In our office I stand out as the “loud typer.” I prefer to think of it as “typing with intensity,” but every time I get yelled at for my fierce tapping I can’t help but yearn for a simpler time when it was impossible to type without raising a cacophony. When you have an entire office typing loudly, there’s no way to single me out as the “excessively loud jackass who keeps pounding the keys like they owe him money.” 

This is one of the many reasons why I have a deep affection for the typewriter. When you sit in front of one you can’t help but feel like you’re seconds way from writing something brilliant. This is not the feeling I get when staring at the blinking cursor on a blank Google doc. Now that they are an archaic object that even the biggest luddite among us shuns, typewriters have a romance to them. And, if you ask me, that’s why they make for such good tattoos. 

As a magazine editor/blogger, none of the actual tools I use on the daily would make for a great tattoo. Who wants to get a sleeve of a mouse, a computer, an audio recorder, the AP Stylebook and a screenshot from Instagram? A typewriter is far more aesthetically pleasing while also announcing that the written word is something I hold dear. 

In the gallery below you’ll find a ton of different typewriter tattoos. You’ve got all the classic styles in there, plus some clever nods to skilled users of typewriters including Kurt Vonnegut and Hunter S. Thompson. And of course there’s more than a few references to the most iconic typewriter specific movie scene of all time—Jack Torrance’s infamous tool from “The Shining.” 

Enjoy!