Typewriter art could be read as making art using a typewriter (and it's parts), or making art by typing with a typewriter. In this case, it's about making art by typing on a typewriter.

I don't know who the first typewriter artist was, or when they started. But, from what I have read, typewriters were invented in the 1860′s. I could see someone getting the idea pretty early on. Maybe they smudged a line of text and noticed how well it spread, like making a picture.

Typewriter art is like ASCII art (art created with the standard keyboard characters, usually digital/ computer based). Both typewriter and ASCII art use the keyboard characters which are visible on the keyboard layout. If you use the extra characters available it stops being ASCII art and becomes ANSI art. Both typewriter and ASCII art make pictures out of keyboard text but, they are created differently and give different results.

The big difference between typewriter art and ASCII art is not so much the typewriter itself, it's the fact that ASCII art doesn't smudge, there is no ink involved. (Unless someone prints the ASCII art, but that would be after it was created fully). Typewriter art uses all the elements of the typewriter. Artists working with a specific form of creating art will always learn the idiosyncrasies of their chosen element, typewriters (with their ink and typing ribbons) included. Not all typewriter art uses the technique of smudging the ink, that's just feature.

I'm an ASCII artist, which is how I became interested in typewriter art, but I have not tried typewriter art myself. At least not deliberately. I am old enough to have used an old, manual typewriter. There was some art form going on there, even before the creation of Liquid Paper.

Keira Rathbone: Modern Typewriter Artist

• Keira Rathbone -- Typewriter Artist
• Tales of a Typewriter Artist
• Twitter: KRTypewriterArt
• People Have Always Been Modern: Typewriter Art
• Etsy Shop: KeiraRathboneArt

A Few Typewriter Artists from the Past

• Typewriter Artist Paul Smith
• Riddell, Alan (editor): Typewriter Art (Old Book)
• Typewriter Art | All About Lettering
• The Virtual Typewriter Museum: Typewriter Art
• A History of Typewriter Art | Readymade

One downside of creating ASCII art is the lack of colour. We type it into plain text and plain text comes out black on white. It’s pretty plain that way.

For most ASCII art that is fine. It keeps it simple. The focus is the art, the way it was created, rather than making it prettied up just for the sake of being prettier.

However, you can easily bring colour to ASCII art.

You will need:

• your ASCII art picture (of course)
• an HTML editor (or text editor with font and colour features)
• a screen capture software
• an HTML colour guide (not essential)

First, open the HTML editor. (I actually use Composer with Sea Monkey). Cut and paste your ASCII art into it. Make sure it shows right, change the font as necessary. You can even try a few fonts and see which gives you the look you prefer. My favourite is still FixedSys but Consolas comes in a close second.

Next, highlight your ASCII art and use the HTML editor to colour the text. This is just what you would do if you were changing the colour of a text sentence, quote or paragraph in a written post. Any HTML or text editor that lets you change the font and colour of your text will work. If not, try another one, there are lots of good, free HTML and text editors.

When your ASCII art is highlighted bring up your screen capture. (I use KSnapshot). Before you capture the image check the position of your cursor. Make sure it’s not in the picture, literally. (I still do this once in a while and have to take a second screen capture to fix it). When you’re ready, take the screen capture of the ASCII art and turn it into an image file. If you have a choice, the .png file tends to give best results.

That’s it! Of course this makes the image all one colour. If you want to make the image a light colour, change to a dark background colour. You can spend time and effort on doing more. I don’t usually. I like to keep it simple and not spend more time colouring the ASCII art than I did in creating it.

An emoticon is a terrible thing to waste.

Emoticons (aka smileys) are fun, easy and add a lightness to any email or forum posts. When you want to add emotion, feelings or mood to your typed words you can just slip in an emoticon. :) They’re so simple to make, to remember and no-fuss.

Of course, some times we use a few too many. Sometimes we forget we aren’t typing a personal email and send an emoticon to the wrong person. Sometimes we send emoticons to people who just don’t like cute little text smileys. Then, there are the times we look back at the email we just sent and notice how many of those smileys are in there.

Too much of a good thing is still too much of a good thing. If you find yourself overindulging in emoticons – start cutting back.

Are you an Emoticon Use Abuser?

Not sure how many emoticons are too many? Ask the people you send your email to. Ask the people who read your posts on forums. (If you use an emoticon with every sentence you type – that’s really too much).

You find you also type a lot of other Internet shorthand, like LOL and ROFL.

Consider why you use so many smileys. Do you really need to explain or emphasize everything you write? Chances are the smileys have become a habit and you’ve forgotten how much simpler and uncluttered your text could be without them.

How to Control your Emoticon/ Smiley Addiction

Stop using smileys in emails or forums where you don’t know everyone well. Friends are more likely to enjoy the more personal styled communication.

Skip the smiley and actually write about your feelings and thoughts. Don’t leave people guessing or making assumptions. You may even find yourself connecting much better with people once you stop relying on smiley faces to tell them how you feel.

Instead of finding new and creative smileys to use, stick with just a few and use them sparingly. Standard emoticons like :) :D and :P should be plenty. Plus, these are standard enough for the average person to know rather than needing a special education on emoticons.

Replace the emoticons with something else. Go back to punctuation like exclamations points, question marks and dashes. But, don’t over use these either. One per sentence is enough.

Avoid emoticons and smileys when you have to write (or reply to) an email with any kind of bad news or a review of a person, product or service. You need to be professional at times like this and emoticons will not give that professional, competent impression of you.

One way to really stop yourself from over using emoticons is to remove them as a type of Internet shorthand. When you type a smiley follow it with a description in brackets. For instance :) (smile face). This will slow you down and help you see just how often you really are using emoticons.

• Five Reasons You Need to Break Your Emoticon Addiction
• Confessions of an Emoticon Addict
• Emoticonics Anonymous: A Five-and-a-Quarter Step Program

I've decided to gradually pull my content off HubPages. With so many posts being no-indexed (by HubPages) it seems I could make more money hosting them myself running Adsense/ Amazon and keeping 100% of the revenue. I already have the blogs up and in need of content. In trying to write for the networks and have some active presence in their communities I have spread myself thin.

You may think there is no point to ever writing for a network. But, I have liked being part of the writing networks for the community, the networking and the sharing of ideas. Also, for the writing discipline of knowing I'm sticking to a schedule and meeting goals not entirely of my own making. Being our own boss is only good when you have a fairly pushy boss.

At HubPages though, the content scraping was pretty much the last straw.  I found two of my posts stolen and even though I sent a DMCA it is just a joke, a waste of time. It's too easy to ignore an email which the writer can't afford to back up with legal fees.

It would be nice if HubPages gave us some support with content scraping/ theft. At the very least, find a way to prevent it. But, they don't seem to be working on anything like that. In the forum they have said it is our content and our problem. However, the way I see it, it is their network and thus they should be offering some support to the writers who write and bring traffic which HubPages profits from.

Anyway, I've been feeling discouraged and decided it was time for a change.

How will writing networks like HubPages, Suite101, About.com and the others fare over the next few years? There have been many changes in the past ten or so years since writing networks began. Some call them content farms.

Are you Afraid of the Future?

I don't see it that way myself. I think things will go on, changing as we evolve. Overall, I have high expectations for people to change for the better and make things work. I don't think the worst of the destruction and mayhem will really happen. Why would we let it? Why would our future people (the children now and their children after them) let things end? We all want to live, to survive. People seem to lose track of that basic fact when they get into creating end of the world scenarios.

So, I look at the apocalypse art, the end of the world stories as fiction, creative and imaginative and a warning to those who can make decisions to keep the really bad things from happening. Actually, that's all of us, in case you were in doubt. We all make big and little decisions which can cause change or leave things the way they are.

What are you Doing About It?

Are you littering or recycling? Isn't that such a small thing and yet it's a choice each person can make everyday, several times a day. On this planet we live on, are you a recycler or a litterer? Do you keep things going, care about what you're doing or do you casually throw it all away expecting someone else to come along and clean up your mess? You might be waiting a long time for someone else to clean up your mess... maybe right to the end of the world.

Think about that next time you flick a cigarette butt out the window or onto the grass. Think about that next time you throw out paper instead of recycling it. Think about that next time you're shopping and buy items you don't really need and then think about it again as you throw out all that packaging from the thing you didn't really need. War isn't the only thing that can end our world, one way or another, it's all about the people in the world and what they do with it.