h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My wife asked me if I have any Tipp-Ex, which I do, but I honestly can't remember the last time I actually used it.

Do people still use Tipp-Ex (other correction fluids are available, Tipp-Ex is probably the market leader) regularly?

In the days of typewriters, correction fluids such as Tipp-Ex made sense as you could correct minor errors without having to retype a whole document.

Nowadays, though, I generally just correct an important document by making minor tweaks on my computer and reprinting. Or if I'm using a pen and writing personal notes, there's ensuring the document is pristine is less important. Personally I write in fountain pen rather than biro and so I usually use ink-killers to correct minor mistakes as that's a lot less hassle than correction fluids that more often than not turn into a gooey mess.

<BB<

I don't use Tipp-ex fluid any more, as I always found it made a massive blob mess, but I do have a corrector tape, which you apply to the paper and slide it along, like a sticky tape dispenser.

I have had to clear printed forms occasionally, so a quick use of the tape and a photocopier creates a new blank form (although I guess that can also be done on the computer by scanning the form, deleting the text and then reprinting). I find it is also useful if you print something and the page number turns out to be wrong, or whatever, so you can just delete it neatly without having to reprint a whole page for a minor detail.

Mostly documents are electronic so if they are changed I just reprint them, yes.

I still use Tipp-ex for when I make last minute changes to entries to crossword competitions.

I work them out on squared paper first, but I occasionally transcribe them incorrectly, or I spot some glaring error on a final check before I seal the envelope.

Tipp-ex may be the market leader in the UK, but it's a knock off of the original Liquid Paper™ invented by the mother of The Monkees original guitarist and fellow Texan, Mike Nesmith.

Correction fluid? Well, I drink alcohol, and 'mistake fluid' would be a good euphemism for that.
I haven't used Tipp-Ex for a long time. I might even have some somewhere around here, but everything important I do is online, and if I do anything that is important and on paper, it's too important to falsify with something like that. Besides, those Tipp-Ex mouse thingies never applied properly for me.

I believe both Tipp-Ex and Liquid Paper were invented around the same time in an example of 'Steam Engine Time Theory' (ie, when it is time to invent something such as a steam engine, lots of people simultaneously invent it).

Thinking about it, the most I've used Tipp-Ex for is for decorating 2p coins for when we used to play 2p knockout at school in lunchtimes (a simple game in which everyone has a 2p coin and everyone takes it in turns to flick their coin onto a table, with the aim of the game being to knock everyone else's 2p off the table and out of the game while keeping your 2p the last one standing). If there's been a reason why a document needs to be pristine, I've never risked splodging Tipp-ex all over it.

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Nope... Bette Nesmith Graham (Mike's mom) invented her correction fluid in 1951 and brought it to market in '56. Tippex's inventor Wolfgang Dabisch filed for his patent for "Colored film for the correction of typing errors (German:Tippfehler)" in '58.


And remember, Save the Texas Prairie Chicken!

No-one's denying that Bette Nesmith Graham invented it first, but it appears for the first few years it was a local business that didn't become larger in scale until the 1960s. There's no reason to believe that the German bloke knew of its existence in 1958. I quite like the Monkees and so much prefer the story of Mike's mum inventing it rather than a faceless corporation that's now part of the Bic empire.

...But how often do you use it?

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Never.


I probably last used LP in college. That'd be 1990. Even then I didn't use it often. After college I did occasionally use correcting typewriter ribbon.

I use the tape like SashaQ - it's far more accurate and you don't have to wait for it to dry. But with pdf tools being so easy to use nowadays, I rarely have cause to.

"I still use Tipp-ex for when I make last minute changes to entries to crossword competitions." [Icy North]

Does that mean that you create the puzzles?

If so, I take my hat off to you. 1. across: three-letter head covering

Or tam, or cap.

We'll have to solve some downs first.

It's not a real hat, if that makes a difference. But, yes, the middle letter is "a".

I solve at least one crossword puzzle a day. Unfortunately, some of them contain serious errors. I won't blame 2Legs for this, not with icy North around .

When I started my current job, nearly 11 years ago, I collected from the stationery cupboard a box of 5000 staples, and a brand new bottle of tippex (and lots of other things, obvs).

I have never used the tippex. But I did use the last of the staples last year.

Mol

{Does that mean that you create the puzzles?}

I'm trying to - I haven't created one sufficiently good to send to the newspaper yet.

If you'd like to try one, then this one's still unsolved: A87884969

I prefer puzzles that have numbered clues.

I created a crossword puzzle for my father for Christmas one time.

I use it all the time.

My computer touch screen doesn't work properly any more though.

PP.

I started Icy's puzzle, but didn't manage to get enough breakthroughs to crack it in the time I had available, so I haven't looked at it in a while... I'll put what I did manage into the thread on the Entry later and hopefully you'll all be able to help

It rarely takes me more than ten minutes to finish the puzzle in my daily paper. The Sunday puzzle, though, is bigger, harder, and more time-consuming.

I haven't gotten addicted to sudoku, but I know people who love it.

I could have sworn Gnomon wrote an entry on Sudoku but I can't find it anywhere. There is an entry on it, but by someone else.