Foreword

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I’m a dinosaur! I’m fifty years old and learned to type when it was still called typing, and a keyboard was a new-fangled instrument that made all kinds of strange electronic noises. Today they call it music.

I took a course called Office Practice in high school, and Typing I and II. In Typing I you learned to type without looking at the letters. In Typing II you learned to do it faster. I could type 80 words a minute at a time when that meant something.

I worked in the legal department of a large corporation in the midseventies. We secretaries would sit for hours hunched over IBM Selectrics, trying to produce a “clean” first page—one with no visible corrections. We all had huge dictionaries open on our desk, and hidden bottles of WhiteOut and packs of corrections strips in our top drawers. We used carbon sheets because copying was too expensive, and our department heads frowned upon over-use of the Xerox 5700. Back then, we took dictation on steno books, and sending a fax was a major production that required permission from somebody on "mahogany row". The fax was charged to your department, as were telexes, the old-fashioned version of email.

One day the supply guy rolled in a huge machine with a noise cover and installed it at the desk of one of the girls. Training sent over a teacher who spent almost a week teaching the girl how to save her work and make corrections. It was a miracle! You could actually correct something and have it come hot off the roller as an original document!

The world was changing, but I left to have my first child. We did that back then…actually stayed home for a few months before the big day, nesting, and then—gasp—remained home for weeks, months, even years, raising the children.

I went back to work with my little sister (you may know her as “Dreamboat”) who taught me how to use a Wang word processor. I eventually got over the habit of giggling immaturely at the name, but I never really did understand what I was doing.

I’ve joined the techno world, but feel like I’m constantly catching up. There was a time when proficiency with a ten-key adding machine was a good thing to have on your resume. Today they're called calculators. Tell them you can take shorthand, and they think you have a physical disability. Don’t stare blankly when they ask if you can mail merge or use PowerPoint, whatever the hell that is…

Every time I learn something, they teach computers how to do it for me.

Today, my little sister is self-employed in the IT business, and I’m still an administrator, though I’ve moved up the ladder to management. I can still type really fast without looking, but nobody cares. I can still spell, but who needs it? I can still take shorthand; but I only use it to write notes to myself.

The other day, I decided to run some errands. I started out with a stop at the MAC machine. I couldn’t get any money because I couldn’t remember my pin number. I went to the grocery store. The cashier asked if I would be using my super duper savings card. Sure, I said, and fished it out of my purse. Okay, she said sweetly, swipe it and enter your pin number. Never mind, I said, I don't need the groceries anyway.

If anybody wants me, I’ll be in the living room, alone, staring at the weather channel. I like the weather channel. At least that’s what I tell myself. Truth is, I don’t know how to use the remote, and the set has been tuned to that station since 1999.

I'm sure you're wondering by now just what my point is. Well, it's this:

My little sister wrote this book. She asked me to read it just before sending it to the editor. I thought she was crazy. She's been trying to shove Word down my throat for years, but I agreed anyway. I was shocked. I actually understand this book.

Now that you know me—trust me, if I can understand this book, anyone can.

~Eleanor Sadorf
Marlborough Township, Pennsylvania
June 2003



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Dreamboat on Word
Dreamboat on Word: Word 2000, Word 2002, Word 2003 (On Office series)
ISBN: 0972425845
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 130
Authors: Anne Troy

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