Bisbee daily review., 1911-07-23

LIE DIOOEE OHlL IlG sIG v are written by the right hand and the by the left hand. as in the case of the. the left hand presses it's key out of it's consecutive order and before the right hand has contri- buted it's quota. This word so trans posed will be seen frequently in newspaper columns and practically payer is it written either Dy author or linotype operator tou or tuo, thus showing again the lack of initia i've on the part of the left hand.
 This lack of initial movement car not be more plainly evidenced than bv the difficulty experiences by op- orators in learning to use the left hand shift key in machines that are provided with a double shift one at each end of the keyboard While the right hand seeks the shift naturally when a capital is desired if takes effort to train the left hand to perform the same act and many operations, even after years of type writing. use the right hand shift eX- clusiyely finding that they have to think, to persuade the left hand to push down and hold the key that the other manipulates 'instinctively." This. in spite of the fact that the left hand shift is the better one to use in the majority of cases for the free right hand will perform faster work while the other attends to the shift than the left will per form if the right is holding the key rigid.
 or course, the right hand does Aot perform the act ~instinctively' any more than its mate; it performs it through a brain direction. but the movement is an initial one (capitals always coming at the beginning of a word or sentence) and the sense of initiation is stronger in the right hand and requires less brain effort.
 The right typist who is merely copying. and this includes the lin- otype operator. sees letters. spaces, ard punctuation marks rather than words. His mentality makes no ef- fort to recognize more than the de- sired copy, and he completes the cycle between the vision and the fingers with no serious strain on his thought centers. Consequently his errors have less of excuse than those of the man who is framing the sentence be is to write at the same time he is writing it, and the sight typist's errors are those or haste, weariness, and indifference alone.
 It is conceded that the best sight typists are those who complete the cycle of right hand action without any draft upon the deeper centers Of recognition or understanding. As the parrot taIker" utlizes what one might call the reflector powers only, so the parrot typist depicts. reflects, and develops on the ma chine letters in combination, words in assemblage, and the various marks which separate them. Of the actual sense of the sentence when com pieted he very probably knows noth- ing unless he gives the paragraph a nasty after-glance.
 The speediest copyist and typists the writer has met were those who worked mechanically and did not know what a story was about after 1t was copied. The slowest he ever had any experience with was young lady of much good literary taste. who seused and enjoyed an interesting story or article as she copied it.
 The very fact that this typist grasped the meaning Of the sen tences and the drift of the nara tive made her slow copy ist compared with those who did not know whether they were copying Addison or Artemus Ward. This operator, by the way, when put on mercantile work where the sentences were composed of the GUS tonary phrases and she did not util- ize her thought centers, became at once the fastest operator in an of fee where several of the twenty other operators had had ten years more experience than she had en- joyed
 A correspondent who dictated an average Of one hundred and forty different letters a day to three sten- ographers and who had three typists
 working on form letters at the same time, and all using the same make of machine did not find it necessary that they should place their initials at the foot of the letter as customary.
 The nature of the occasional CT TOTS, the quality of the spacing, the touch of the operator, in a word the psychology of the letter, ineyit- ably revealed to him the identity of the person who wrote it.