Flying Coffee Cups and Washing Keyboards

<p>Plenty of near-full coffee cups go flying in offices, so, as a writer and editor I'm not ashamed to send out a manuscript or report with a slight sign that it was read while I was drinking or eating.</p><p>Authors should consider that better than receiving back a manuscript which has not been opened. (I am told some stick a hair or similar across pages to check - in the manner that crime novel detectives would stick a matchstick across a door to see if anyone had entered a room).</p><p>However, at one newspaper where I worked, the IT manager felt it necessary to put up a large notice in the copy editors' area which read "If you must drink coffee at the desk, please take it without sugar!"</p><p>Most keyboards and terminals would survive the coffee, and he regularly had one or two keyboards hanging from the partitions in his workshop after being washed with a hose; the sugar is what does the damage. But I do not think any editor or publisher would dare to ban coffee for copy editors, certainly not on the late shift.</p><p>And I do know that several of those photographs from correspondents and readers which "went missing" mysteriously, were lost after being smothered in a takeaway curry.</p><p>I am surprised how many lost items turned up in no fit state to return when I had to move everything out to have my office recarpeted. However I'm more worried by all the things I can't find since moving everything back in. I know where they used to be.</p><p>However, if you do spill something on a keyboard and decide to take the risk of washing and drying, the one thing not to do is to undo those screws underneath. At one time keyboards had little holders for the springs to fit in. Many modern ones do not, so any attempt to open them results in a spray of several hundred parts over a wide area. It's quite impressive.</p><p>I have just this minute thought that if one could loosen those screws just enough one could produce this effect at the first touch by someone else...</p><p>You can usually remove the key caps by gently prising them off with a spatula or other wide and soft blade. Be sure that you know which goes where.</p><p>You may be able to touch type and know the major key positions but are you sure where the question mark, verticial bar or plus sign goes? Taking a digital photo before you start the demolition will help.</p><p>A can of compressed air is good for regular cleaning of computers inside as well as the keyboard but for the keyboard only you can also loosely tape a straw to the end of a vacuum cleaner hose. Make sure that suction at the end of the straw is low, enough to pick up dirt, dust and food scraps, not the keycaps themselves.</p><p>There is actually a "dishwasher safe" keyboard but for most of us it is worth using a cotton bud between the keys every week, and a wipe with one of those dust attracting dusters a couple of times a day. Holding it upside down and giving a mild shake will remove much of the detritus.</p><p>You are typically shedding tens of thousands of skin cells every day so you have to act regularly to stop the build up on the keyboard even if you do not have that coffee cup sitting ready to be knocked flying.</p><p>Gordon Woolf is the author of several books including How to Start and Produce a Magazine and (jointly) Success in Store: How to start or buy a retail business, enjoy running it and make money, which has just been reissued in a second edition which is being printed concurrently in both Australia and the USA. His blog is at <a target="_new" href="http://www.gordonwoolf.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.gordonwoolf.com</a></p>