I touch type, and could do it with my eyes closed. I know that in some instances, I use the wrong finger for the wrong keys, but it all comes out in the end. I’ve never been timed, so I have no idea how fast I am. They did try to teach us to type in high school, but I had a dislocated finger at the time, so I never learned to type properly. Which is probably why I use the wrong fingers all the time - I learned typing when I didn’t have all my fingers - I tend especially to allow my right hand to wander, and do some of the keys such as t and v and even the occasional f, but then I never ever use my right shift key, only the left one.
When I started writing programs in my later years at high school, I taught myself to type, and then when I hit uni, I got pretty good, and pretty fast.
I use just a couple of fingers and type fairly quickly, half the time looking at the keyboard. Now that I’m paying attention to my typing style, I notice that, oddly enough, I barely use my left index finger at all. Man, that’s weird.
This is going to drive me crazy now, because I’m going to be noticing it all the time. I’m trying to use that finger now and it just feels so wrong!
Most of the time I don’t have to look at the keyboard. Sometimes I do when I’m first putting my fingers in place, to make sure I’m not off by a key and end up typing complete cyphers.
Just for kicks, everything in this sentence after this comma has een ty[ed with my yees colsed.
Hmm. Not as great as I thought, but not as bad as I’d feared. I notice that I use my right index finger more than I should - it’s all over the place, even reaching for the space bar and the letters b on occasion. I think that have something to do with the way I’m sitting at the moment. sitting slouched off to the right with my left elbow falling off the desk makes moving my right hand easier than sliding my left wrist along the edge.
I can type while looking away and even carrying on a conversation with someone else, altjhough it means running the risk of typos. I touchtype at around 70 =80 WPM.
(typed this message without looking and talking with my girlfriend about charm bracelets :))
Has anyone else noticed a connection between fast typing and piano playing? I sure have. I think dextrous fingers = dextrous fingers.
Too bad fast typing is actually connected with lower-level job skills, these days. I had an evil boss once who wanted me to stay away from network stuff because if I didn’t word-process all day, my typing skills would suffer. :rolleyes:
I’ve never had any formal typing classes, other than 1 computing class. Since I’ve been using computers since I was 8 I’ve pretty much got the keyboard memorized, and have kind of evolved into touch typing. I’ve even started using the home row keys.
Funnily enough, now that I’m back at Uni and having to type long things and copy stuff out of textbooks I’m having a reaction similiar to Manny in Black Books where he discovers he can play the piano. I was copying some definitions out of a textbook the other day and realized halfway through that I was typing at the same speed I was reading without having to double check to make sure I wasn’t making stupid wrong-key-hit spelling mistakes, and I was spelling long latin medical terms correctly! Needless to say as soon as I realised how well I was going my fingers immediatly stuffed up. I guess it’s one of those skills where I have to not think about it to do it correctly :).
I type w/ all 5 fingers, but I mainly use my thumbs on the spacebar…
As far as being able to look away and type I can do that pretty well too… of course, as I type this response which regards my typing skills, I have made an inordinate amount of typoes…
I don’t suppose any of you would have known that, but I think honesty is the best policy
I took a (required) typing class in high school, but it never worked for me; I memorize a line or two at a time and then look at the keyboard to type it with whatever fingers are convenient at the moment, but somehow manage to type fairly fast – racinchikki (who touch types at some heinously secretarial speed) was amazed at how fast I type with my unorthodox method.
I used to be able to touch type perfectly. Then I spent nearly a year in a chatroom shortly after I first got on the internet using a slowly-failing keyboard that gradually forced me to adopt a weird typing style. I type nearly normally with my left hand (I’m right-handed), but my right-hand typing now uses almost exclusively my thumb and index finger and less often, my middle finger. Right ring and pinky fingers never get used anymore. I really want to retrain myself, but I’m lazy like that.
I am really amazed at the amount of people nowadays who do not know how to properly type, especially with the explosion of the computer industry and internet. You’d think people would type more and better. That said, most people are doing a pretty decent job of typing in a quick, but really inefficient manner. I used to do the ‘fast huntandpeck’ which had me typing at around 30wpm. After learning to touch type properly, I type around 60-80 wpm, depending on whether or not I’m copying or simply spewing my own thoughts. If I’m retyping a letter or anything (like at work, where we have no scanner or OCR software), I can hit around 80wpm, but I’m slower when I have to think about what I’m typing. Anyway, one of these days, I’m going to learn the Dvorak keyboard layout very well and start typing even faster.
I got tired of hunt-and-pecking so I got an old Mavis Beacon typing tutor and learned to touch type. I certainly don’t have to look at the keys any more, but you wouldn’t want me as a secretary, I’m too slow. Guess I just started too late.
It is amazing how many people here (IT office) don’t know how to type properly at all just bash away with two fingers. Among the guys touch typists probably one in ten. All the ladies type like demons.
How can you sit at a keyboard all day everyday for years and never even think about learning the home keys? I wonder if they know what the bobbles on f and j are for.
Ive found that most people dont even notice the bobbles on f and j until theyre pointed out to them and they certainly dont know what theyre for until they’re told. They’re just weird things on the keyboard.
I started to learn to touch type about 2 months ago and its doubled my WPM from 30 to 60 and it getting faster literally every day. I suppose it takes a few years of practice to hit the 100+ area. It suprising how few people are actually taught how to type but for most people its a non-essential skill.
Still cant come to grips with numbers, capitals and special symbols.
It never occurred to me that people wouldn’t know what they were for, so I conducted a straw poll in this office.
There are 25 of us in here today.
Apart from me and the MD’s PA, no one knew.
:eek:
She is 40 and I am 36. There are ten people between her age and my age and the rest of the office is between 19 and 35.
The MD’s PA is a properly qualified secretary and can do shorthand, audiotyping etc. and it transpires that she and I are the only people who learned to touch type on a typewriter.
Surely, in this day and age typing should be a skill everyone learns at school?
I learned it at school and it has stood me in good stead.
Ask the maximum; not the minimum, for the bicycle and the carriage.
I took an evening typing class when I was in the eighth grade since I was getting into using computers around then. This helped me move beyond being and hunt-and-peckist, but I never really mastered the idea of keeping the hands firmly on the home keys. I don’t keep the left and right hands to their respective sides of the keyboard. My hands are all over the keyboard when I type and the index and middle fingers of each hand do about 80% of the work (I never use the pinkie fingers, and only occasionally use the ring fingers). The thumbs, of course, are on the space bar. I have no idea what my WPM is, but I type reasonably well even in spite of all the mistakes I have to go back and fix.
I use the middle three fingers on each hand. My typing has also improved considerably in the last few years thanks to MUDing (this was a thread for geeks, right?_. Also, I typed this whole post with my eyes closed. (Including this part. Right here. Yes. Now.
I’ve also learnt to type solely from practice. I actually learnt the QWERTY layout from one of those children’s electronic organisers, and naturally started touch typing soon after my family got a computer at age 10. Now all I need to do is think a word and it appears before me on the screen. It creeps me out that I don’t even need to follow the individual key strokes.
My typing style is freakishly complex for something that naturally evolved. It’s obviously hard to monitor and changes for various words, but these are generally patterns.
Left Hand
Thumb – Space bar immediately after a backspace/Control/Alt
Little Finger – Shift key
Middle Finger – Far right keys/Other keys when there is more than one left hand side key in a row/Tab
Ring Finger – Other keys when there are more than two left hand side keys in a row/Caps Lock
Index Finger – All other keys on the left
Right Hand
Middle/Ring Fingers – Backspace, Delete and Return
Index Finger – Everything else on the right, and the Space Bar! (yes, this poor finger is incredibly overworked!)
Not quite sure why the system is so much more complicated on the left side, though I suspect its because more happens over there. Some aspects are very inefficient, like using my right index finger for the space bar, whilst my right thumb does nothing! Nonetheless, I type at around 70WPM on average, though that can increase when I really get focused or I push myself.
I touch type, but I don’t know the speed, it’s been so long since I’ve had a typing test. I wonder if there is an online typing test somewhere? That would be fun.
I do find that I’m slower on the laptop than the desktop because the keys seem slightly smaller or closer together or something.
I touchtype. I can do just about everything but numbers with my eyes closed. In fact, I’m writing this post with my eyes closed (though there’s a bandaid on my rogjt omdex fomger. wjocj ,ogjt slew tjomgs sp,e/(*) The last time I played an online typing game, I started out about fiftyfive words per minute, though near the end I was getting around ninety with one hundred percent accuracy. I can also tell when I’ve made a mistacke, usually.
Holy crap it’s hard to type without looking at anything.
Should be “there’s a bandaid on my right index finger, which might skew things some”. Strange that that’s the main bit I messed up.
