For the past month or so, I've been making a concerted effort to reawake and reinvigorate typing skills I learned a very long time ago. That effort involves typing dozens of full pages of formal text.

One thing I've noticed is that virtually every letter on every page is applied with a different amount of (for lack of a better phrase) finger energy. Some letters are thin and spidery, and some are thick, dark, and full. Some are even over-full and a bit bloated. I can attribute some of that discrepancy to old, dried-out ribbons and to new, modern, small-lot reproduction ribbons that are a bit over-saturated with ink. But, I think, most of the discrepancy comes as a result of fifty years using IBM chicklets that don't care whether you pound them or touch them with a fleeting feather finger. Manual typewriters do care.

Ever since taking up the sport of typewriter collecting, I've not been a fan of electric machines, despite the romantic whirr and hum. But I will give them some credit -- the clacking keys appear to produce (more-or-less) uniform strikes.