Chris Hoover sends this in: “I perceive this to be two jokes about typing but with your hand in the wrong position on the keyboard. However, I am unable to decipher the one on the right. For that matter, I’m not particularly certain about the one on the left.”
A similar gag from Nancy, but this one’s not a CIDU.
Comics I Don't Understand 
It’s been a while since I touch typed anything, but it looks like the one on the left is “Love, but typed on the wrong row”, with the right hand shifted one key to the right. which doesn’t explain why “Love” is correct. The one on the right seems to be “Love, but typede (sic) ?? the different row” this time with the left hand shifted one key to the right. But “os” doesn’t fit the pattern, nor does it make grammatical sense. All in all, I’ve spent more time on this than it was worth.
Make that “the one on the left is typed with the right hand shifted one key to the left.”
Indeed. It’s not the wrong row, it’s the wrong column. It’s still a CIDU for me, because I don’t see how it’s funny or even clever?!
Did anyone notice that Nancy is grabbing the gocomics.com logo rather than a phone to text Sluggo? I thought that was funny!
@Brian R: More than that, she’s actually using the letters from “gocomics.com nancy” to fill in the missing letters she can’t type! (though she’s apparently able to endlessly reuse them, as there’s only one “y”, but she uses it three times, etc….)
I do the vast majority of anything on the desktop computer, so I touch-type a lot, including this message. In my sophomore year of high school, I had a schedule conflict between another year of French or Typing. I chose the latter, and didn’t regret it, other than they were still using manual typewriters. I’ve always been a fairly fast typist, but not overly accurate.
Some time back, I did an old-fashioned thing of having something hand-written, then transcribed by typing without looking at the keys or the results. I actually made far fewer mistakes than the norm. I think many of the errors come from trying to compose and type simultaneously.
Brian – I learned to two finger type from my dad (who was probably the best expert at same there ever was) on his manual Underwood typewriter – which looked like the early typewriters one sees in period TV shows and movies.
I took typing as a summer class when in high school and learned that I was not suppose to look at the keys the way dad did, but to do so by touch only. While I type with my fingers on the home keys of touch typing – I need to look at the keyboard at least peripherally while typing on my computer keyboards – but of course correcting for errors in typing while using a computer is much easier than doing so while using a typewriter – no erasing needed (and I learned to type before there was white out or tapes that one types through and it covers the error – so one had to erase and that never really worked).
Luckily I was never “the girl” in the office who had to do the typing. I only type for myself (at work and home).
Typewriter keyboards have been integral to my life–even before it started. In 1952, my dad was working as a translator for an OGA (OK, it really was a CIA subsidiary). His typist quit and he asked for a new one, adding “Don’t give me anyone interesting”. When she (yeah, of course “she” back then) showed up, he remembers thinking, “Dammit, nobody listens to me around here!” Within a year they were married.
I grew up with both an IBM Selectric and a Model B in the house–two VERY high-end typewriters. And learned to hunt-and-peck with the best of them. In high school, my parents talked me into taking typing. For reasons I forget I showed up a few days late, and didn’t know the teacher’s name; I called her “Teach” for the first few months, until she finally asked me why and I told her I didn’t know her name.
And so I learned to touch-type over 100WPM. Which I suspect is genetic. Around the same time I was taking typing, my mom was bored (I was the youngest, and so the house was pretty empty) and went back to work. Despite having two Masters degrees, the only thing she was really qualified to do was secretarial work, so she went to a temp agency. They said she had to take a typing test, and set her up with a typewriter, a text, and some paper, and said “You have five minutes”. Three minutes later she emerged and they said “What’s wrong?” and she explained that she’d run out of paper, having covered both sides of all the sheets.
50 (!) years later, I’ve been making my living through the computer keyboard since I was 19. I’ve had four hand surgeries from various RSIs (carpal tunnel x2, TFCC repair, and pisiformectomy): my hand surgeon says after the next one, the sixth is free unless I lose my punch card :) But my hands are still a mess. Still, can’t complain!
Like pshiii, I am a fast typist. But the reason for that is most likely that I trained as a concert pianist. Back in the 1970’s when I was in college practicing the piano three or four hours a day I typed other students’ papers for money, going more than 90 wpm on my old Remington Model 17 (the typewriter, not the shotgun). There is a job that has gone away and will never come back.
Mark in Boston: My mother (not me!) was also a pianist, reasonably serious when she was younger. We had two baby grands in our living room for most of my life. She finally donated one of them to a nearby church: a half-dozen guys came and carried it down the street, to much amusement.