Kerry Spot    [ jim geraghty reporting ]
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The usually-brilliant Jonah is a bit off in his statement in the Corner that so much hangs on the ‘th.’ The problems with this document, so far, are as follows:

* The font does not appear to match any available at that time.

* No letterhead.

* Did the typewriters at the time have the ability to make curved apostrophes, and the elevated, smaller-font ‘th’ at the end? Why does the document appear to shift between straight-line apostrophes and curved-line ones? For that matter, why does one document refer to “1 st Lt. Bush” with a rather glaring space between the numeral 1 and the ‘st’? Could this be an effort to overcome a modern word processor’s setting to bump up the ‘st’?

* The size of the paper should be 8x10.5, not 8.5x11. Where is the line on the photocopy?

* Is it mere cooncidence that typing the same words into Microsoft Word results in spacing and line breaks, if left to Word's defaults, are identical to those in the CBS document?

Yet another observation from a Kerry Spot reader: “IBM did have a ‘custom element’ option available for the Selectric, that did make special symbols like logos, copyright symbols, super and subscripts like the "th" used in the August 18 memo in question, but these were VERY rare and VERY expensive because it required special tooling at the IBM typewriter plant in Lexington, Kentucky.”

Would this be used at an Air National Guard base in Texas or Alabama during that time period?

[Posted 09/09 04:54 PM]