Do you touch-type?

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)
#1

Pretty simple question. I was wondering this especially among dopers. I recently realized that a lot of people that come off sounding really weird on the internet are possibly people who just can’t touch-type! I can remember what it was like before I learned, and it is true that it really doesn’t compare.

What is the overall consensus with touch-typing nowadays? I’m 26 years old, and it’s pretty common within my age group. Its kind of crazy really, but everyone in my age group is expected to have a computer. So I feel that touch-typing goes along with that.

Do you feel that it is a common skill for your age-group? Are people impressed with your skills?

What if you don’t touch-type? Do you have any kind of special technique? Did you forget how or were you never taught? Do you want to learn?
For myself? I am 26 but learned to touch-type in 8th grade. That was about a year after I started using computers. I started with that and have never forgotten since. I sort of know how to touch-type the numeric pad. I actually learned the Dvorak keyboard layout for a few years but gave it up because of the inconvenience. It’s funny, they say that for some people, they can learn another layout and remain “fluent” in the other. For others you simply forget the old one. So I forgot QWERTY. I eventually got tired of being unable to use QWERTY so I had to re-learn it.

That’s it for me

#2

Yup. Don’t even look at the keyboard most of the time. Last time I was tested, I was about 60 wpm. The really irritating thing for me is that at work I have to use a dictaphone, then read and edit the typed dictation days or weeks later. It would be so much faster for me to just type the damn thing myself.

Best course I ever took in high school, typing was.

#3

Yes. I’m 39 and took typing in high school because I was required to take at least 1 vocational course (it was typing or VICA masonry ;)). I started with good old FJF FJF exercises on a manual typewriter*. We used little pieces of correction paper to fix typos - good times!

Of all the classes I took in high school, I truly believe typing has been the most useful. Not only for online purposes but in my job as a technical writer. I would have a really hard time at work if I didn’t type over 70 WPM.

Most people seem impressed by how quickly I type - and according to my boss - how many fingers I use (that would be all of them). I don’t have to look at my fingers at all, but I usually watch the text as it appears on the screen. I’m pretty impressed with myself sometimes too, it is a really neat ability.

  • High school typing class got me started, but furiously typing out bursts of text timed for spell casts on EQ raids trained me to be the speed demon I am today.
#4

Don’t touch type. When I was in school who knew they were going to invent computers? I always assumed a secretary would do my typing. The only way I could have learned was taking a home ec class.

#5

Yup. We had to take lessons in second grade. I type between 60 and 75 wpm (depending on how into I am and how much I’ve been typing at the time.) I have fairly good accuracy too (over 90%), even if not looking at the screen (I was copying text from printouts in my lap. Did it nearly perfectly, but it was only a sentence or two)

#6

Yup, I touch-type.

Took typing in 7th or 8th grade ('81 or '82) because I was already getting into computers and figured it’d come in handy. Learned 10-key on my own however.

#7

Mostly. I still have to look at the numbers, and sometimes I get dyslexic, hitting the right key but the wrong hand, so k becomes d, for instance, but mostly I’m not looking when I’m typing. I learned on my own, and when I started using a keyboard regularly I just made sure I used the correct fingers until I could do it quickly. If I used the numbers more often I’d force myself to learn those, too.

#8

I had my first PC when I was 7, started taking mandatory computer classes in 4th grade, and had a mandatory typing class in my Freshman year of high school. I touch-type, and I test between 95-100wpm with 99% accuracy. Most of the people I know in life would not want to challenge me at any sort of typing game, although I recall from previous threads that there are several Dopers who can kick my ass in terms of speed.

Speaking of which, paging Antinor01 to the thread…paging Mr. Antinor01…

#9

Sure. Last time I tested (on this website) I got 100% accuracy at 86wpm. I tested 10 key for a data entry job a few years ago and got something like 97% accuracy at 140spm.

Self-taught. We didn’t have a computer/keyboarding class until freshman year of high school. I’m 25.

#10

15; I don’t touch type. I use various fingers on both hands, and I don’t usually have to look at them when I’m typing, unless I’m reaching for something I don’t usually press. I get about 35 wpm.

The main reason for this is that in playing PC games one hand is normally dedicated to movement and only one is free for typing, and it’s too much hassle to switch back and forth. I don’t play FPSs all that much anymore, but the habit of forgoing touch typing has stuck with me. I was taught the touch typing method, though.

Valete,
Vox Imperatoris

ETA: That test that Silver Fire posted gives me 41 wpm with one wrong word.

#11

25, been touch-typing since elementary school or something. Seriously. We had to take computer class starting in 3rd or 4th grade and my friends and I always used to compete with this one program we had over who could type the fastest, until we discovered you could just mash the entire keyboard and you’d hit upwards of 200wpm =)

Really what taught me best was my early obsession with IRC back in middle school, though. That got me up to something around 90wpm. Now I’m back down around 70-80, though I don’t really care much any more as I never actually NEED to type faster than that.

#12

I learned touch typing as a sophomore in high school on an IBM Selectric II (Get off my lawn!). Our class was made up of college bound students who were limited to one semester of typing. Any more than that was considered vocational.

The funny thing, though, was our teacher, Miss Ruble’s prediction that we wouldn’t use this skill once our last term paper was finished. :dubious:

Currently, I type about 70 wpm and ten key about 120 spm with an average of 95% accuracy for both.

#13

I’m 25 and I touch type. I learnt on an electric typewriter at high school. What honed my skills however was working in a call centre after leaving school - they did NOT want your phone off the hook, even though you were just trying to log the last call you took…

I got 84wpm and 97% accuracy.

#14

When I was in high school (I graduated in 1987), the flodfather kept nagging me to take a typing class. “No matter how bad things get, there’s always a job in a typing pool somewhere that’s going begging,” he said. “Learn to type and you can at least keep a roof over your head until something better comes along.”

I never took a typing class.
Typing pools have become an endangered species.
And though I never learned touch-typing, I’ve worked out my own typing method, and am now faster and more accurate on the keyboard than my dad :stuck_out_tongue:

(Most of Dad’s advice worked out better than that. Really. Gotta give the old guy his due.)

#15

29 - touch typist since the age of about 13. I taught myself using home computer programs, in the UK there aren’t classes at school on typing. Just took the test linked to by Silver fire and got 95wpm at 97% accuracy.

#16

I touch type- but it is a requirement for me pretty much as a 911 guy.

I also took the linked test and got 94 wpm and missed 1.

(I actually took it two times, the first time I got 80, but I had some work pop up halfway through :slight_smile: )

#17

I touch type. I went through a typing class each in elementary, middle, and high school. I’m now 23. I just woke up 10 minutes ago and I managed to get 123 wpm on that site on my second try, with 0 errors.

#18

When I started my first IT consulting job I was on the bench for three months. I got bored pretty quickly and picked up one of those Mavis Beacon teach-yourself programs to keep me occupied. The numbers lessons irritated me though, so I skipped them and to this day I can’t touch type numbers! I supect I’m not very fast, but I’m accurate enough and it’s a skill I’m forever grateful for, particularly since I went back into part-time studying.

Most of the people I’d ever discuss it with are in IT, or Education, or are studying, so they can pretty much all do some version of it. However, as Illuminatiprimus said, it was very rare in the UK to do typing at school, so nobody I know was ever formally trained, that I know of. By the time I left Uni the first time there were still just a handful of PCs on campus, and before that I went to the sort of school that trained the doctors, not the medical secretaries, dahling. Practical skills were what they got at the Comprehensive school, not at mine (hated the place, can’t you tell?). I’m 38.

#19

Anybody know a good website to learn touch-type? I’m a pretty fast typer but I’ve got what my wife affectionately calls sausage fingers…meaning I stare at my fingers and make mistakes all the time. Probably a reason so many spellerphiles on the SDMB correct me all the time.

So how does a thirty-something learn touch-type? I should mention I am fast with at least 4 of my fingers - I don’t ever use my pinky finger is that bad?

#20

I was on the College Prep track in High School, but my mother sent me to learn typing during Summer School. We used manual typewriters with blank keys. In a classroom without air conditioning, located between the paper mill & the refineries in beautiful downtown Pasadena. (Pasadena, Texas, that is.) Hated it.

But typing/keyboarding has been an important part of most jobs I’ve held. Although figuring out an IBM Executive at my first “real” job was quite a challenge–yes, Virginia, proportional spacing was in offices back when the 60’s turned into the 70’s. And my ability to produce camera-ready copy by typing everything twice on the Selectric Composer earned me a paycheck at a hippie newspaper–even on those weeks when not everybody got paid.

I just got 67 WPM on this test. Plus a few errors; but I’d corrected a few as I went, so I could have been faster with more mistakes. And I hadn’t “gotten up to speed.”