The complete guide
How To Choose And Fit A Typewriter Ribbon
The problem with a faded page
You sit down at the typewriter, roll in a sheet of paper, and the first line comes out grey. The thin parts of the letters drop away. Full stops look like smudges. Nothing is broken, the machine still works perfectly, but the ribbon has given up most of its ink.
That is the whole story of a typewriter ribbon. It is a strip of inked fabric that sits between the typebars and the paper. Every strike presses a tiny bit of ink out of the weave and onto the page. Do that a few thousand times and the ribbon runs pale. It is a consumable, like a pen refill, and swapping it is a normal part of owning a manual typewriter.
The frustrating part is not the swap. It is realising you need one at the moment you want to type. That is the reason a typewriter ribbon twin pack is worth more than a single. The second spool sits in a drawer and turns a stalled afternoon into a one-minute job.
What this ribbon actually is
The pack contains two ribbons, each wound on a universal 2-inch (5 cm) plastic spool. The spool is the plastic reel the ribbon sits on. The maker says this size suits most standard and portable vintage manual typewriters, but not all of them, which is why one ribbon style can cover so many machines from different makers.
The ribbon fabric itself is half an inch wide, about 13 mm. That number matters as much as the spool. The maker says the fabric can be used in any machine that accepts a half-inch ribbon, so even if the spool does not fit, the fabric can be wound onto spools your machine recognises.
The ink is two-colour. Black runs along one half of the ribbon's width and red along the other. Two small grommets are set near the ends, which is what lets a reversing machine know it has reached the end of the ribbon.
How two-colour ink works
If your typewriter has a colour selector, you will find a small lever or dial, usually near the keyboard or on the side of the ribbon mechanism. Moving it changes how high the ribbon lifts when a key is struck. Lift it a little and the typebars hit the black band. Lift it more and they hit the red.
Red is a working colour, not a decorative one. Typists have long used it for corrections, for headings, for the odd word that needs to stand out, for crossing a line through a draft. Red ink typically prints a shade lighter than black, which is part of how it reads as an annotation rather than body text.
Many selectors also have a third position, often marked with a white or clear band. That is stencil mode, which drops the ribbon out of the way entirely so the typebars strike directly. It is only for cutting stencils and you will rarely need it.
If your machine has no colour selector at all, that is fine. It will type on the black band and the red simply goes unused. You get a standard black ribbon out of it, which is what most people want anyway.
The auto-reverse grommets
When a ribbon runs from one spool to the other and reaches the end, something has to happen or you stop typing. Older and simpler machines expect you to do it yourself. You unhook the ribbon, lift the spools, swap their positions and hook the ribbon back on. The ribbon then runs the other way and you type through it a second time.
Machines with a reversing mechanism do this on their own. The grommet in the ribbon trips the reversing mechanism, and the drive flips direction. You keep typing and barely notice it happen.
Both grommets on this ribbon serve that purpose, one for each end. If your typewriter does not have the feature, the grommets just sit there harmlessly and you reverse the spools by hand. Neither situation is a problem. It is useful to know which kind of machine you own before you fit the ribbon, so you are not confused the first time typing goes pale halfway through a page.
Checking fit before you order
The maker says it suits most vintage manual typewriters, standard and portable, and names several well-known makes. It also states plainly that it will not fit every machine ever made. That honesty is worth respecting, so do a two-minute check rather than guessing.
Open the typewriter cover or lift the ribbon guard. Look at the spool already in there. Measure its outside diameter. If it is around 5 cm (two inches), you are in the right territory. Then look at the ribbon fabric and check it is about 13 mm (half an inch) across.
Also note how the spool sits on its post. Some spools have a notch, a pin hole or a particular hub shape that engages the drive. If your spool has an unusual hub and the universal spool does not match it, you are not stuck. Keep your original spools, unwind the old dead ribbon from them, and wind the new half-inch ribbon on in its place. This is a common trick among collectors, and it is what the maker means when it says the fabric suits any machine that takes a half-inch ribbon.
Fitting it without making a mess
You need no tools. Work on a table with a cloth or sheet of newspaper underneath, because ink does transfer.
Start by noting how the old ribbon threads. Trace its path from one spool, through the ribbon guides and vibrator, and across to the other spool. A phone photo before you touch anything is the single most useful step, and it saves a lot of guessing later.
Unhook the old ribbon and lift both spools off their posts. Place the new full spool on one post and an empty spool on the other. Thread the ribbon through the same guides you photographed, then hook the end onto the empty spool and wind it on by hand a few turns to be sure it grips.
Check that the ribbon is not twisted anywhere along its path. A twisted ribbon types faintly on one side and can jam. Then close the cover, type a line, and look at it. Solid dark letters mean you are done.
Hold the plastic spools rather than the fabric wherever you can. If you do get ink on your fingers, soap and water handles it.
Caring for the spare
The second ribbon in the pack will only be as good as the conditions you store it in. Heat and light dry ink out, so leave it in its packaging and keep it in a drawer or cupboard rather than on a sunny windowsill. A cool, dry spot is all it needs.
When your typewriter is not in use, close the cover or put the case on. Dust settling on a ribbon does it no favours, and dust on the typebars will eventually transfer to the page as grubby letters. A dry, lint-free cloth wiped across the platen and typebars now and then keeps print clean.
Keep your old spools too. They weigh almost nothing, they cost nothing to store, and they are the simplest fix if a future ribbon arrives on a hub your machine will not take.
Who this suits
Anyone with a working manual typewriter they actually use. Letter writers, journal keepers, poets who like the sound of keys, students who type drafts away from a screen. If you own more than one machine, the twin pack is even more useful, because the two ribbons can go into two different typewriters.
It also suits someone restoring a machine they have just brought home. Old ribbons in secondhand typewriters are nearly always dried out, and a fresh ribbon is usually the difference between a typewriter that looks lovely and one that writes well.
The short version
Two ribbons, black and red ink, universal 2-inch (5 cm) plastic spools, 13 mm (half-inch) ribbon width, two auto-reverse grommets. Check your existing spool against those numbers and you will know quickly whether it fits. If the spool is wrong but the width is right, wind the ribbon onto your own spools and carry on. Keep the spare somewhere cool and dark, and you will not be caught out the next time a page comes out grey.