Definition
Typewriting, in legal contexts, refers to text produced by a mechanical typewriter, and to the question of whether such text satisfies legal requirements that demand a document be "in writing." The core legal issue is not the act of typing but whether typewritten output counts as legally sufficient writing for purposes of wills, official communications, court submissions, and formal instruments. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as the typewriter displaced handwriting in commercial and administrative practice, courts and legislatures were forced to determine whether statutory and common law writing requirements — drafted in an era when writing meant handwriting — extended to this new technology.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The act or skill of using a typewriter; also, the material produced by a typewriter.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The act or art of using a typewriter; also, a print made with a typewriter.
The gap between common and legal meaning is one of stakes, not definition. In ordinary usage, typewriting simply describes an activity or its output. In law, the same word carried threshold significance: whether a document was "typewriting" determined whether it met formal requirements, triggered particular postage rules, qualified as a valid will, or could be received by a legislative body or court. The act of typing was unremarkable; the legal status of the product was contested.
Common Confusion
Typewriting should not be confused with printing in the technical legal sense. Early authorities sometimes treated typewriting as analogous to printing (mechanically produced text), which carried different legal consequences than handwriting. The distinction mattered most in will execution, where some jurisdictions recognized holographic wills only if entirely in the testator's own handwriting, disqualifying any typewritten text. Typewriting was also occasionally distinguished from "writing" in the sense of a signature — a typewritten name did not automatically satisfy a signature requirement under all authorities of the period.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter typewriting as a legal category almost exclusively in sources from roughly 1880 to 1950, corresponding to the period when the typewriter was a novelty and its legal status unsettled. Several traps exist:
First, the case law and commentary are jurisdiction-specific and sparse. Bouvier notes Delaware practice accepting typewritten wills, but this was not universal, and statutory amendments in the twentieth century largely mooted the question by explicitly defining "writing" to include typewritten and printed text. A researcher relying on period sources without tracing subsequent statutory revision may find the authority superseded.
Second, the British position differed sharply from American practice. Bouvier notes that a typewritten memorial presented to the House of Commons in 1897 was refused. Researchers using English sources should not assume American acceptance of typewritten documents followed English precedent — in many respects American practice was more permissive.
Third, the postal rule noted in Bouvier — that typewritten matter was treated as writing for letter postage purposes — reflects an administrative determination that had no necessary carry-over to judicial or legislative contexts. Researchers should be cautious about using the postal rule as evidence of broader legal acceptance.
Fourth, this term connects directly to the evolution of formal requirements for wills, contracts, and court filings. Research into any document-execution question from the period 1880–1940 may require checking whether the relevant authority addressed typewritten instruments explicitly.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary is the primary historical legal dictionary source. Bouvier's treatment is brief but instructive on two points of legal consequence: the postal rule (typewriting charged at letter postage rates, equating it with written correspondence) and the will execution question (some states satisfying "in writing" requirements with typewritten text, Delaware cited as established practice). Bouvier also flags the British parliamentary rejection of a typewritten memorial in 1897, suggesting that English practice was more conservative and that the American acceptance of typewriting as legal writing was not a foregone conclusion even at the turn of the twentieth century.
Bouvier's entry is incomplete by modern standards — it does not address court filings, contracts, or the question of typewritten signatures — but it captures the precise moment of legal uncertainty when typewriting was new enough to require doctrinal accommodation. Later editions of general legal dictionaries largely dropped the term as a discrete entry once statutes settled the question.
Jurisdictional Note
American jurisdictions varied considerably in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some states explicitly amended their definition of "writing" to include typewriting; others left courts to resolve the question by implication. English practice was more restrictive in formal contexts. Modern statutory frameworks have eliminated most practical ambiguity by defining "writing" broadly to include any legible, reproducible text regardless of the method of production.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Documents
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Wills (Formal Requirements)