I like Shagnasty’s answer – similar age, similar results. I guess when I was five or so I got fascinated by an old manual typewriter my parents had, and would copy out things from stuff just for fun.
Still type the same way – three fingers on each hand – but I am very fast (last time I had to take one of those temp agency tests it was 70 or 80 – not secretary fast, but faster than the stereotypical hunt and peck person). Need to look down every once in a while, but generally not.
I bet most kids just type and get good enough. That home row shit may be fine for a professional typist, but it’s an absurd complication for anyone looking to get things done.
I recently chaperoned/counceled/taught/whathaveyoud an integration of science and computing course for 7th graders (or thereabouts), and while the kids were decent typists they had a few odd idiosyncrasies which made me think they didn’t have formal instruction yet. A big one I noticed (that drove me absolutely mad because it slowed them down a lot) was that some of them would press caps lock every time they needed a capital letter.
So every time they started writing a sentence they would move their whole hand to mash caps lock, move it back to the home row, type a letter, moved back and hit caps lock again, then continued typing. So instead of “[shift-S]o” it became “[Caps Lock]S[Caps Lock]o”. It got particularly troublesome when they were typing peoples’ names.
Come to think of it, if they were resetting to the home row they probably had SOME instruction, from a parent or what have you, but the Caps Lock thing really makes me think that it wasn’t thorough. That or it didn’t sink in and they went back to their old habits somewhat.
ETA: It might be a spill over from texting, come to think of it. The shift button works a lot like Caps Lock on my iPhone and typing on it requires me to do roughly the same thing (granted the iPhone has auto-uncaps).
You know, considering how much electronic writing there is in their lives – between papers, notes, email, Facebook, homework, research, and eventually communications and research and such for work – becoming a good typist may just be one of the biggest timesavers they’ll ever learn.
80 wpm is plenty fast, but getting to that speed requires quite a bit of practice. If you start 'em early with better technique, that same amount of practice would result in a higher speed essentially for free (or for a few hours of classroom time). I would argue typing is an immeasurably more useful skill than, say, knowing the Dewey Decimal System (which they also taught us, and which I never used again since that day).
It’ll also relieve a lot of frustration. Before I took a typing class, I did have to type stuff and it was a royal pain. After learning to type correctly, my errors decreased drastically. For a few required typing tests later in life, I got consecutive scores with no errors.
I wish the school and public libraries would abandon DDS and go with the LOC system that the universities use.
I was put into a typing course in high school. It wasn’t my idea at all. I did manage to work up some speed and accuracy on both manual and electric typewriters. This was, as you might have guessed, in the mid 70s.
However, my speed and accuracy REALLY shot up when I got my own computer. The first one was a TI994/A, and I had several text adventure games for it. Scott Adams adventures, not even Zork. I also typed in programs that were published in magazines. I learned to be accurate because I hated spending long periods of time typing in the programs, and then spending an even longer period of time trying to figure out just which character I mistyped, because the stupid program wouldn’t run.
I’ve tried doing it the ‘proper’ way, and I’ve found it is very uncomfortable for me. I have to look at the keyboard and figure out what my fingers are supposed to be doing. I imagine if I was to take it up, I would have to unlearn a lot of ‘bad’ habits. There would be a period of time where my wpm would drop rapidly. I do appreciate that once I’ve got through that period it might be much better, but the skills I have right now are sufficient.
I get many people saying “Gosh, you can type fast.”
And yeah, like I said, I never ever look at the keyboard. I don’t even need to look at the screen most of the time. In lectures at uni my eyes are on the lecturer/powerpoint slides.
So, there’s simply not enough impetus to change my ways.
The adjustment process takes time. I could type reasonably fast hunt & peck style before I tried to learn the proper method. I even gave up several times because it just seemed too cumbersome. When I had too type something real fast, I forgot everything I learned and switched back to hunt & peck just to get the job done.
But eventually, it worked out. I would highly recommend to be patient and learn “real” keyboarding. If for no other reason, it’s a more relaxed way of writing.
My 3 kids were born from 88-91, so my info is dated. We moved when the oldest was in 2d grade, and were dismayed that the new schools didn’t teach cursive. The schools’ position was that it was unnecessary, as the kids would always be typewriting anyway.
Well, the punchline is that they didn’t teach “keyboarding” either. Sure, they had a class with that name, but they did not teach the kids to touch-type. Instead, they just wanted the kids to be familiar pushing various keys on a keyboard. So long as the kids were using both hands in some fashion, it was deemed sufficient.
Fast forward a decade or 2 and my eldest is the only one of the three with decent handwriting. And, she had the discipline to teach herself typing via Mavis Bacon.
I wouldn’t describe my style as ‘hunt and peck’. I do not seek out each key. My method of typing is reflexive, I know exactly where my fingers need to go without looking. To me, it’s just an ‘alternate’ touch-typing style I’ve developed without formal training. I also do not feel un-relaxed, it is very comfortable for me to type in this way.
How much faster would I be? If I’m currently at 70-80wpm, and wikipedia says that’s within the range of a professional typist. If that is true, then I’m not sure it’s worth the frustration of having a down period.
Same here. I’ve never had any formal teaching but have always owned a computer of some form. Aside from hitting shift or space bar, I basically just type with the first two fingers of each hand.
But IIRC my type speed is around 80wpm.
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One time, while I was in college, I went for a job as a secretary. The guys at the agency kinda dug a hole for themselves by saying they had lots of jobs to fill but could only offer them to people who passed their advanced typing tests.
Well, I aced them, and a few minutes of awkwardness followed as they clearly didn’t want to put a man forward for secretarial roles.
Yeah, if you’re at that range, and it works for you, why change? I do mostly traditional home row touch typing, but I have a number of idiosyncrasies, too, in which fingers I use, and I don’t always use the same finger for the same keys. For example, when I type “pretty,” the right hand hits the “y.” When I type “by,” the left hand hits the “y.” I average 95-100 wpm. There’s no one “correct” way to do it. Some ways are better than others, but I think most people could use tweaking to their own comfort level.
Go on custom typing. It teaches you how to do so really well. I type 75 - 80 WPM and here’s how I did it: I started typing in third or fourth grade, and then got to about 40-50 WPM, and now I’m at 75-80 WPM after being on Yahoo! Answers for a while and posting long posts there, and just in general being on the internet a lot as allowed me to increase my typing speed by a LOT!
I recommend custom typing though. It gives you a great training program but it costs I believe $7.99 per month. It’s great though. My mother didn’t know how to type and when she got a job and needed to know how to type. So she signed up and now she types at about 25-30 WPM which is considered acceptable for her job. And she only trained for a month!
I sure do miss my TI, all 16 bits of it. My only complaint about it was that I had to use the cassette player on my boom box as a data storage device and my TV as a monitor, which meant that I couldn’t listen to my Men Without Hats tape or watch The Facts of Life while writing programs.
I’m a touch typist, I can comfortably do 60-70 wpm with correct technique. I learned the hard way - dad had computers (through work) since I was a little kid in the mid-80s, finally decided to learn to type properly in the late 90s. Spent maybe 8 hours on Mavis Beacon learning the correct fingers for each key, then gave it up and just forced myself to never look at my fingers or the keyboard when typing. Went from beginner to fairly decent in about a year, and got really good at finding the backspace key ;D. Really helped when writing term papers in college.
But that ratatype site - man, maybe it works, but I loaded it up and it just murdered me. Maybe I learned words more than I did characters, but it asking me to type “dfdff dfddd fdfdff dfdddff dfdf dfdfdf ddddffdf” or whatever I just can barely do it, and slowly, with errors.
Had to load up a different online typing speed test just to verify that yes, I still can type.
I’m self-taught on IBM Selectrics. My high school had a keyboarding class in the early 90s, but still called it typing. I’ve tried Mavis Bacon and other programs, but never got the hang of it. Then again, that’s what the backspace, erasers and white out are for. I do have a problem with using notebook keyboards. I just can’t deal with a flat keyboard.
