Typewriter Talk / Typing manuals

**Posted by robmck** 27-7-2022 12:29:56

I'm interested in typing manuals, both layout/style and technique. Any recommendations of good, or interesting books?

Laurenz's post from earlier today (Typewriter Talk » Line Spacings From One To Three (boardhost.com)) lists two style books:

Fowler, N. 'The Art of Letter Writing'. George Sully & Co., 1913.
House, C. and Skurow, S. 'Typewriting Style Manual'. South-Western Publishing Co., 1972.

**Posted by Laurenz van Gaalen** 28-7-2022 06:08:37

Hi robmck,

Here are some typing manuals:
https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/tw-manuals.html#typingmanuals

All kind of interesting old publication can be found on the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/search.php?query=letter+writing&sin=

The TWDB let you view/browse typefaces by typewriter brand and model:
https://typewriterdatabase.com/typefaces.php

If you have a TWDB account you have access to the download section, wich contains (among others) typographical publications.

Lau

**Posted by SoucekFan** 28-7-2022 16:25:29

20th Century Typewriting, Rowe Typing, and Gregg Typing, are three of the most common typewriter instructional textbooks. They all have numerous editions that span several decades.

**Posted by robmck** 29-7-2022 10:33:10

Thanks for the recommendations, all! I'd forgotten that Richard Polt's site also has these sort of manuals (I've used it many times for user and service manuals).

It's interesting to see some of the tips and techniques in some of these. E.g. I'd always centered things by doing some math on a scratch paper. House & Skurow suggest centering the typewriter, then backspacing for every 2 characters in the centered text - nice and simple.