According to this story, fewer young uns are learning how to touch-type.
Do you? Are you fairly fluent at it?
Here’s what I mean by the poll choices:
Touch-type well (never need to look at the keyboard; fast enough for all normal purposes, even if you’d never win a speed contest) Touch-type haltingly (need to look at the keyboard occasionally, not terribly fast) Self-taught system (probably doesn’t involve all fingers, but you don’t need to look at the keyboard [much] and you’re pretty fast) Strictly hunt and peck (definitely looking at the keyboard a lot, not terribly fast)
I’m guessing we’ll cluster at the more fluent end of things, since, obviously, hard-core hunt-and-peckers probably won’t hang out on a text-based message board for fun. I do hope we’ll hear from any lurkers who can’t type – is that a reason for doing more reading than posting?
Me: I learned to type in junior high (summer-school course), though I didn’t start getting fast till I was in grad school, when I had a work-study office job, plus was typing all my own (rather substantial) papers. My college BF, who used a self-taught system and was damn fast at it, typed most of my papers my junior and senior years, when they started getting longer. That was back in the pre-computer stone age.
I learned touch-typing in the late '70s, and that’s predominantly what I did for the first 20 years of my working life. I could do all of the other clerical tasks, of course, but my primary task was always high-volume typing. I still miss my IBM Selectric; button-pressing on a computer keyboard just doesn’t compare to the sound of that little ball hitting the platen at 80 wpm. I do not, however, miss Wite-Out or carbon paper.
I still touch-type and touch-key, and that’s good, because staring at a computer screen for hours on end is destroying my vision.
Learning to type is perhaps the most useful thing I learned in high school…though I actually became really proficient at it MUDding in college
I can’t imagine NOT being able to touch-type at a decent pace. My brother got through college as hunt-and-peck; I can’t imagine typing double-digit pages of papers like that.
And anyone who claims that they can two-finger as fast as a touch typist is full of crap…unless they are talking about a 20 wpm touch typist. Which doesn’t count.
I never took a typing class, but I knew what the home keys were, so when I started playing on the intrarwebz, I pretty much taught myself touch-typing. And I rarely have to look at the keyboard, which is good, since half of my letters are worn off.
Numbers and special characters are another story, but basic text typing is pretty easy and fast for me. So I picked *touch-type well *in the old geezer category.
I went through at least two typing courses in public school, but I began to type quickly and well when I started hanging out in internet chat rooms in the mid-90s. I am 31.
Dad suggested I take a typing class in high school. It would have been a really easy sell if he had pointed out that there were about 20 girls and 2-3 boys in the typing classes. I have really big clumsy hands, so it was always much easier for me to type on a manual machine than on an electric or computer. Banged out all my college term papers on my Dad’s Underwood, which worked a little smoother than the Remington my folks had bought me.
I touch type text, but I do a lot of programming and have to look for the symbols. It doesn’t help that many of the key locations are not standardized…or if they are then the manufacturers ignore the standard.
One really bad thing about knowing how to touch type is that I am abnormally slow on a smartphone because I know the key locations by unconscious muscle memory, so have trouble finding them when forced to be a hunting pecker.
I took a typing class in high school (back in the seventies). But it was just something to get a passing grade in not something I used regularly. I did hunt-and-peck typing for years after that.
But I now find that years of writing reports at work and hanging out on internet message boards has given me some touch typing skills. Sometimes I’ll be typing words on the screen and realize I’m doing it without looking at the keyboard.
Technically I hunt and peck but to most people that signals slow, halting typing using the index fingers – and I H&P about 50 wpm. Which is not executive-secretary speed but good enough for most people.
I can even H&P without looking to a certain degree.
Well, I’m self-taught, but like FairyChatMom it’s basically the touch-type system (I voted self-taught, though). I use all my fingers, but I use the “wrong” ones for certain keys, as I discovered when I tried to use one of those ergonomic keyboards. I don’t need to look at the keyboard unless I’m using numbers/symbols, the arrow keys, or Home/End/etc. which seem to be in a different orientation on every keyboard in existence.
They did offer typing in my high school, and maybe in my middle school; I just didn’t take it. I used a system of my own devising - all the fingers, but only my right hand - up until my last year of college. Then two things happened: I was working as a receptionist, and my boss wanted to dictate a letter. He was shocked to find out that I had never learned to type properly (and annoyed that he had to type it himself). Then, a friend saw me writing a paper in the computer lab* and laughed at me for using one hand. So I decided to teach myself to type the “right” way. I’m really glad I did; I’m not fast, but I’m certainly much faster than I was when typing one-handed. I just tested, and I did 27 words with one hand (which is probably about as fast as I ever was), and 45 with two.
*You see, children, back in the '90s, the internet was still young, laptops barely existed, and many students didn’t own a PC, even at very expensive universities. So all over campus, they had huge rooms filled with computers that students could use. These rooms would be open late into the night, or even around the clock. It was a wonderous time. Now go to bed, and tomorrow I’ll tell you about Pine accounts.
We had to learn typing in second or third grade (early 90s). Since then I’ve refreshed with various programs and I think I took a typing class in high school. At my best I can do 75wpm on QWERTY and about 35 on Dvorak (although I’m getting better).
26 years old. I’m not an especially fast typist, but I rarely look at the keyboard except when I need to track down some symbol I don’t use frequently so I’d say I touch-type well.
OP here – yeah, if you need to look at symbols on the top row occasionally – esp. ones other than @ or * – but otherwise don’t, you still count as a fluent touch typer.
Hello Again, I’d call what you do “self taught system” rather than “hunt and peck,” as described in the OP.
I took “Personal Typing” in seventh grade. All manual typewriters except for one Selectric, which was used for the final exam: Type the Gettysburg Address from memory, and find your own tab settings so the copy would be justified. I aced it, and as a bonus still remember the Gettysburg Address.
My college job required me to type long sequences of numbers into carbon forms, on an electric typewriter that didn’t have a number pad. So I am very proficient at entering numbers using the top row on a keyboard, but not so much with the number pad on a calculator or computer keyboard. I still use the number row, and I’m really fast and accurate.
I was taught touch typing on an Apple IIe in Junior High. Mom insisted, everyone else (including me and including the generally drunk teacher) thought it was a waste of time, 'cause who the heck needed to type these days unless they were a secretary, and I sure as heck wasn’t going to be a secretary! But Mom thought I should know how, “just in case.” In Mom’s brain, secretarial work is something a young woman could always fall back on. I halfheartedly gave it a shot, and ended up with 50 or 60 wpm by the end of the semester. Not bad, but not amazing.
That was in 1988. A few years later, the internet came around to personal use, and darn it if that keyboarding class didn’t help a whole lot!
I do use some “wrong” fingering here and there, so what I do now might be considered “my own method”, but it’s 95% as I was taught, so I voted “touch typing”.
I need to look for about half the symbols, though. @ I can get, % is iffy, $ is pretty good. & I have to hunt for every time. And I cheat and use the numberpad instead of the numbers on the top row.
