It probably depends on how fast you type..

I'm not sure what an escapement is? I do have my thumb on the space bar, but I didn't think I was pressing down enough to cause this.  I suppose that when I do get to typing faster, I see this more often.

Hi Col

On a typewriter, your left hand moves the carriage from left to right. The mainspring and draw cord move the carriage from right to left. The escapement controls the carriage movement from right to left. Think of it like a wind up alarm clock. You put the energy into the mainspring by winding the key. The mainspring them rotates the hands aroung the dial and the escapement controls how fast the hand move. It's the escapement in a clock that makes the familiar tick-tock sound.

If you move the carriage of your typewriter to the right and gently press the space bar rythmically once a second (down for ½ second and up for ½ second), your ear will start to pick up the tick-tock sound of the escapement. A steady regulated typing rythm always works best on a manual typewriter, and as Uwe says, keep your thumb of the space bar when typeing words as this can prevent the escapement from properly resetting. One tends to end up with a tick-tock-tock scenario which causes an extra space now and then.

In a clock, the hair spring regulates the speed of the escapement, with a typewriter, your fingers on the keys and thumb on the space bar are what regulate the speed of the escapement. Hope this helps and all the best,

Sky

There have been a couple pof threads recently dealing with the actual technique of typing: sittig position, hand position, how you strike the keys, etc. All these things have an effect on how the typing comes out on the page - some typewriters are better at compensating for bad technique (eg Hermes) and others, like Royals (as I'm finding!) make more demands on the typist to actually do it properly. I think it's less like typing on a computer in this respect, and more like playing the piano. 

If it's happening with all of them, and it's happening when ypu [ress the space bar, and if it's roughly the same number of spaces extra, it is likely to be your thumb-resting habit. 

When an escapement is skipping, it speeds ahead for many spaces. It might happen at regular intervals because one tooth on the wheel, say, is damaged or clogged. Or it could be random if all the teeth are a bit worn down. And it won;'t be anything to do with the space bar, it will be happening after typing any letter - because it's abotu the wheel, not the letter mechanism...

As my typing has improved (through deliberate practice, hours of it) I've got much better at identifying what I'm doing and where it's causing problems on the page. (Fixing those bad habits is another thing!)

I just left this on your other thread but will post it here just to keep the thread tidy... it's a blog post I was just reading that addresses this very issue.

I've certainly had this issue with the QDL I managed to get hold of the other week - my first Royal. I did a bit of googling and found a few people saying the same thing - but my main problem is the bunching. I think the 'a' thing in this blog post is a thing about pinkies, and I've certainly found that. 

Anyway, the other day I got fed up with it, and found a metronome site online, and typed to a metronome for about half an hour!  Started slow - which was hard, like trying to walk slower than feels natural - but speeded it up and got a real feel or how I do things, and eventually got to a speed that felt natural. Trying to type in a completely even, metronomic way is a great way to see what your quirks and foibles are! Where do you slow down unwittingly, where do you speed up. 

And you know what, while I was doing this exercise, the letters didn't bunch up or skip one single time. 

So there you go. My natural comfortable speed, btw, was about 230 strokes a minute, but by no means were all of those strokes correct! Another learning moment.