Teresa Procarione, age 8, of Eugene, Oregon, for her question:

Why aren't the typewriter letters in alphabetical order?

Some of the letters work extra hard. Ode meet them many, many times on every page. Other letters work only once in a while. We may have to search a whole page to find one of these. The alphabet lists all the 26 letters. But it does not list the busy ones first and the weary ones later. You have only eight fingers and two thumbs to tap all the letters and extra buttons on a typewriter. And some of your fingers are stronger than others. It seems sensible to let the strongest fingers do the most work. The people who planned the typewriter thought of this when they arranged the letters on the keyboard.

When you learn the proper way to type, each finger and thumb is trained to tap certain keys. The keys are arranged so that the hard working letters are right where your strongest fingers can tape them. The order of the alphabet would not fit in with this sensible plan. As you practice and practice, each finger and thumb learns to tap its proper keys. When they are all trained properly, you can type a whole page without even watching them do their different jobs.