I never got what the big deal was over touch typing. I proudly use three-four fingers to do all of the typing I do, and I can type as fast as I can think (at least, as fast as I can arrange my thoughts into words). I rarely look at the keyboard, I just know where all of the keys are on the QWERTY keyboard and I know how to type them. It’s muscle memory I’ve been working on since early childhood. Screwed me up to no end in Europe, where they have the subtly different QWERTZ keyboard that has keys useful to Europeans in spots here reserved for keys useful to Americans. (The Euro symbol is more accessable than the commercial at (@), for example.) Anyway, I’m perfectly happy in a CLI (command-line interface), where typing is how you interface with the computer.
In Elementary school, I was placed in a ‘computer’ class that consisted of the same damn typing course they had in the era of the typewriter. Fine, train me to be a freaking secretary. :mad: Anyway, I stolidly refused to break my hard-won typing skills by ruining myself with their version of touch-typing. I knew where the teacher was, and I could slip in and out of ‘home row’ position so fast it’d make your head spin. I didn’t type the ‘correct’ way for more than five seconds at a stretch, and I got the award for being the most proficient typist. I’m sure I was: I had been using command-line interfaces nearly since I could read, so I had an amazing headstart on the rest of the class as long as I kept my old patterns.
Moral? The best teacher of something like typing is simple experience. Muscle memory is your friend. Like tearing down an M-16 and giving a Windoze box the three-finger salute, it quickly becomes something you don’t even think about.
I’ve garnered some pretty useful stuff from this thread. I reckon I’ll do it this way: Stick with the program I’ve got (dull enough, but “humourous” tutorial software wears a bit thin after a bit), follow it at my own speed, not the program’s, and try not to look at the keyboard, but if I do from time to time, then no biggie.
Yep, that’s the way to do it. When you look at the keyboard to confirm your finger placement/letter location all the time, all it does is slow you down when you’ve eventually learned where everything is; the habit of looking down has become ingrained, and you lose your place in whatever you’re typing.
I learned the old-fashioned way, on a clunky manual typewriter, typing “f-f-f-space-j-j-j-space (repeat ad infinitum)” to the tune and rhythm of “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” which I still hate.
Me 80wpm, 100% accuracy (except for any typos in this post, of course).
It’s all about the practice. After a lot of bother and fighting your own fingers, muscle memory does start to click in–and after a few years, it does so very very well. (I once disassembled a keyboard to try to save it from a glass of water I knocked into it, to let it dry over a few days–when putting the keys back, I literally couldn’t tell where they were supposed to go by sight, I had to keep pausing, put fingertips over home row area, and go from there.)
See if you can hunt up a copy of a bizarre little game called “Typing of the Dead.” The better you touch-type, the faster you kill the evil zombies.
I found an easy way to learn to touch type is to respond to message boards in the dark. With the only light being from the screen you can’t really see the keys on the keyboard so you have to leanr how to touch type. Saying this, I still find myself only using four fingers to type at the most. Also I don’t use the home row. I place my fingers where they feel comfortable and that is between keys.
I didn’t type the ‘correct’ way for more than five seconds at a stretch, and I got the award for being the most proficient typist. I’m sure I was: I had been using command-line interfaces nearly since I could read, so I had an amazing headstart on the rest of the class as long as I kept my old patterns.
