Word Processors and Typists

Job purpose

To produce finished letters, reports, forms and other material from rough drafts, corrected copy, voice recordings and dictation, checking, formatting and laying out the text and printing and transmitting the completed work, so that documents are accurate, consistently presented and delivered on time.

Skills

• Knowledge of word processing and office practice — document formats, page layout, line spacing and style requirements, computer filing conventions, and the merging and reformatting of text and numerical data — with the command of written English needed to catch errors of spelling, grammar and punctuation in another person's draft, and the arithmetic to verify totals on report forms and bills. Secondary-level education is usual, with almost as many having completed some further study, plus up to a year of on-the-job training.
• Takes instructions on how material is to be typed, queries drafts and dictation that are unclear, and returns work for approval. Answers the telephone and deals with external customers and members of the public, some of them discourteous, with a large volume of telephone, e-mail and in-person contact. May coordinate others where a document draws on several contributors.
• Renders a draft or recording into the required format, resolving illegible copy, inconsistent style and material from different sources, and searches stored text to locate and change specified characters. Checks completed work for spelling, grammar, punctuation and format. Problems are matters of practice and presentation, with conventions and previous versions to follow.
• Gathers, registers and arranges the material to be typed following instructions, and works a queue of typing jobs to their completion times under time pressure, with considerable freedom over the order in which jobs are taken.
• Keying accuracy and speed at a screen for extended periods with repetitive motion of the hands, and the dexterity to collate pages, address envelopes and prepare labels and to resupply printers — changing print wheels and cartridges, adding paper and loading blank media.

Responsibilities

• No supervisory responsibility. Works to instructions from the originators of the documents and may coordinate colleagues to bring a document together.
• Computes and verifies totals on report forms, requisitions and bills using an adding machine or calculator, so figures pass through the postholder's hands in the typing. Holds no budget and exercises no discretion over any amount.
• Ordinary care of a workstation, word processing equipment, printers and typewriters, and routine resupply of consumables. No responsibility for stock or plant.
• Maintains the computer filing system in which completed documents are stored, retrieved, updated and deleted, keeps records of work performed, and transmits work electronically. Accountable for the accuracy and presentation of every document produced and for catching errors in the copy supplied; the content is written and approved by others.

Effort required

• Close visual concentration on text, holding exactness across long typing runs and detailed checking of spelling, grammar, punctuation and layout, while working from handwritten drafts and recorded dictation that may be hard to make out. The demand is sustained accuracy rather than analysis.
• Repetitive work paced by the deadlines others set for their documents, with frequent contact by telephone and in person, some of it with discourteous people. Calls for patience and an even manner; responsibility for the substance rests elsewhere.
• Seated at a workstation for nearly the whole working day, with repetitive keyboard and hand motion and little scope to vary posture. Neither lifting nor exertion is recorded.

Working conditions

• Indoor, environmentally controlled office accommodation, with no physical hazards or exposures recorded. The psychosocial element is confined to a steady volume of contact, occasionally with someone discourteous.
• Practically all incumbents work a regular established schedule, around four in five a standard forty-hour week. Time pressure comes from document deadlines set by others and the task cycle repeats; there is real freedom over the order of work, though formats, standards and final content are settled elsewhere.