How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Technology, page 2

This week, I divided the book "The Mac is Not a Typewriter" by Robin Williams (not the actor) into three readings for my future students. This book, or its counterpart, "The PC is Not a Typewriter", should be read by everyone who wants to appear professional when composing a document.

The first 25 pages cover such topics as, "one space between sentences" — yes, my friends, in this new world it is no longer necessary or desirable to hit the spacebar twice after punctuation. I can see some of you recoiling in horror at this blasphemy, but go ahead, check around — you'll see that it is true, and it is also true that the double hyphen when you mean em dash is history.

Oh, this book is a gem! Readable in one sitting, it will help make your words look professionally typeset. Never underline! Avoid rivers! Use real apostrophes and use them correctly! Use real quotation marks, not inch marks! How to type those accent marks, fractions and other special characters.

My next challenge is to decide how to compress a 14-week course into ten weeks of lessons. A few assignments will have to go, but the most entertaining ones will stay, like the Haiku book that's been a staple for years.