I’m 27, and although I recall occasionally using Typing Tutor when I was in grade 5-6ish, it wasn’t really a formal class. It was just something that was available for us to do when we’d finished typing our 3 paragraphs of story or whatever. I don’t know how fast I am, but I’m not particularly slow either. For the most part I don’t look at the keyboard, except for certain letters that I rarely use (zxq!) and the odd ones that I can never remember which is which: vbn! (This is a Qwerty keyboard, btw. And I just managed to misspell Qwerty! My fingers want to use something, anything, in another row!)
Other than backspacing to change what I want to say, I only made 2 typing errors in the above paragraph (and one was Qwerty). I figure that’s pretty good. I use most of my fingers, though the pinkies don’t get quite as much use as the ring-middle-index ones do. I also tend to reach across the board for things, like using my left hand for “y” rather than the right.
It is much harder to type when you are thinking about typing.
This is about how I type – both pinkies and my right thumb go largely unused.
We had typing class in a summer enrichment class between 4th and 5th grades (1981). Additionally in 4th through 8th grades, we were able to take some enrichment BASIC programming on TRS-80s, and there were Apples available for text games. In high school (1985-89), typing was an elective, but there was a mandatory Computer Skills/Free Enterprise class when I was a senior.
Hmm, after reading all the posts, and reflecting on my experience, I’m not so sure. I think it’s not papers that do it, but chat or, in my case, text-based games. The difference is the pressure to be fast. Without that pressure, you can write a thousand papers, and still use two fingers. There’s just no need to not look at the keyboard. But it was when I started playing MUDs (text-based MMORPGs) that my typing skills and muscle memory really took off and I was able to type fast with no instruction.
Hehe, you mentioned papers lacking pressure, and I just had to chuckle to myself thinking of how many papers I printed 5 minutes before they were due. Maybe you were a better student than I, but text in games had nothing on how many words had to fly from my brain to my computer the period before class
I graduated from a rural NC high school in 1987. I was trying to get a county scholarship and one of the requirements was a “vocational” course - basically it was typing or shop. I opted for typing and it was the best class I ever took in high school. Of all the things I learned, it’s the only skill I use consistently every day. I learned on an old manual typewriter (back in the days of white out!) and I am an excellent touch typist, make few mistakes and never have to look at the keyboard. I’m a technical writer/trainer and my job would be incredibly difficult if I couldn’t type as quickly and accurately as I do.
Of course, all the years of online chatting have only improved my ability - I really do have to thank Everquest. Trying to burst out a line of text in between spell casting really honed my abilities. Thanks SOE!
Well actually, it’s more like words didn’t fly from my brain that fast when I was writing papers. I wrote plenty of papers before class too. Wish I could’ve done it in 5 minutes man, all these smiles suck
I had typing in 8th grade, 1965, 2 periods a week. I got pulled out for 1 for speech, so I was never very good until I started programming and actually using computers.
I think my kids had some on computers with typing software, but they typed on our computers from babyhood.
When I took typing accuracy was very important, since correcting errors was so painful. Do typing (keyboarding) teachers stress it now, since backspacing is so easy?
I guess the games would help stress it, since the idea is to type fast and correctly, spending time erasing words, phrases, or letter combos because of bad typing wastes time.
First year in high school 1978 on a manual typewriter. “Put your fingers on the home row”. I never learned to touch type, I don’t hunt and peck, its more like two finger typing but I can get by at a modest speed. I always thought they should teach typing on a completely black keyboard, that way you would have no choice but to touch type.
I started playing around with computers before our school even had a formal computer program. Basically, our science teacher went out and bought one of them new fangled TRS-80 thingamajigs (4k, yes k, of memory, and a cassette interface! Wheeee!) and a lucky few of us were allowed to play with it. We ended up developing what became the computer classes for the county.
When I was in high school, I took a FORTRAN class over the summer on an old Honeywell mainframe computer. As part of the class, we spent an hour each day learning how to type properly on electric typewriters. They taught us very useful things, like asdf jkl; and that you can use a lower case L and a 1 interchangeably (no, we work on computers, and they don’t like it when you interchange them, sorry). At the end of the class I could type in the “correct” way, but by then I had been typing incorrectly for so long that within a week I was back to my old way of typing.
Yes, I can.
I also had a secretary once who complimented me on how amazingly fast I typed considering how wrong I did it. Well, maybe it wasn’t a compliment.
By the way, my kids have never learned “typing”. All they know is “keyboarding” and they start with computers in kindergarten.
I graduated from highschool in '94. In 10th grade (maybe 9th), I took an optional typing class that used manual typewriters. In my middle school, there had been a computer “lab” and a computer “class” which I did not take, but I’m relatively certain (from my friends) that typing was not taught in it. It was never mandatory for me. I suspect that there was an optional typing class in my college as well, but I never really noticed.
I’d had computers around for a long time before that (was playing Ultima at the age of 9 on an Apple II E), and figured it might be good to be able to type faster. This was just as I was getting into the BBS/MUD scene, too.
I eventually went into software development and noticed that only around 1/4 of software developers actually had decent typing skills (over 50 wpm). It’s not a huge big deal because frankly more of your time is spent designing and cutting & pasting, but it was a nice bonus.
I believe that practice with the large volume of papers is only practice. “Practice makes perfect” doesn’t always work. It’s more like “Practice makes permanent”, which I heard somewhere – it just cements what you already know. I agree with others that typing should be taught as a life skill early on so that there’s nothing to unlearn later. People’s own independent methods are probably fine, but I’d want my children taught a system that will work at good speeds, not have them attempt to create something on their own that may not be able to top 60 wpm.
Which is why I’ll be teaching my children using typing programs and my own oversight very soon (my oldest is 6).
