Typing Skills: Daily Job Techniques (2ndEd, 1972)

[Music] shirley seems to be in quite a hurry this morning she's the new typist in our office [Music] i guess this is her first job because she doesn't seem to have learned if you rush to work without preparation the quality of your work is going to suffer i learned the right daily job technique some time ago so i can imagine how shirley feels it must seem to her that the pile of unfinished work on her desk has grown over the weekend [Music] really though it's just a normal load and her fingers tapping without warm up they must feel like she's wearing boxing gloves that letter for mr vogel i try so hard but still make mistakes and there must be a thousand extraneous thoughts running through her mind mrs kelly want this done today am i dressed right why did margie look at me that way when i walked in should i spell out mr larson's name i used to be the same way and whether i used an electric or a manual typewriter i made mistakes surely too she's miscounted her carbons i can imagine how she feels gloria recognizes shirley's problem like all good typists she knows that to be successful at the business of typing she should be concerned with production time and costs she's most valuable to her employers if she can get through a day with maximum efficiency minimum effort to do this gloria has found she has to make plans three kinds of plans first i plan to do a variety of jobs whatever kinds i may be assigned during the day second i plan each job and third i plan for accuracy consider gloria's plans one at a time plan to do a variety of jobs whatever kinds may be assigned if we were to ask her how she does this gloria might reply first i organize my desk and my work my memo book is a help i list in it jobs i should do regularly every day or every week this morning like every morning i've made sure letterhead paper second sheets and carbon paper are handy now i don't have to open drawers when i need these supplies i keep incoming work in this basket and supplies i don't need for the job at hand are kept in drawers i stack envelopes this way so i can pick them up and put them in the typewriter without turning them other time savers i keep reference books and an address book on my desk and my eraser and shield close by so i don't waste time and effort looking for them as for organizing my work every morning and during the day too i look over the jobs i have to do i try to group similar jobs together so i don't waste time resetting margins and tabulators or hunting for supplies usually i know which job should be done first but when there's a question i ask my boss of course no matter what kinds of jobs a typist does she should condition her fingers for typing usually i do finger exercises as i type some drills and warm-ups i'm careful to keep the stroking action in my fingers conditioning her fingers organizing her work and materials on her desk gloria plans for the day without planning a typist wastes time to get supplies and reference books she must leave her work and she must correct errors made because her fingers weren't warmed up in fact in a few hours shirley may use as much energy for needless errands corrections and repetitions as gloria extends an entire day this wasteful helder skelter tires her needlessly [Music] on the other hand gloria handles a full workload partly because she's planned to do a variety of jobs whatever kinds she may be assigned you recall the second sort of plans gloria makes plan each job and she sees it for the most part each job i do needs a different kind of preparation for example typing letters and envelopes cards and labels though the style of a letter margins and spacing is prescribed by company policy a little work on my own makes letters look better for instance looking at a letter i decide where to place it on the page so it'll be centered once i've started i try to keep the right margin even i know my elite typewriter types 12 letters to the inch apache typewriter 10. addressing a number of envelopes i use a chain feeding method as a finished envelope rolls out a new one rolls in a pleated sheet of paper allows me to type postcards and labels without rolling them all the way through the carriage i simply put the card or label into the pleat and roll it into and out of the typewriter from the front typing letters and cards usually takes up a good part of my day but i also work on forms and memos to be duplicated in this office when four or fewer copies are needed carbon copies are made to keep carbons and pages in line i put a folded strip of paper over the top edge before i put it in the typewriter when five to ten copies are needed i simply prepare a clean original to run off on our photocopy machine when from 10 to 50 copies are needed we type a spirit duplicator master before typing the master i give the type an extra cleaning and then i roll in the master with its open side up this way i can open the master making corrections as i go along in this office when more than 50 copies are needed we type a stencil master before typing a stencil i check the copy against the numerals at the side and along the top of the stencil i use these numerals as guides for setting my margins and tab stops above once a month in this office a long report is typed the job is so big that i'd get discouraged if i didn't make this preparation i break the big job into smaller ones dividing by sections or by main headings many of the sections have material that should be centered on a page to center vertically i roughly estimate the lines and spaces to be used 30 in this case i subtract this from the 66 lines available on every eight and a half by 11 inch page the remainder is 36 half of 36 18 is the number of lines left blank at the top of the page the other eighteen will make up the space at the bottom centering columns horizontally on the page i clear all the margin and tabulator stops then i backspace from center once for each two spaces of the longest line in each column four spaces between columns i backspace once for each two spaces required wherever i finish backspacing i set my left margin the rest of the job is simply spacing forward setting tabs to allow for the longest line in each column plus the right number of spaces between columns organizing her work gloria plans each job for shirley who has not yet learned that she must make plans a normal nine to five working day seems to be many hours longer than it actually is the day should be long enough yet much of her work doesn't get done comparing shirley's work with gloria's it's easy to see the value of planning each job gloria's third sort of plans make equally good sense she tries to plan for accuracy as she puts it accuracy doesn't mean correcting errors but avoiding them concentrating on the copy is the best way i know for avoiding errors and proofreading is the only way to find those that have slipped by doing masters or stencils i proof while the work is in the typewriter this way i can roll back and correct without realigning the master but the most accurate proofreading is the kind i'm training shirley to do with me i check the final copy while she reads the original allow sales were up 19 over the previous quarter com we still have not equal last year's apostrophe high colon dollar sign thirteen com zero zero zero point as we read we abbreviate the punctuation capital is read cap comma is calm period is point and so forth point cap however calm we are primarily concerned with our share point steady growth for 10 underlying years has brought about a unique situation this is how gloria plans for accuracy considering gloria's plans and the way she executes them it seems clear that preparation can help a typist get through her day easily as shirley gains experience she too will begin to make and execute the right plans resulting in savings and production time and costs someday she may teach younger typists the daily job techniques gloria learned years ago and how very important planning can be in improving the quality and increasing the quantity of a typist work you