Aspire

Field Notes pal Marcin Wichary came across a copy of Barnes’ Complete Typewriting Instructor, a beautiful manual from 1899. Lucky for us, he photographed it and also transcribed a section listing “useful/undesired traits of a stenographer” which includes, “Pays attention to small details; strikes evenly, writes with clean type, never has a capital out of line, presses punctuation marks lightly, and makes the left-hand margin properly wide.” See the entire list of advice for work (and life) in Marcin’s post here.

Oh, and as far as stenography goes, it helps to have the proper tool.