How to read a type sample

Before I pick up a screwdriver I type one line. It’s always the same one:

Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs. NnHh 234567890

The sentence, because it has every letter of the alphabet in thirty-two letters. NnHh, because a capital beside its own lowercase shows whether the shift lands. The figures, because they live on the top row where nobody types, so that’s where the dirt is. And the figures start at 2 because half of these machines have no 1.

Then I read the slip before I read anything else about the machine. Two questions sort out most of it.

Is it one letter, or all of them? If the e is wrong every time it appears and its neighbors are fine, the trouble belongs to the e: its slug, or its bar. If every letter does the same thing, it’s something they all share. The ribbon, the platen, the carriage, the shift.

Is it every time, or only sometimes? Every time is a part that’s bent, worn, or set wrong. Sometimes is timing: something slow, something loose.

What follows is what I’ve learned to look for, in pieces of the same line. Each one links to the machine that taught it to me.

A letter that sits high or low

Every e low, every o high, and the letters between them level. A letter that’s off by the same amount every time it prints has a bent typebar: bent up, it prints high; bent down, low. The cure is bending it back, a little at a time. No. 15 had five of them.

A letter that leans

The letter is at the right height but tipped, like a fence post after a storm. The bar is twisted, or the slug has turned on the end of it. On the Underwood the e was both low and leaning, and those turned out to be two separate corrections that undo each other if you’re not careful.

Dark at one edge, pale at the other

The top of the letter prints and the bottom doesn’t, or the other way around. The face isn’t meeting the paper flat; the old repair books call a face that does meet it flat “on its feet.” One letter doing this is that letter’s bar. If they’re all doing it, I look at the platen and the shift before I blame forty-some bars. The capitals on No. 14 still do it a little.

Every capital up a step

Lowercase level, capitals all high together, or all low. No pile of bars bends in unison, so this is the shift: whatever moves when you press it is stopping short or going too far. Look for a stop screw with a loose locknut. No. 14.

Bowls filled in

The e looks like a c with a black eye; the o is a dot. That’s ink and lint packed into the hollows of the type, and it’s the one fault on this page a toothbrush fixes. The letters with closed bowls show it first. Cleaning type.

A letter that’s faint only sometimes

The x is a ghost in box, and you’d swear the x is the problem. Type axe and it’s fine. Look at the letter before the faint one. A typebar that’s slow falling back gets in the way of the next one coming up, and the next one arrives late and soft. Gummed segment. No. 9.

The line fades as it goes

Dark at the left margin, gone by the right. The ribbon isn’t advancing, and every letter is hitting the same worn spot. If instead the whole line is evenly pale from the first letter, the ribbon is moving and is simply dry. No. 12.

Red along the bottoms

With a two-color ribbon, red feet on every letter mean the ribbon is being lifted too high and the bottom of the type is landing over the line between the colors. Tops of the letters pale or cut off means the opposite, too low. The type is innocent both times. No. 12 again.

Letters crowding at the end of the line

Even spacing for most of the line, then the letters start leaning on each other. The carriage isn’t being pulled hard enough to keep up, and it shows at the end because that’s where the mainspring has the least left. Check the drawband and the spring. If the crowding turns up anywhere in the line, something is dragging on the carriage instead; on No. 11 it was the carriage rubbing the shell. No. 10.

A space where there shouldn’t be one

The opposite fault. The carriage has jumped two spaces on one keystroke. That’s the escapement letting the wheel past two teeth, and it likes to happen on fast pairs of letters. Dirt first, wear second, too much spring third. No. 13.

The line runs downhill

Each letter is fine and the row of them isn’t level with the edge of the paper. The paper went in crooked, and that’s the feed rollers: glazed, or with flats worn into them from decades of sitting. I check by feeding the same sheet three times. If it comes out crooked by a different amount each time, it’s the rollers and not me. No. 11.

Periods punched through

Hold the slip to the light. If the period is a pinhole and the o’s are cut like little washers, the platen has gone hard and there’s nothing behind the paper to take the blow. A second sheet behind the first is the quick answer. New rubber is the real one, and it’s not a job I can do. No. 11.

A shadow beside every letter

A faint second image, a little to one side. This is the one I can’t read from the slip alone. It can be the type bouncing off a hard platen and landing twice, or the carriage starting to move while the type is still on the paper. I type the line again slowly and listen. If the shadow goes away when I slow down, I look at the escapement; if it doesn’t, the platen.

What a slip can’t tell you

It’s one line, typed by one person, on one sheet. A heavy hand hides a weak ribbon and a light hand invents one. So I type the line twice, once slowly and once at the speed I’d really use, and it’s the difference between the two that I trust.

And I keep the slips. Each one gets the machine’s number and the date in pencil and goes in a shoebox. The best use I’ve found for a type sample is laying it next to the one from last month.