Welcome back to the CEO Book Club! Ajay Patel, CEO of SMA, just finished reading for the hundredth time, Robin William’s classic book, “The PC Is Not a Typewriter” published in 1992 by Peachpit Press. This book is an essential reference for anyone who uses a computer (or phone) to write books, reports, papers, proposals, letters, emails—not just desktop publishers and graphics professionals. I guess that’s about the entire world population! Why is this book so important and considered a classic? Robin’s book was the first book to recognize how word processing softwares such as WordStar, WordPerfect, Word, and others revolutionized the world of publishing, giving everyone the tools to create professional and high-quality pages. The book divulges the secrets that have been used for centuries to make type “pleasing, beautiful, readable, legible and artistic” and how these same secrets are now available to anyone who uses a computer to produce type.

Some of us wrote our first papers using a typewriter, and even if you’ve never seen one almost all of us treat our computers just like it is a typewriter. We mistake our computers and its keyboard for a typewriter, yet they are from different centuries. Do you still hit the Space Bar five times at the start of every paragraph? Do you hit the Enter Key at the end of each line? Do you press “Space Space” at the end of every sentence? Do you still underline to add emphasis to your text? Do you use the hyphen key for a dash? Do you align text and numbers on the page using the Space Bar? Do you press the Enter Key twice after each paragraph to create an extra line of space between paragraphs? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then please read this book. In less than 30 minutes, you will change forever how you use your computer to produce professional type and be the hit of your next party when you share your newly discovered expertise!

Anyone who produces type using their computer or even a phone will benefit from reading “The PC Is Not a Typewriter” – and that’s all of us!