I was at Grange & Broughty Golf Club the other week, doing one of my talks about language, journalism, and things that annoy me (misplaced apostrophe misuse and the use of emojis, mostly).
It went well. Some of the members stayed awake for fairly lengthy periods.
Among my many outlandish utterances I boasted that, in my younger days, newspapers had skilled reporters, assiduous sub-editors, and gimlet-eyed readers’ departments – which meant mistakes rarely appeared.
After I’d finished blethering, a very nice lady approached me and said she, too, was intolerant of mistakes in written English. She learned this during a secretarial career in the NHS.
Which prompts me to use this week’s column to pay tribute to a group of workers whose English skills were, literally at times, a matter of life and death: typists.
The members of the typing pool, in any organisation, were almost always female. They usually weren’t well paid, and often didn’t get much respect.
A typist didn’t have the luxury of sub-editors or a readers’ department. They pecked their finger at a key on an old-fashioned typewriter and a letter was inked on to paper. There is little room for error in that sequence.
There was no recourse to, as is everyday practice in modern word processing programs, engage the automated spellchecker software, cut and paste, or go back to edit before printing.
Matters of law, technical specifications for engineering projects, high-value purchases, and many other important tasks, depended upon the skills of typists.
And they were judged by speed. Upwards of 60 words per minute could be achieved.
Over the years there were various inventions – fluids or white tapes – to correct a slip of the finger. But you could always tell when these tricks had been employed. It was far better to do the most difficult thing anyone ever has to do: get it right first time.
When a letter was dictated, and taken down in shorthand, highly technical terms might be mumbled. Worse, after a liquid lunch the person doing the dictating might slur their words or (depending on how many sherbets were downed) spout drunken nonsense.
No matter what gibberish was dictated, however, a typist was expected to produce a highly-professional document. The vocabulary, spelling, punctuation, and grammar skills required to do this are of the highest calibre. I salute these women.
One of the secret ingredients of a skilled typist was a solid knowledge of the language, earned during a stringent education.
I am going to make an ageist claim – criticise if you will. I feel there are vanishingly few youngsters leaving school today who could quickly become as proficient as typists of the pre-digital era.
Word of the week
Darg (noun)
A day’s work, a fixed quantity of work, a task. EG: “Many a skilled and clever typist put in a good darg.”
Read the latest Oh my word! every Saturday in The Courier. Contact me at sfinan@dctmedia.co.uk
