Typewriter Operation. I think I finally figured out the best combination of options in order to meet my eclectic work habits and the demands of the Editor.

First of all, the idea of printing as I type for the purposes of the first draft works great.

I can choose to set up the machine either as a type writer or word processor. As a typewriter, the Smith Corona has four modes.

The first is plain old typewrite mode; each character is printed when the key is hit. The machine beeps at the end of the line and you can either use margin release or hit the Return key.

The second mode is Auto. In this mode it turns out you do not need to hit the Return as the typewriter will hold the full line of type in the memory and when you get down to the last six spaces, it will issue an automatic return and move the next words down to the next line.

It turns out that as long as I am set in the auto mode, when I switch to the word processor, the only returns that end up in the file are the ones I actually hit.

The only bug I have found so far is if I am typing a long word and it starts before the "end zone" and continues past the margin, the machine is set to look for you to go back and hyphenate it.

Since this is an option that my Editor dislikes, I need to go ahead and enter an actual return to be deleted later. It has happened once so far tonight. I simply inserted a shorter word that brought me into that magic end zone.

The one thing I do notice is that it has yet to happen again in all the lines I have typed. Time to really work on upgrading my vocabulary. Now that I have figured out the best configuration, let us roll on.

The short version of the above is that first I put the typewriter in the Auto mode, switch to word processing, open file in print and store mode and start typing.

The one last thing to watch out for is once I get out of the file, I can not go back into it in the print mode. That works out okay with me doing one page at a time.

The above long-winded explanation goes directly to my argument that it is not what the "technology" can do; it is how the user of that technology can make the best use of it for his individual needs. Individual needs being the key phrase.  ¶ 12:12 PM