- cold pizza
- convincing people
- now
- Mark Twain
- language
- paradoxes
- co-authors
- identity
- Jay Z
- anxiety
- advice
- writing as memory
- future
- truth
- spellcheck
- dyslexia
- culture
- jealousy
- religion
- tomorrow
- timing
- quotes
- clichés
- art
Annotators
-
-
en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
-
en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
-
thecarrtell.blog thecarrtell.blogBooklist1
-
https://thecarrtell.blog/booklist/
-
-
slate.com slate.com
-
Finding a new way to manage my day.<br /> by [[John Dickerson]]<br /> accessed on 2026-11-13T15:21:26<br /> archive copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20251212011648/https://slate.com/technology/2009/10/finding-a-new-way-to-manage-my-day.html
-
One small flaw is that I don’t actually want to go skydiving. Not in a million years. But I haven’t processed the maintain integrity of all metaphors index card yet.
-
Finally, there’s the “Skydiving List,” which represents the big picture or 36,000-foot view of my life. From there I try do dive down and create small actions that can be performed. It includes questions like “How can I teach my kids about generosity?” or “Do I need to change the filter in the furnace?”
-
The first is my “Expletive List,” which sits at 10 a.m. on my electronic calendar. If these items are not done by the end of the day, I will emit a barnyard epithet. (I try to be ruthless. If a task can be delayed, it should not be on there.) If I have an expletive event in a day to come, I put it at 10 on that day. There is only a handful of these items every day.
John Dickerson's version of "eat the frog" is called his "expletive list".
-
The clustered item is a silent killer. It not only makes cleaning the garage harder because you don’t know where to start. It keeps you from writing things down on your list at all. I want to rock climb. But if I’m thinking in clusters, it just all seems too daunting.
-
-
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
-
Who needs a PDA when I've got paper<br /> by [[Leon Ho]] in Technology | The Guardian<br /> accessed on 2026-11-13T14:58:06
some affordances of using digital for note taking and to do lists
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
-
Jilly Cooper’s beloved typewriter could fetch £8,000 at auction<br /> by [[Jamie Grierson]] in The Guardian<br /> accessed on 2026-11-12T12:01:01
Jilly Cooper using "Monica 2" an Olivetti Underwood Lettera 32. 
Did Jilly Cooper call her Lettera 32 "Monica 2" because her other typewriter was an actual Olympia Monica, which the image here seems to be?Jilly Cooper appears to enjoy typing "topless" based on these two photos. The article mentions "famously claimed to work topless in the sun", but doesn't make the clear connection to the typewriter not having a hood on it.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Congratulations. You've joined an exclusive club that includes writers like: Edward Abbey John Ashbery, Saul Below, Johnny Carson, Joan Didion, Bernard Kalb, Elia Kazan, Helen Keller, Grace Metalious, Arthur Miller, Carl Reiner, Fred Rogers, Rod Sterling, George Sheehan, and Wallace Stegner.
I've got over 60 typewriters in my collection and the KMG is my favorite, especially when it's clean and properly adjusted. I've got one each in Royal Elite and Royal Pica typefaces they're so nice.
KMG controls diagram: https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/RoyalKMGdiagram.jpg<br /> Richard Polt's site doesn't have a manual (yet) for the KMG (manufactured by Royal from 1949 to 1952), so pull the manual for the Royal KMM instead. It was the model made just before the KMG and should be functionally identical. The Royal HH which followed it was also broadly similar. https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/tw-manuals.html
A lot of their design, including the glass tombstone keys, was influenced by Henry Dreyfuss' redesign of the Royal Quiet De Luxe in 1945.
The spools for the standard Royal typewriters (Ten, H, KH, KHM, KMM, KMG, RP, HH, FP, Empress, 440, 660, etc.) have a custom metal mechanism for their auto-reverse. The spools are known as the T1 (which is the same as General Ribbon part # T1-77B , T1-77BR, and Nu-Kote B64.) If winding on universal 1/2 inch wide ribbon onto them, remove any eyeletes which aren't needed and may interfere with the auto reverse. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMDfGkKqbgE
Incidentally when browsing YouTube for repair videos, the mechanics of all the Royal standards (listed above) are all incredibly similar if not exactly the same, so search beyond KMG to find solutions.
For cleaning:<br /> - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjumGF9NFE8&list=PLJtHauPh529XYHI5QNj5w9PUdi89pOXsS&index=5<br /> - https://boffosocko.com/2024/08/09/on-colloquial-advice-for-degreasing-cleaning-and-oiling-manual-typewriters/ - The tombstone "glass" (acetate) keys are metal rings that hold a piece of acetate over a paper legend (with the key letter printed on it) onto a metal platform. Don't get liquids or water on these as it will seep inside and discolor or damage the paper legends. They're replaceable, but it requires a special tool and/or lots of patience. Incidentally, these were the last US manufactured typewriters with glass keys.
Use and maintenance: https://boffosocko.com/2025/06/06/typewriter-use-and-maintenance-for-beginning-to-intermediate-typists/
If it helps, here's a link to all my posts about the purchase, history, use and some restoration pieces I've written about mine (start at the oldest and work your way forward): https://boffosocko.com/tag/royal-kmg/
Other resources as you may need them: https://boffosocko.com/research/typewriter-collection/
Good luck!
reply to u/Saltiend at https://reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1rwsfxp/just_bought_a_royal_kmg_any_tips/
-
-
boffosocko.com boffosocko.com
-
www.facebook.com www.facebook.com
-
on this one because of the film, mineral spirts/wd-40 and a soft brush to start. Then a wax cleaner while always getting a clean 4x4 sq of towel. Use detail swabs in any curved spot. Go slow w a light touch and let the cleaners do the work. If it were a typical machine, a bit of liquid polish mixed in to start the first cut.
James Groom's polishing regiment for a black lacquer Royal Ten via https://www.facebook.com/groups/TypewriterCollectors/posts/10164437661134678/
-
-
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
-
Ron's Typewriter - YouTube<br /> by [[Parks and Recreation]] <br /> accessed on 2025-10-06T22:09:41
Parks and Recreation S3, E5 "Media Blitz" aired 2011-02-17<br /> https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1636241/
Ron Swanson unfortunately misidentifies his Underwood SS as an Underwood No.5.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
reply to u/ValenciaTangerine at https://old.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1xsee6q/luhmann_only_indexed_1_to_4_cards_per_keyword/
Placing notes into neighborhoods using his alpha-numeric system allows this sort of "sparse indexing". Imagine if he had indexed everything related to it in his system as "sociology", then the keyword "sociology" would have absolutely no meaning because the signal gets swamped in noise.
Most people in digital contexts don't place their notes into neighborhoods like he did, so to find things they may need to over-index to be able to find them, but they'll need finer-grained search to delve beneath the noise of the dozens, hundreds, or thousands of notes they may accumulate.
-
-
en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
-
A Morris chair is an early type of reclining chair. The design was adapted by William Morris's firm, Morris & Company, from a prototype owned by Ephraim Colman in rural Sussex, England. It was first marketed around 1866
-
-
-
https://www.ebay.com/itm/362982494358
Stated 1928 advertisement for Royal typewriters geared toward children and their education.
Appeared on p. 147 of Hearst's International-Cosmopolitan for October 1928.
-
-
oztypewriter.blogspot.com oztypewriter.blogspot.com
-
Christmas Typewriters #19<br /> by [[Robert Messenger]] in oz.Typewriter: accessed on 2026-11-11T11:40:18
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
I know it's 2026, but the cost of using index cards and the ease of adjusting the system without compromising the rest is the biggest advantage for me.
via u/Rafalvso at https://reddit.com/r/indexcards/comments/1xt5u7g/my_new_hipsterpda_2026/
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
via https://reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1xtgbj0/writers_and_their_typewriters/
<br />
Christmas ad for Royal typewriters featuring Vogue in The Literary Digest for November 30, 1929.Also note the educational pitch:
"This interesting way of writing stimulates enthusiasm for study hours at home, thus advancing the children in their progress at school."
-
-
site.xavier.edu site.xavier.edu
-
James Grooms counts 202 Royals to 131 Remingtons for authors on this page on 2026-11-11.
https://www.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1xtgbj0/writers_and_their_typewriters/
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
www.facebook.com www.facebook.com
-
https://www.facebook.com/groups/TypewriterCollectors/posts/10164428883349678/
The "genuine plastic" was read from an advertisement and got a second of canned laughter, even then.
Leave it to Beaver Season 5, Episode 29 in 1962.
"Plastics" wasn't yet a "line" in The Graduate until 1967.
-
-
www.imdb.com www.imdb.com
-
Leave it to Beaver, S5, E29 "Beaver's Typewriter"<br /> aired 1962-04-21
Beaver finds that learning to type on his new typewriter is harder than it looks and is once again reminded that accepting help from Eddie Haskell is never...ever...a good idea.
-
-
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
-
Oh you know it is the greatest—the way a Remington Quiet-Riter helps stimulate interest in the young people. Brings out the best in them. <br /> You know something? The minute you get your hands on this wonderful portable, you find yourself with an urge to express yourself! Now that can be mighty important not only in school but in later life too.
-
-
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
-
Type slug cleaning [00:05:27]
-
-
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
-
Typewriter Type Slug Cleaning Process, Pick Clean Clogged Faces, Restore Shine, Quickly<br /> by [[Duane Jensen]] on YouTube<br /> accessed on 2026-11-10T07:23:36
Tags
Annotators
URL
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Broad colloquial advice on finding script machines. Fairly facile and not very nuanced, but broadly rings as true.
-
-
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
-
Advanced Typing - Shortcuts (1943)
Advanced Typing: Shortcuts. 16 mm. Vol. MN-1512c. United States Navy Training Film, 1943. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUJfCfqgsX0.
Correct typing posture: fingers curved<br /> arms sloping up<br /> light fast strokes<br /> steady rhythm
fast continuous motion of return lever<br /> using backing sheet (aka temping sheet ??)
Shortcuts:<br /> mise en place for office supplies (she doesn't use this phrasing though) - greater efficiency - cuts down on searching
tabulators can be helpful. There are two types:<br /> - automatic - handset
Use tabs for paragraphs, dating letters, columns of numbers, and letter closings.
To clear all tab stops, put carriage to left, hold tab clear key and move the carriage across. (Usually applies to Royal, Remington, Underwood, and Electromatic).
On LC Smith and Woodstock machines sometimes have a tab clear lever on the back.
Decimal tabulator keys help to align a variety of numbers around a decimal point. 09:43
Always have a few tabs set to prevent a flying carriage which can be hard on the machine.
When using carbon sheets which are slightly longer than the paper size, cut off a small triangle at the top left hand side. This makes it easier for one to separate the carbons from the copies by holding the top left with one hand and pulling the carbons out from the bottom of the stack.
To align multiple sheets of paper for carbon copies, use a folded sheet at the top to taco the pages into the machine. Remove the folded sheet once the carbon pack is rolled forward.
Paper bail rollers should be set to split the pages into thirds (for two rollers).
Remington noiseless machines have a pressure indicator on the front of the machine (usually above the keyboard) which can be used when using thick carbon packs that may cause the ribbon guide to stick or bind.
Only erase when the carriage is fully left or right to prevent eraser crumbs from falling into the machine. 15:26
Use a soft eraser on carbon copies. Use and insert slips of paper behind the carbons and allowing them to stick out the sides, erasing from back sheet to front so as not to allow the eraser to mark your carbon copies. For the front sheet, use a shield and ink eraser and erase with a horizontal motion. After erasing, easily pull out the inserted sheets.
When typing a correction, tap the key lightly two or three times rather than hard once.
When in a rush and it's necessary to add a word (on double spacing), underline the last letter of the prior word and type a slash (/). Then move the typing line up and type the insertion above the prior line. This creates an "arrow" of sorts for the inserted word.
Details for inserting extra letters in misspelled words using half-spacing machines. (Underwoods and Electromatics don't have this function.)
Light pencil marks at the bottom of the sheet can help to indicate the coming bottom of the sheet.
Putting up the card holders (fingers) on Underwoods and Royals. They help to hold the card and improve print quality and reduce noise.
Card holders can cause markings on carbon packs if they're not lowered.
Trick for quickly writing postcards in succession: Disengage the ratchet using the platen spring release (or variable platen switch) Type the address on the front of the card. When done give the platen a quick practiced spin. The postcard with "jump" up and stop at the paper table and be in position for rolling in the opposite direction to write the message on the back of the card! When done a faster spin of the platen will shoot the card over the back of the typewriter where it can land in a box to collect all the postcards which were written in such a manner. <br /> timestamp 23:22
Time saving methods for addressing envelopes:
-
Front seat principle. Insert the envelope in the usual way and type out the address. When done, turn the envelope down through the machine with the right hand. With the left hand, place the next envelope between the top of the first envelope and the front of the platen. Feed the first envelope back through the machine (in reverse) and the second will be rolled in to place for typing. Continue in this fashion until finished. All the finished envelopes will stack up in the back at the paper table.
-
Chain feeding. The first envelope is inserted and rolled partway into the machine. A second envelope is inserted between the platen and the second envelope (behind the platen). Turn the first envelope to the writing line and type the address. Take out the first envelope and insert the next the same way as before.
-
Uses paper bail. Do the first envelope in the usual way. Spin it out of the machine up and behind the paper bail into a box behind the typewriter.
For quickly doing labels or small cards: (27:29) Create a small zig-zag fold into a piece of paper to create a pocket slot which can be scotch taped on either side. This template paper can then be inserted so that the pocket is visible above the writing line, but the paper below it is still in the platen. The label or card can be placed into the pocket and the platen reversed to feed the label or card in backwards to the desired typing line. Using a v-groove or hole in the typing line can create a pencil line to serve as a guide for inserting many labels at the same place so that the typing lines up between labels.
Some offices had special platens for holding cards like this.
Pockets like this can also be used to hold the page to add additional lines at the bottom of pages. Deeper pockets may need to be used for doing this with carbon packs whose carbons are longer than the pages.
Alternately one can do something similar by creating a inverted u-shaped set of slits into an index card. to hold such labels.
When in the midst of a page and needing to do another piece urgently, roll back the letter until about 2 inches from the top, and then place in the new page and one between each of the carbons. Then roll forward to do the short message as necessary. Turn back to the insertion position to remove the copies and then continue with the first letter where you left off.
For drawing horizontal lines on typewriter paper, push the carriage to the extreme left and place the pencil or pen at the edge of the card guide and the scale. Then move the carriage to the right to effect the line. For vertical lines, put the carriage at the desired space and place the pencil at the card guide and scale and move the platen up/down as necessary.
-
-
- Nov 2026
-
www.saddler.co.uk www.saddler.co.uk
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
www.facebook.com www.facebook.com
-
via "Honestly, Same" at https://www.facebook.com/groups/1922868772004684/posts/1978726723085555/
Every Sunday, I spend 60 minutes making index cards for the woman I think I'm going to be that week.<br /> That woman has never once shown up for work.
-
-
www.facebook.com www.facebook.com
-
https://www.facebook.com/groups/olympiasg1/posts/1812952576689815
Lots of colloquial suggestions for cleaning and polishing plastic typewriter keys.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
reply to u/ropeynick at https://reddit.com/r/TypewriterRepair/comments/1xk6tkj/olympia_sg3_right_margin_stop/
The right margin on the Olympia SG3 is a known thing:<br /> - https://typewriter.boardhost.com/viewtopic.php?pid=27528#p27528<br /> - https://typewriter.boardhost.com/viewtopic.php?id=3521
They say roughly what my experience is with both of my Olympia SG3 right margins: - If you're typing characters, the line lock will engage and require you to hit the margin release to continue. - If you're tabbing, spacing, or using the carriage release you'll blow right through the margin and can keep typing.
The number of spaces from bell to margin will differ based on the pitch of the machine as will the number of spaces one would need to space past the margin before the line lock disengages and allows you to type in the margin again.
It was a change in design of how a right margin stop worked in late typewriter manufacture.
-
-
www.facebook.com www.facebook.com
-
https://www.facebook.com/groups/4770669677posts/posts/10164413651119678/
The Haas Atlas (page 7) would identify the foundry mark as being a Hulse-Typen manufactured Pica face for Smith-Corona: https://archive.org/.../typewriter.../page/n5/mode/2up
Page 31 of the 1954 Smith-Corona Typewriter Type Styles and Keyboards Catalog would indicate it seems to match up solidly with the Pica Gothic No. 4 typeface: https://typecast.munk.org/.../1954-smith-corona-scm.../ Especially look at the Q, the J, and the 8. The '64 NOMDA guide Mark links is the same, but doesn't have as extensive a typesample.
Many machines, and especially the American manufactured ones, don't always have foundry marks which line up with the respective catalogs.
-
-
yurii7812.github.io yurii7812.github.io
-
Paper PKM, Illustrated<br /> accessed on 2026-11-06T09:18:06
Example of someone's version of a zettelkasten process
-
-
www.etsy.com www.etsy.com
-
www.omegasonics.com www.omegasonics.com
-
https://www.omegasonics.com/<br /> Omegasonics
Recommended by Lucas Dul as something he uses in his shop.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
We put a good dozen machines through a month, and large amounts of small parts. It's a great machine, but very expensive. Both the unit, the power demand, and the solutions. Not every machine or part can go in either, we still do many machines by hand to avoid damage in the ultrasonic. Quality of work is critical, but so is time. We can do the same level of in depth clean manually, but it takes 2-3 hours and the ultrasonic halves that time. We still do drying, rust removal, bulk grease, and final washes by hand to ensure consistent quality. Can't express enough how amazing the ultrasonic is. Deffinately increased our output. We work with OmegaSomics for machines, parts, and cleaners.
via Lucas Dul (aka u/Lucasdul2) at https://www.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1xairdl/comment/19rpjcvqm7v9e/?context=1&screen_view_count=2
Puts about a dozen machines a month through their ultrasonic cleaner. Doesn't rely on it solely due to need for quality control.
-
-
www.crystal-clean.com www.crystal-clean.com
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
reply to u/remy_vega at https://old.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1wxj0js/olympia_sm3_i_think_acquired_now_to_cleaning_and/
The white material is likely oxidation/corrosion specific to the metal on the piece. I'd guess potentially zinc oxidation. Duane has used lacquer thinner on stuff like this in the past with good results. (See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDpTJ4NQGwk).
However for the material on the keys, you're likely to damage the plastic on them. For this part you could spot test some vinegar as a means of removing the oxidation without damaging the keytops. Try it out on one key to see how well it works. If it helps, you can remove the keytops individually. (See: https://youtu.be/XRm0VH42y1s?si=P0D1L9bm8uMRSJDC&t=867) I might also try a thin/skinny brass bristle brush either before, or in combination. (See: https://boffosocko.com/2024/12/01/typewriter-tools-upgrade/#Typewriter%20Cleaning%20Tools)
See another occurrence at https://reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1x2drma/olympia_sm2_restoration/ where kizeer reported success at my method by saying:
Thanks for the links! I started to remove the key caps and soak them in vinegar and brush the rest off which seemed to work fine. Just having some issues to remove the first row of key caps (1,2,3,..). I guess I need to remove the case/housing first.
-
-
www.facebook.com www.facebook.com
-
Das lachende Berlin
via https://www.facebook.com/groups/705152958470148/posts/1409358181382952/
-
-
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
-
No Country for Old Typewriters: A Well-Used One Heads to Auction<br /> by [[Patricia Cohen]] - The New York Times<br /> accessed on 2026-11-04T23:19:34
McCarthy also had a Royal typewriter in the early 60s.
-
Glenn Horowitz, a rare-book dealer who is handling the auction for Mr. McCarthy, said: “When I grasped that some of the most complex, almost otherworldly fiction of the postwar era was composed on such a simple, functional, frail-looking machine, it conferred a sort of talismanic quality to Cormac’s typewriter. It’s as if Mount Rushmore was carved with a Swiss Army knife.”
-
-
-
Josh Brolin Never Thought He’d End Up in Malibu<br /> by [[Nick Haramis]] - The New York Times<br /> accessed on 2026-11-04T23:18:16
-
and a stand-alone office with an antique walnut desk, an Art Deco lamp by the modernist Irish architect and designer Eileen Gray and a typewriter — an Olivetti Lettera 32 — that once belonged to the novelist Cormac McCarthy. After years of false starts and a second career as a stock trader, Brolin finally became a movie star with his role as an unsuspecting hunter in the Coen brothers’ film adaptation of McCarthy’s 2005 novel, “No Country for Old Men”; he was with the author this past June the night before he died.
Josh Brolin has one of Cormac McCarthy's Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriters.
-
-
www.amazon.com www.amazon.com
-
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08F5BH2JT?binding=hardcover<br /> Writings of Charles S Peirce (7 book series)
-
-
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
-
Patrick Stewart, ‘Star Trek’ Captain and Professor X on ‘X-Men,’ Dies at 86<br /> by [[Anita Gates]], [[William McDonald]] The New York Times accessed on 2026-11-04T22:40:39
-
-
www.theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com
-
A Cynical Ploy to Block California’s Wealth Tax<br /> by [[Marc Novicoff]] The Atlantic<br /> accessed on 2026-11-04T22:38:56
-
-
cormacmccarthy.lib.utk.edu cormacmccarthy.lib.utk.edu
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
reply to u/Prince_naveen at https://reddit.com/r/math/comments/1xmn4c6/for_those_of_us_postponing_grad_school_and/
Who says anyone needs to "quit" math anyway?!? If you love it, practice it as a hobby. Work on problems in your spare time. If there are nearby colleges, take courses go to lectures and colloquia. (I've been taking various subjects in the math departments of UCLA, USC, and Caltech near me for over 20 years now. Here's a recent example of one: https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/1vnknqu/in_the_los_angeles_area_and_looking_to_expand/) Find conferences via the AMS.
Even people like novelist Cormac Mccarthy read mathematics throughout their adult lives. A research project has been cataloging his personal library of over 20,000 volumes and a huge number of them were in math. https://cormacmccarthy.lib.utk.edu/home?search_api_fulltext=mathematics Later in life he joined his friend Murray Gell-Man at the Santa Fe Institute for "fun".
There's lots of math out there, you just have to look a bit to keep it in your life.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
-
Justice Alito Will Not Retire From Supreme Court Immediately, Despite Election Outcome<br /> by [[Ann E. Marimow]] - The New York Times<br /> accessed on 2026-11-04T22:00:24
-
-
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
-
Opinion | Jon Ossoff Suddenly Looks Even More Presidential - The New York Times<br /> by [[Peter Beinart]]<br /> accessed on 2026-11-04T21:57:47
-
-
-
Trump Emerges After the Midterms: ‘Did You Guys See the Helipad?’<br /> by [[Shawn McCreesh]] - The New York Times<br /> accessed on 2026-11-04T21:51:30
-
-
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
-
California 2026: Live Midterm Election Results - The New York Times<br /> by [[The New York Times]]<br /> accessed on 2026-11-04T21:43:41
-
-
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
-
Simon Winchester, Author of ‘The Professor and the Madman,’ Has Died<br /> by [[Alan Cowell]] - The New York Times<br /> accessed on 2026-11-04T19:12:21
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
I got my last dream typewriter two typewriters ago...
https://www.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1xnbahv/hermes_baby_help/
-
-
www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
-
https://www.ebay.com/itm/377616520971
A French Royal O typewriter with Vogue offered at $990.
Tags
Annotators
URL
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Beginning of a holiday gift giving guide for the typewriter enthusiast in your life:
Repair person:
Some ideas for typewriter tools: https://boffosocko.com/tag/typewriter-tools/ including:<br /> - Paul at Bremerton Typewriter has reproduction segment picks that make solid stocking stuffers. - Crawford Tools has some great oilers and spring hooks.
Typewriter repair manuals are great to build up your library: https://www.lulu.com/search?adult_audience_rating=00&contributor=Ted+Munk&page=1&pageSize=50&sortBy=PRODUCT_SALES_90_DAYS
Shelving that will fit heavy standards is always a true "gift".
Bulk ribbon from Fine Line Ribbon in Texas is lovely.
If your rich uncle asks: https://www.safety-kleen.com/services/parts-washers/solvent-parts-washers
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
reply to u/Fireflystudio at https://old.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1xn596e/remington_identification_help/
They (the serial number prefix JT) sort of appear at https://typewriterdatabase.com/remington.42.typewriter-serial-number-database but as J, SJ, and EJT.
You'll find two of them on https://typewriterdatabase.com/Remington.Standard.42.bmys. Your serial number seems to line up with the other Italian made ones, but the database doesn't seem to have any detail about years of manufacture for those serial numbers. Because they're fairly serious collectors who've listed theirs as early 1960s models (196X), yours was probably also early 1960s. The shift from the green keys to the white/gray chicklet design can be seen at the break between 1959 and 1960 for the Remington Quiet-Riter Eleven: https://typewriterdatabase.com/Remington.Quiet-Riter+Eleven.42.bmys
Presumably the primary prefix model letter for the Remington Standard is "J" and the additional letters either indicate the factory/country of manufacture or other functionality. (Remington often added the letter "T" to some models to indicate tabulator or decimal tabulator, though in this case, as a standard, a simple tabulator would have been implied. Perhaps in your model's case the "T" stands for Torino which is likely the plant it was manufactured in in Italy. See also: https://www.nytimes.com/1951/10/08/archives/remington-rand-to-build-in-italy-company-to-construct-large-plant.html
The SJ models seem to be from England, FJ models in France and another CJ model, potentially from Canada? Some additional research ought to uncover if this hypothesis holds.
Torino, Italy
-
https://www.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1xn596e/remington_identification_help/
Prior to this in the late 40s and early 50s were the Remington 17 and KMC versions before they switched to the Remington Super-Riter. This one with the push and slide margin controls marks it as a Remington Standard.
There are only a few models in the database that have this body finish and "chicklet" style keys (Both James Grooms and Richard Polt have them), but perhaps this was a tooling change when they moved manufacture out of the US to Italy some time around 1962?
These were used by Robby the Robot, Lina Wertmuller, and Grace Kelly. Mel Gibson's character used one in the 1982 movie The Year of Living Dangerously.
Your machine should have the Fold-A-Matic feature which should help you clean out the internals: https://boffosocko.com/2024/12/06/using-the-fold-a-matic-feature-of-the-remington-standard-to-clean-oil-and-adjust/
Should you need to replace some of the internal rubber grommets: https://boffosocko.com/2026/02/23/rubber-grommet-repair-on-remington-super-riters-and-standards/
The manual: https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/RemingtonSuper-Riter.pdf
There was a laterRemington 19 which had a plastic body and similar "chicklet" keys that showed up in the early 60s,
-
-
typewriterdatabase.com typewriterdatabase.com
-
From the 1983 The Year of Living Dangerously. Gibson uses a Remington Standard.
via James Grooms: https://typewriterdatabase.com/196x-remington-standard.23240.typewriter
-
-
www.imdb.com www.imdb.com
-
Kaffee: [interrupts with game-show buzzer sound] eeehhhhh! I'm sorry, your time's run out! What do we have for the losers, judge? Well, for our defendants, it's a life time at exotic Fort Leavenworth! And, for defense counsel Kaffee, that's right, it's a court martial! Yes, Johnny! After falsely accusing a highly decorated Marine officer of conspiracy and perjury, Lieutenant Kaffee will have a long and prosperous career teaching... typewriter maintenance at the Rocco Globbo School for Women! Thank you for playing "Should we or should we not follow the advice of the galactically stupid!"
via https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104257/quotes/
double-check the quote verbiage
-
-
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
-
1945 Remington Rand C — Full Restoration of a Flea Market Typewriter
Listed as a full restoration, but really only a reasonable refurbishing. Paint job, but no new rubber at all....
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
The white correction part is dry white correction material on film. It's supposed to be that way. The black is the part that ought to be wet with ink. I don't think that anyone makes the older bichrome correction ribbon anymore. There's still NOS out there, but I generally don't recommend it as, though it may work, it throws flecks of white into your segment and onto your typebars. It makes a heck of a mess and is a pain to clean up.
If you need it, you can find old correction tabs out there or correction tape which is far easier (and cleaner) to use.
Better ribbon can be found here: https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/tw-faq.html#q1
Reply to u/OalBlunkont at https://www.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1xkpg95/ribbon_for_brother_charger_11c/
-
-
www.facebook.com www.facebook.com
- Oct 2026
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Likely the right hand margin slider has shattered. I just fixed this same issue on my SG-3 by 3D printing a replacement using a free file available on Thingyverse. My library printed it at no charge. The repair took a little doing— I had to drill out two small brass rivets and replace them with tiny screws, but it is great to have it working again.
via u/radiant_control at https://www.reddit.com/r/TypewriterRepair/comments/1xk6tkj/olympia_sg3_right_margin_stop/
-
-
www.facebook.com www.facebook.com
-
Saturday, May 23, 1970: “This is a brand new Olivetti typewriter upon which I am writing given to me by Lil and Brook. It is sparkling and very loose compared with the Hermes Baby and it will take me a little more time to bang away on it with the same abandon as I do on the old one which I shall keep anyway out of loyalty for many years of battered service. I shall retire the Baby to the library on the boat or at Gstaad. The machine is fire-engine red and I’ve pasted on it a Welsh dragon. . . “ - Richard Burton, The Richard Burton Diaries
via https://www.facebook.com/groups/TypewriterCollectors/posts/10164377139549678/
Check source on the quote.
-
-
www.facebook.com www.facebook.com
-
www.harpersbazaar.com www.harpersbazaar.com
-
Valentine di Olivetti: la storia della macchina da scrivere portatile<br /> Bazaar<br /> accessed on 2026-10-30T17:45:34
-
-
oztypewriter.blogspot.com oztypewriter.blogspot.com
-
I Know What's in Richard Burton's Case, But What About Marlon Brando's Case?<br /> by [[Robert Messenger]] in oz.Typewriter<br /> accessed on 2026-10-30T17:34:08
Richard Burton had a red Olivetti Valentine with a Cymru flag sticker on it. <br />
Marlon Brando travelling in August 1953 with what appears to be a Smith-Corona portable typewriter.
Orson Welles with an Underwood Noiseless, a Royal Standard, an Underwood four bank, and a Lexikon 80E Electric. <br />
Tags
- Elizabeth Taylor
- Orson Welles
- Smith-Corona typewriters
- Marlon Brando
- Olivetti Lexikon 80E Electric
- typewriters of Hollywood people
- photos
- typewriters of actors
- Richard Burton
- Royal Quiet De Luxe
- Underwood 4 bank
- Olivetti Lexikon 80
- Olivetti typewriters
- Royal typewriters
- typewriters of authors
Annotators
URL
-
-
myoldtypewriter.com myoldtypewriter.com
-
Touching Grass and Powder Coating Typewriters<br /> by [[maryech]] myoldtypewriter<br /> accessed on 2026-10-30T13:12:27
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
reply to u/MorsaTamalera at https://old.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1xjo3ly/do_my_type_pieces_seem_ok_or_do_they_need_cleaning/
During a period when people got their machines serviced regularly, the general advice was to bush out the slugs with a stiff bristle brush (firm toothbrushes make a reasonable tool here) once every eight hours of typing. See: https://youtu.be/ocdxgkxKAKo?si=Qz5PSud60SYGVvH6&t=328
If you've got some dirtier slugs, a degreaser like mineral spirits in combination with a a brass bristle brush can be used to better effect. Some also use pins, toothpicks, or even dental picks to clean out the harder to clean loops of letters like a, e, b, g, d, etc.
A variety of solvents can be used if you don't have any mineral spirits on hand including isopropyl alcohol, fingernail polish remover, lighter fluid, or even gasoline and kerosene (though obviously take care that your cigarettes and open flames aren't around). See also: https://boffosocko.com/2024/08/09/on-colloquial-advice-for-degreasing-cleaning-and-oiling-manual-typewriters/#nail-polish%20remover
-
-
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
-
Dust getting into the typebar segment often causes sticky typebars. via https://youtu.be/ocdxgkxKAKo?si=jpfcAIpE3ZfNkP8b&t=298
Tags
Annotators
URL
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
This website is a gem, thank you!
via u/RaspberryEnjoyer at https://www.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1xgtxmy/comment/19rtl32oof0bp/?context=1&screen_view_count=2
-
-
-
www.instagram.com www.instagram.com
-
https://www.instagram.com/p/De2PQF4D5vWom7fZgbCX4t5G1YNJ14Xi4N2lAQ0/
Next reading is at @typewriters_anonymous (aka The Poetry Bunker) on Thursday, November 5th! MACHINERY OF NIGHT features Duncan Cuervo, Rhiannon Cielos Chavez, Daryl Gussin, Phillip T. Nails, and a special set by moi and my compa Raul Garcia as CASCAJO
-
-
www.amazon.com www.amazon.com
-
Quote from Introduction:
I remember when it was all done in first draft telling Gene Wolfe, who is the wisest writer I know and has written more excellent novels than any man I’ve met, that I thought I had now learned how to write a novel. Gene looked at me, and smiled kindly. “You never learn how to write a novel,” he told me. “You only learn to write the novel you’re on.”
Gaiman, Neil. 2021. American Gods: A Novel. 10th Anniversary. New York: William Morrow Paperbacks.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
memotorres.substack.com memotorres.substack.com
-
What Happened at L.A. Taco - Memo Torres<br /> by [[Memo Torres]]<br /> accessed on 2026-10-27T10:53:42
-
-
www.telegraph.co.uk www.telegraph.co.uk
-
Josh Brolin: ‘I used to drop acid and walk naked in the desert’<br /> by [[Richard Grant]]<br /> accessed on 2026-10-26T22:00:49
-
-
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Obviously there are well built machines and more cheaply built machines, but at a certain level it’s what you connect with. If you spend three years straight typing on one machine, then it will be comfortable and perform well for you. Back in the day, people may have encountered different typewriters and occasionally tried them, but MOSTLY they picked one out in the store they connected with and used it. After years and years (if they don’t have issues), they will think it’s the best typewriter ever. It’s like buying a car, most modern cars are very reliable. So you do some basic research, look at costs and make a pick. If it has something annoying about it (bad visibility or crappy AC or reliability), you’ll never buy one again. But if it works well and you like it, then you’ll think great. You’re comparing two top brands that took very few shortcuts. It’s like comparing a BMW to a Mercedes - maybe one here or there will have issues - but they are both great cars. That doesn’t stop BMW people from talking shit about Mercedes and the other way around.
by u/newsINcinci at https://www.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1xf54ra/the_sm9_that_i_almost_passed_up/
-
-
www.smithsonianmag.com www.smithsonianmag.com
-
Josh Brolin, who starred in No Country for Old Men, at his Southern California home. He became close with McCarthy and sat with the novelist right before he died. He’s also the proud owner of McCarthy’s Olivetti typewriter. Wayne Martin Belger
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/93/f4/93f4c6cd-b174-4ddc-9d3b-c9b6842852de/31b_smithsonian_cormac_josh_brolin_-1000406.jpg)
-
Two Years After Cormac McCarthy's Death, Rare Access to His Personal Library Reveals the Man Behind the Myth<br /> by [[Richard Grant]]<br /> accessed on 2026-10-25T14:02:31
-
She was unable to calculate the total number of books because the cataloging software didn’t account for multi-volume works. McCarthy’s 36-volume history of Utah, for example, registered as a single entry. Nor did the software tally multiple editions of the same book, so McCarthy’s 13 copies of Moby-Dick registered as one entry. The total number of entries was 18,520. Taking into account duplicate copies and multi-volume works, Peebles felt confident that McCarthy’s library contained just over 20,000 books, with 2,170 annotated.
-
“Cormac considered contemporary fiction a waste of time,” said Dennis, “because contemporary writers no longer have a legitimate culture to feed their souls.”
Could this be because of the age and generation of writers writing at the time he was reading?
Compare with Neil Howe's thesis in The Fourth Turning.
-
With the exception of Moby-Dick in multiple, gorgeous leather-bound editions, the scholars found hardly any novels until they started cutting open boxes that Dennis retrieved from a storage locker in El Paso. Out came the entire canon of Western literature, from ancient Greece and Rome to the best novelists, poets and essayists of the 1970s, nearly all in cheap, worn, paperback editions. “These are the books that he read in his 20s and 30s and maybe into his 40s, and he was broke that whole time,” said Dennis. “Once he got money, Cormac bought all his books in hardback if possible, and for the last 40 years of his life he read almost no fiction at all.”
-
As Rick Elmore, a philosophy professor at Appalachian State University with floral tattoos climbing up his neck, puts it, “Wittgenstein was always asking how the systems we use to represent the world relate to the world we want to represent. It’s one of the central questions in McCarthy’s work.”
-
His great friend Murray Gell-Mann, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, invited him to join the Santa Fe Institute, serving as a sort of in-house literary intellectual.
-
I asked John what else his father collected apart from books, cars and kitchenware. “I would say clothes were the other big one. He had hundreds of tweed jackets, hundreds of shirts, hundreds of suits that he’d never worn.” John once spent three days dragging stuff out of a room he wanted to use as a bedroom. “When I was done, I said, ‘You ever think you might be a little bit of a hoarder?’ And he looks at me and he goes, ‘Yeah, probably.’ He attributed it to all those years when he had no money.”
An example of poverty, scarcity mindset and hoarding as a symptom.
-
It was John who told me that McCarthy worked in bed—a California king with high-thread-count sheets, the Olivetti on a wooden platform with a leather pillow underneath it, and piles of typed pages, magazines, books and catalogs. Writing, McCarthy once said, was not a conscious process for him. He put a blank piece of paper in the Olivetti, the words arrived, and he typed them down. But that was just the first stage of an extensive rewriting and structuring process, and some of his books took 20 years or more to get right. “Dad didn’t like being interrupted when he was working, or when he was reading,” John said. “‘No, no, no. I’m reading. Go away!’ he would say.
-
Oprah, knowing it was true, asked if The Road was a love story to his young son John. “In a way, I suppose, that’s kind of embarrassing,” he said. She made slightly better headway on the subject of punctuation. McCarthy didn’t use quotation marks, hated semicolons and kept commas to the barest minimum. “There’s no reason to block the page up with weird little marks,” he said. “If you write properly, you shouldn’t have to punctuate.”
-
After leaving her without an explanation in 1974, McCarthy drifted around cheap motels with his typewriter, a pile of books and a light bulb for good reading light.
-
McCarthy often had a pencil when he was reading and would make tiny vertical marks next to sentences that interested him and add comments in the margins in small print handwriting. Sometimes he jotted down thoughts on slips of paper that he left between the pages. Inside The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila by Herself, first published in 1565, we found him musing philosophically: “There is an intelligence to the universe (of which we are fractal) and that intelligence has a character and that character is benign. Intends well toward all things. How could it not?”
-
McCarthy was starting to seem like a man whose talents and intelligence were without limits, yet he lived in a hoarder’s shambles and couldn’t stop buying nonstick skillets and fruit bowls.
-
McCarthy was a devoted carpenter and designed these nine-foot-tall shelves along the walls of his living room, with room for 1,000 books—a mere 5 percent of the author’s sprawling personal library. Wayne Martin Belger
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/02/51/0251ae3b-5286-47dd-9130-d49b2f5d875e/30_smithsonian_cormac_shoot_1_-9.jpg)
-
The second major discovery, discernible in his work but confirmed beyond doubt in his library, was that McCarthy was a genius-level intellectual polymath with an insatiable curiosity. His interests ranged from quantum physics, which he taught himself by reading 190 books on the notoriously challenging subject, to whale biology, violins, obscure corners of French history in the early Middle Ages, the highest levels of advanced mathematics and almost any other subject you can name.
-
Nor did McCarthy use a computer—ever. He typed out his pages on a cheap, durable Olivetti typewriter and, I learned later, did most of his work propped up on pillows in bed.
-
I was invited to the house by two McCarthy scholars who were embroiled in a herculean endeavor. Working unpaid, with help from other volunteer scholars and occasional graduate students, they had taken it upon themselves to physically examine and digitally catalog every single book in McCarthy’s enormous and chaotically disorganized personal library. They were guessing it contained upwards of 20,000 volumes. By comparison, Ernest Hemingway, considered a voracious book collector, left behind a personal library of 9,000.
Cormack McCarthy had a library of approximately 20,000 volumes
Ernest Hemingway had a personal library of approximately 9,000 volumes.
Tags
- quantum mechanics
- car collectors
- writing practices
- collecting
- book collections
- reading practices
- personal libraries
- commas
- hoarding
- Oprah Winfrey
- reading with a pen in hand
- non-fiction
- writing in bed
- Ernest Hemingway
- polymaths
- Ford GT40
- Murray Gell-Mann
- Santa Fe Institute
- Dennis McCarthy
- The Fourth Turning
- abstract mathematics
- scarcity mindset
- quotes
- Cormac McCarthy Society
- writing methods
- semicolons
- interviews
- read
- generations
- fruit bowls
- nonstick skillets
- Olivetti Lettera 32
- quotation marks
- typewriters of authors
- Winston Churchill
- libraries of authors
- typewriters of Hollywood people
- interviewing authors
- punctuation
- drifters
- Rick Elmore
- Stacey Peebles
- fiction
- Albert Einstein
- philosophy
- Josh Brolin
- photos
- quantum physics
- physics students
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
- Allard racing caars
- Lincoln Mark VIII
- Oprah
- Charles Sanders Pierce
- Lotus
- annotations
- culture
- writing style
- Cormack McCarthy
- Bryan Giemza
- Olivetti typewriters
- Saint Teresa of Ávila
- Buick Riviera
- art
- James Joyce
- hoarders
Annotators
URL
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
My SG1 doesn’t handle thick cardstock well. I have some index cards that are thicker than normal index cards and they are the thickest I can feed. Greeting cards or the nice letterhead cardstock my wife got me, do not fit.
If this is the case, I worry that there may be something poorly adjusted on your machine.
These standards were designed for offices using thicker carbon packs of 10 or more sheets of paper for carbon copies at the same time. I can easily roll a stack of 13 standard Oxford index cards (approximately a tenth of an inch!) into my SG1 at the same time. It's only when I go over this that problems begin.
I just tried it as an experiment, but if I'm careful, I can put a piece of corrugated cardboard from a standard Amazon box into my SG1 and type on it. (Hint for those considering it: the corrugation doesn't give the best results from an imprint standpoint. The machine is also going to compress the cardboard and put "wrinkles" into the corrugation as it winds through the platen.)
If the bigger standards aren't going to handle the thickness of card stock you're attempting to type on the portables and ultraportables are going to be even worse.
-
I am looking at purchasing a manual typewriter, specifically an ultra-portable or a portable. I mainly want to be typing cards with thicker paper. the world of typewriters is more vast than I thought and I keep going down multiple rabbit holes and can’t come to a conclusion on what would be best. please give me your thoughts! thanks!
Reply to u/arightler at tk
As one of the few here who may be typing on a regular basis on index cards, I'd generally recommend standard typewriters (which have larger diameter platens and thus handle thicker cardstock better) which also have either card fingers or Perspex card guides. These latter will help hold the card to the platen for a better imprint and make the process much quieter. Any of the Royal standards (all of which have card fingers) here would be great (KHM, KMM, KMG, HH, FP, etc.) or the Olympia SG1 which has Perspex guides.
You can get away with portables, but they're not as great for regular card work (smaller diameter platens). I might recommend one of the Smith-Corona Series 4 or 5 machines as long as they've got adjustable card fingers. (In the late 50's typically only the Silent-Super model had card fingers, but earlier models often had them as well.) Most of the Olympia SM series (2-9) will do relatively well as they all have Perspex card guides.
Ultra-portables, with their miniscule platens and barely extant/broadly useless paper bails, will be the worst possible option. Most don't have fingers or card guides at all. I highly recommend against them for this work. If you insist on using one for it, DON'T every try anything else as you'll discover how bad these are for this work and it will utterly ruin you.
Grippy platens and paper bail rollers with nice tension along with card fingers/Perspex are usually required for being able to type all the way to the bottom of a card or label cleanly.
For quickly doing labels or small cards, some of the advanced typing techniques in this video will help: https://youtu.be/JUJfCfqgsX0?si=li5bPyn8NdAr2F69&t=1649
Create a small zig-zag fold into a piece of paper to create a pocket slot which can be Scotch taped on either side. This template paper can then be inserted so that the pocket is visible above the writing line, but the paper below it is still in the platen. The label or card can be placed into the pocket and the platen reversed to feed the label or card in backwards to the desired typing line. Using a v-groove or hole in the typing line can create a pencil line to serve as a guide for inserting many labels at the same place so that the typing lines up between labels.
Some offices had special platens for holding cards like this.
Pockets like this can also be used to hold the page to add additional lines at the bottom of pages. Deeper pockets may need to be used for doing this with carbon packs whose carbons are longer than the pages.
Alternately one can do something similar by creating a inverted u-shaped set of slits into an index card to hold such labels.
My usual typewriter recommendations and some information on the market:
Tags
- typewriters for labels
- Smith-Corona typewriters
- typewriter paper
- cardboard
- Royal standard typewriters
- Olympia SG1
- Smith-Corona Silent-Super
- Perspex card guides
- standard typewriters
- typewriter recommendations
- Smith-Corona 5 series
- Royal typewriters
- carbon copies
- reply
- index cards for typewriters
- Oxford index cards
- carbon packs
- card fingers
- Smith-Corona 4 series
- Olympia typewriters
- typewriters for index cards
Annotators
URL
-
-
-
https://www.uline.com/BL_3867/Wide-Span-Storage-Racks-Particle-Board
James Grooms uses something similar in his typewriter collection.
-
-
worldcoffeeresearch.org worldcoffeeresearch.org
-
Sensory Lexicon<br /> by [[World Coffee Research]]<br /> accessed on 2026-10-23T14:23:10
-
-
sca.coffee sca.coffee
-
How to Use the Coffee Taster’s Flavor Wheel in Eight Steps<br /> by [[Specialty Coffee Association]]<br /> accessed on 2026-10-23T14:22:12
-
-
www.lowkeycoffeesnobs.com www.lowkeycoffeesnobs.com
-
https://www.lowkeycoffeesnobs.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-3-1536x960.png
Via https://sca.coffee/sca-news/how-to-use-the-flavor-wheel-in-eight-steps-ab2hy
archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20180918204922im_/http://www.scanews.coffee/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/SCA-WCR-Flavor-Wheel-768x996.png
-
-
honestcoffeeguide.com honestcoffeeguide.com
-
Coffee grind size chart:<br /> https://honestcoffeeguide.com/coffee-grind-size-chart/
-
-
www.etsy.com www.etsy.com
-
writing.bobdoto.computer writing.bobdoto.computer
-
Understanding the Zettelkasten as an "Asymmetric" Communication Partner<br /> by [[Bob Doto]]<br /> accessed on 2026-10-22T08:27:48
-
-
ber10thal.com ber10thal.com
-
www.kores.com www.kores.com
-
https://www.kores.com/product/ribbons/<br /> Kores manufactures typewriter ribbons and cassettes out of Europe:<br /> Leopold Ungar Platz 2/ Office 334<br /> 1190 Vienna, Austria
They sell on Amazon in the UK. https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=kores+typewriter+ribbon
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTypingRoom/comments/1x7optf/does_the_paper_change_the_way_you_write/
See also commentary at https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTypingRoom/comments/1x7optf/does_the_paper_change_the_way_you_write/
What effect does the quality of paper have on what we write?
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
https://old.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1x92f53/the_hunter_never_sleeps/
-
I am a displaced western Nebraskan.
u/Jbhusker is a typewriter collector from Nebraska who lives in the midwest.
-
Given your username, if you are in Lincoln, send me a DM and let’s get a coffee.
u/MicroProf is a typewriter collector in Lincoln, NE
-
-
www.conejomountain.com www.conejomountain.com
-
https://www.conejomountain.com/obituaries/Gerard-William-Lynham?obId=48648853<br /> Gerard William Lynham <br /> July 26, 1946 - June 5, 2026
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Its just a ball bearing. Pull hard and it'll pop out. Might want to keep a finger on it so it doesn't fly into the Abyss and you can use it to attach the new ribbon.
via u/Koponewt (Pelicram) at https://old.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1x8uddf/is_there_a_way_to_unspool_this_it_seems_pinned_in/
On removing a ball bearing in a typewriter spool that's being used to friction fit a ribbon into a typewriter spool.
-
-
ia801708.us.archive.org ia801708.us.archive.org
-
Those, for example, who have carelessly practiced gluttony, violence and drunkenness are likely to join a company of donkeys or of similar animals. Do you not think so?
This passage provides a sort of personality to donkeys in an Aesopian manner.
More importantly it seems like it may be the inspiration for the donkey sequence in Carlo Collodi's Pinnochio.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Hal B. Wallis, producer, had a Royal Vogue typewriter in his office.
-
-
www.hollywoodreporter.com www.hollywoodreporter.com
-
The 1944 Oscar statues that were handed out at the ceremony were made of plaster, which was part of the industry’s agreement to preserve metal during the war. Metal awards were later made and given to winners to replace the plaster stand-in.
-
