on typewriters

It’s odd to me how the en-dash is left out in some text editors. One dash (-) is a hyphen, two dashes (–) is an en-dash, and three dashes (—) is an em-dash. You would think that by hitting the - symbol multiple times, you can get the dash you’re looking for. Substack (and other editors) give you an em-dash with only 2 clicks, and 3 clicks gives you

How would my life change if I wrote typewritten letters to the people in my life I care about?

Now that my hands are shot from playing some hardish riff on piano, and I find it hard to type, I realize that there’s a similar dexterity between the two.

I got my 2nd typewriter! A “Royal Arrow” from 1940. Story here.

Look into FreeWrite and other modern analog writers. What advantages might they have over an old school typewriter?

One Typed Page is a mono-stream of typewritten submissions from around the world.

There’s definitely a place for stream of consciousness. My sense is that the more analytical, slow, and entrenched my editing process for long form is, the better my one-take typewriter essays are. There’s a world in which the patterns of the craft become automatic, and over 50% of what you make is ready to go. I think it’s extremely rare to start

Found out that my late grandfather had a typewriter but it was thrown out. It totally makes sense that after computers became mainstream (say, 2000), there was no conceivable future where a typewriter would ever be useful. (Yet, I spent $647 of my $650 in birthday money on a 84-year old typewriter in 2024). The utility of a typewriter in this day a