Well, there is the "Preview" button. But of course, no matter how many times you preview, you will only catch the final errors when you post. I also find that on my other vitally important pronouncements, like Amazon product reviews.

I have to agree, if the choice is "forever" or "never" then never is clearly the way to go. If some spelling or editing error is left, well... it's really only an informal forum, even if the expected retention time is "forever" - or at least until the cataclysmic end of our civilization.

At the moment I'm using my 1909 No.3 12" Underwood Standard Typewriter to learn how to type, and from a period instruction book "From sight to touch" by underwood, I think mine's a 1914 publication. I never learned to type and though I'm pretty fast with my "multi finger hunt and peck" style I've always wonted to learn to type by touch. I guess this also goes with my recent desire to relearn cursive writing as well.

I've heard of people putting a typewriter in their kitchen so they can jot down their grocery list one-by-one as they run out of certain foods. I tried it, but because the list was in the typewriter for so long, the paper came out curled around itself.

As for me, I'm a university student who is studying a tertiary certificate on the side, so I use my typewriters extensively for notes. It's a bit unclear, though, because my degree is in creative and professional writing, so my creative work could be classified as study or hobby. I like to think it's study.

I just made an envelope for this week's receipts before I left home this morning.  It was quick and easy to put it into a typewriter and label it.  This is an attempt to keep better track of spending.

JoeV wrote:

I like the idea of using typewriters for some "practical" use in one's life, like typing grocery and shopping lists, or to-do lists. I will also use a typewriter to plan a project, by typing out the required steps in order. It helps to organize one's thoughts, and there's a kind of permanence and importance given to the writing that otherwise wouldn't exist with just a hand-scrawled note.

Exactamundo!

Sometimes I wake up with some silly or strange phrase or sentence on my mind, or throughout the day I might come up with something I want to set down on paper. That's where my Corona 4 comes in handy, as it's the one machine always on display (but under a protective clear plastic dust cover), ready to respond in short notice to my sudden writing needs.

"Sudden writing needs". That is a very good phrase. It is a humorous and happy phrase which I think only a writer would have stumbled on. Hence your needs. 

It's interesting how the typewriter rediscovery has changed the usage mode of these machines, from being strictly the tool of an office to now being objects of fetish-like obsession (guilty as charged), or used more in a mode of self-reflection about typewriters in one's life through blogging (also guilty as charged). It's for these reasons that finding "practical" uses for typewriters is so important to me.

Joe, I think we are 100% on the same page here. I read you. I have just gone through the self-reflective self-referential stage - though I did not blog - and old typewriter hands probably rolled their eyes inwardly at another newbie who thought he was cool because he typed about typing and once kicked an escapement.

Now we both know that what everyone really wants to use a typewriter for is to write great books in a surrogate atmosphere of booze and cigarette smoke (surrogate because such things are not done now). I realized as a first step to this modest goal I would have to stop this self-referential typing about typing. It just will not do. So now my plan is 1) self-referential gibberish 2) to-do lists 3) great book!

I may be leaving out a few things between 2) and 3). I am not sure.

I tried to write an essay tonight but the vintage ribbon disintegrated on the first reverse of direction, and that was so distracting to fix that I lost my train of thought. But I'm sure if I can just get out a few essays, why, a great book will kind of write itself!  It may be a story about a man who founds a religion based on his self-referential typewriter blogging and his typewriter parables (For, when the platen has hardened do not the type slugs suffer?), though I, the author, am of course not doing this very thing, and am only an ironic observer. That way the great book faeries may give me a pass.