DSD

Per­haps the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. But prob­a­bly my oxen will haul a dozen loads of gravel just as quickly.

Going through my grandmother’s old things last night, my father and aunt came across her typ­ing text­book from sec­re­tar­ial school in Eng­land, 1934 to 1936. One of the exer­cises, about halfway through, includes a some­what hilar­i­ous list of sen­tences using every let­ter of the alpha­bet.

The Clark’s Col­lege Sys­tem of Rhyth­mic Touch Type­writ­ing begins with an intro­duc­tion to the home row, with diagrams,

The British Empire Key-board

And pro­ceeds through a col­lec­tion of exer­cises like this one:

Exer­cise VII.

(Two Fin­gers on Two Rows of Keys.)

(Right Hand Only.)

Upper Two Rows.

1st and 2nd fingers.

ykykykykykykykykykykykykykykykykykykykykykykyk

1st and 2nd fingers.

ukukukukukukukukukukukukukukukukukukukukukukuk

2nd and 4rd fingers.

ililililililililililililililililililililililil

3rd and 4th fingers.

o;o;o;o;o;o;o;o;o;o;o;o;o;o;o;o;o;o;o;o;o;o;o;

1st and 3rd fingers.

ulu­l­u­l­u­l­u­l­u­l­u­l­u­l­u­l­u­l­u­l­u­l­u­l­u­l­u­l­u­l­u­l­u­l­u­l­u­l­u­l­u­lul

1st and 3rd fingers.

yly­ly­ly­ly­ly­ly­ly­ly­ly­ly­ly­ly­ly­ly­ly­ly­ly­ly­ly­ly­ly­lyl

…

 

The com­bi­na­tions marked with an aster­isk are those most fre­quently used. You must be very sure of these.

Stu­dents work grad­u­ally through more pat­terns, adding more and more let­ters, while the book admon­ishes “The object to aim at is per­fect even­ness of touch. If one let­ter prints more heav­ily than another you are typ­ing badly,” and “Accu­racy and style are every­thing. speed is noth­ing.” How­ever, it rec­om­mends that stu­dents con­struct a card­board model of a type­writer before attempt­ing any of the exer­cises on an actual machine.

“The stu­dent is rec­om­mended to con­struct a model … upon which to prac­tise before using the actual typewriter.”

I’m sure it was worth work­ing through it all to get to this:

Instruc­tions for Exer­cise XIX.

(Alpha­bet­i­cal Sentences)

We have now learnt to write the alpha­bet cor­rectly, and may pro­ceed to work on sen­tences which con­tain every let­ter in the alpha­bet in sequences other than that in which they occur in the alpha­bet itself.

Exer­cise XIX is a rather more dif­fi­cult way of test­ing your knowl­edge of the key-board. Here you have sen­tences, each of which takes the fin­gers over every let­ter of the alpha­bet, but not in any recog­nised order.

Let the first 10 min­utes of each les­son be devoted to a small por­tion of each of the Exer­cises XVII, XVIII, and XIX. The whole could be com­pleted each week by tak­ing three lines from each exer­cise at every lesson.

Great care must be taken when work­ing through the alpha­bet­i­cal sen­tences. This will be your first acquain­tance with con­nected mat­ter, and you must try to pre­serve a uni­form rate of typing.

Don’t type in spas­modic jerks — going quickly over the easy words only to slow down when the hard ones are encountered.

Each sen­tence must be prac­tised until it can be done cor­rectly, evenly and quickly.

CAPITALS. — Important.

All stu­dents, when the sen­tences can be prop­erly accom­plished as they stand, should prac­tise them start­ing each word with a Cap­i­tal, as in the case of a heading.

Exer­cise XIX.

(Alpha­bet­i­cal Sentences.)

• The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
• The boy was not lazy and jumped up quickly before the box gave way.
• My help squeezed in and joined the weavers again before six o’clock.
• They pro­voked a quar­rel by zeal­ously mix­ing a few black cats.
• You spoke about hav­ing a ten quart zinc box joined firmly forward.
• When­ever the black fox jumped the squir­rel gazed very suspiciously.
• We dis­like to exchange job lots of sizes vary­ing from a quar­ter up.
• The black jury fixed up the ques­tion of prizes with the Government.
• Prob­a­bly my oxen will haul a dozen loads of gravel just as quickly.
• The job requires extra pluck and zeal from every young wage earner.
• The judi­cious advo­cate will never for­get that a good cause may be quickly lost by too much zeal.
• Daz­zling jew­els, pen­dant from her neck were thrown quite in the shadow by exceed­ing wit, which ever flashed from her bril­liant mind.
• Old and quaint max­ims filled the pages of that very curi­ous book, on which, with quiet joy, he gazed for hours together.