Why is wordprocessing and computer use generally still subject to the typing rules of the 1950s? Nothing is expected of a lot of computer users but that they relate to their computers much as the typists of 50 years ago related to their typewriters.
Does anyone, anywhere consider quick clicking to be more important the quick typing? Why don’t people with the ability to create a database, or work through a mail merge or create a web page with speed and efficiency hold it over the 90 words a minute typists?
Spellcheckers can be used as clean up tools but as far as I know that doesn’t advantage slow typists either. It should if they can proof read quickly and accurately. This is not a carbon paper and white out age. Those things just don’t mean anything anymore.
Why haven’t the rules of typing kept up with advances in technology?
i don’t think i entirely understand your question… but…
i use a software that predicts the words i am about to type. i use it extensively while typing out documents, and it increases my typing speed a helluva lot. i just have to use the num-pad to choose from one of the 9 words that it thinks i want to type. It learns and adapts to my typing style and word usage too. I don’t think this was available 50 years ago. it is available here :
i also have access to “you-talk-it-types” software. Though largely innacurate, it still is an advancement in the field of data entry.
increasing mouse speed will just increase the sensitivity of the mouse pointer to my movement of the mouse. setting this too high would make me overshoot my intended target most of the time. Kinda like a car with over-steer.
“Why don’t people with the ability to create a database, or work through a mail merge or create a web page with speed and efficiency hold it over the 90 words a minute typists?”
someone with excellent web-designing skills might even be earning a whole lot more than data entry operators. and text input or text entry speed is not the most important part of a web-designer’s skill set.
Well we certainly choose our typists on the basis of both typing speed and their familiarity with the software (WP package) they are going to be using, amongst other things. But the problem is that such things are fairly hard to measure compared to straight out typing speed.
Additionally, I think you are just plain wrong if you think typing speed doesn’t matter, at least in some work. My secretary has to type up large amounts of words, in the form of original prose (if the type of rubbish that emanates from my desk as legal advice deserves that name). There is no magic way of doing that, but type it. Well, OK, there’s voice recognition, but I have tried that and found it wanting.
Just plain fast typing is required. Spell checkers are all very well, but it is slower to type badly and then correct than it than it is to just type the damn thing accurately in the first place. By the time you have got your hand from your keyboard to your mouse or numpad, any good typist will already have typed or corrected about three words, without so much as lifting their hand or looking down.
I’m not saying that other skills such as those that you outline aren’t important, they are. But somewhere along the line you’ve got to just plain bash out the words.
xash: I’m sorry if I used confusing language. I was referring to the “mouse speed” (read work accomplished) which will be determined by the reflexes of the user of the mouse not by alteration of settings in the Control Panel.
Although, this makes perfect sense to me:
“increasing mouse speed will just increase the sensitivity of the mouse pointer to my movement of the mouse. setting this too high would make me overshoot my intended target most of the time. Kinda like a car with over-steer”.
so does the fact that success at this type of game depends on human reflexes not machine reflexes:
What about this then: In 1948 a typist with a speed of 80 words per minute falls into a coma and she remains that way for the next 50 years. She wakes up, jumps out of bed and runs down to the employment agency to apply for a typing job. The only other applicant types 45 words a minute although, unlike coma woman, she has definitely, definitely heard of Microsoft. Who gets the job?
G. Nome: for generic office admin and secretarial work I imagine those with the software skills would get the work, purely because the speed the coma victim types at would likely be outweighed by the confusion over formatting, printing, mail merging and the other additional functions WP software commonly offers.
I have held a number of temporary office jobs in the UK and Australia, and in all cases I was expected to score highly in tests of my familiarity with Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel in addition to testing my typing speed and accuracy.
Ok, basically, typing speed still remains a required skill. Much like many other old professions, e.g. gardening (or whatever, i can’t think up a better one right now)
In this case it would depend on the learning curve. i personally feel that moving from 45wpm to 80wpm for applicant 2 would take a whole lot more time than to train coma lady to use MS Word. So, yes, in a job that involves primarily typing coma lady still has a useful skill-set.
But it is misleading to assume that typing speed alone is the most important factor to excel at computer based jobs. A good grasp of MS Office would give applicant 2 a whole lot more edge in a job that requires using PowerPoint to type out and create company presentations, or take care of company databases or spreadsheets. Her speed with the mouse in these applications will be a lot faster than coma lady’s, and hence she’d get the job.
[just being mean]
so… basically… you haven’t understood your own questoin
[/just being mean]
I’ve worked lots of temp work. And I’m guessing that in your example, it’s gonna be applicant three, who can type 60 WPM and has a basic familiarity with WP programs, who’s gonna get the job. Comalady and butterfingers man both lack important skills for administrative work.
xash, I disagree that the learning curve for coma lady will be lower than that for butterfingers man. I lack any cite on this except for my personal experience.
I do computer training at my office, and occasionally some yahoo will hire a person who hasn’t used a computer in fifteen years, will hire someone who is unfamiliar with how a mouse works, what a password is, and (I kid you not) what the shift key on a keyboard does. It’s nearly impossible to teach folks at this level how to use a computer to enter their work records on a daily basis. Yet these folks are far more familiar with PCs than comalady would be.
Granted, the folks I’ve dealt with are ones who’ve lived around computers for two decades and avoided learning about them: they may have self-selected for ignorance, whereas the comalady might be a tech-savvy person who will learn quickly. I don’t think you can count on that, though.
At any rate, I think that most employment agencies require several sets of skills for a secretary-type position:
-Familiarity with basic computer functions
-A decent typing speed
-133t grammar and spelling skillz.
A lack of any one of these three means the applicant won’t get a secretarial position.
What about this: The slower typist has the ability to comprehend the material she will be working with. How much of an advantage will that be to her? The job involves typing documents almost completely related to science.
I never learned what were termed “commercial subjects” at high school but I knew girls who did learn typing and shorthand. They all left school early and went to work for lawyers and doctors and so on. I don’t think Tocqueville, Darwin or Hume or Hobbes was required reading for them. I don’t think they’d ever heard their names. So, what I’m admitting to, I suppose, is an ignorance of how typing pools worked or still work. How can a typist be employed to type subject matter she/he doesn’t understand?
Is this a real example, or a hypothetical one? I know that in the physics department here, the office professionals hardly ever deal directly with the science. Arranging teaching schedules, reimbursements for travel expenses, student recruitment, sure, but those don’t require any scientific knowledge. Professors and students will generally do the typing and layout of papers and the like themselves, which generally requires use of technical tools like L[sub]A[/sub]T[sup]E[/sup]X.
Chronos: A more useful medical typist would be able to spell hypoprothrombinaemia, I would have thought.
The idea that science literate games players make the better secretaries is beginning to disturb me a little. That’s because I now have a image of Spoofe in formal office attire. I can’t get rid of it. Pantyhose, lipstick, orthopedic underwear. Because he’s worth it. Let me out of here.
As I type now, I am staring at my keyboard, and I have hit backspace at least 30 times. At work I usually type the same thing over and over. I can type “sending aps for 50.00 to client” without even thinking. It’s all conditioning. Then again, I drool when bells ring, so maybe I’m not the best example.
I have completely no idea what the OP is asking. I don’t think typing is the same kind of skill as database administratiion or website development. They are all together in different categories so there simply is no comparison.
However, it remains a fact that fast typing is a desirable skill to programmers, and it is not hard to learn. I can type up to 60 wpm depending on the kind of material.
Most job vacancies for office work require conversancy with Microsoft products and mastery of the whole package - Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, FrontPage and Publisher - is a common requirement. Employers aren’t unreasonable to expect an office worker to create a database and zip up a little website in the same hour and all over the world people are spending huge amounts of money and time to live up to their standards. However, if typing speed is always going to be the [Word Thesaurus] determining factor, the lynchpin, essential, the key, critical, central, imperative, vital, compulsory, obligatory and indispensable [/Word Thesaurus] to obtaining a job in an office why do most people bother with software packages at all? How many people can crown their computer literacy with the fascist dictate of 80 - 100 words per minute?
I think I already answered that, G.Nome. Because you have to get the words down somehow. You can be capable of using these packages like greased lightning, but they can’t read your mind, and no amount of mouse clicking is going to put the words on the page. Is it any more complicated than that?
So far, however, voice recognition - the ability for PCs to understand and obey the human voice - has enjoyed only limited success as a dictation device. Users today still must speak words separated by distinct periods of silence - known as “discrete dictation.”
Their slow speed - only 40 to 60 words per minute, far less than the 100-word-a-minute typing speeds required in many workplaces - have slowed down their acceptance.
Obviously, there is no connection between the word “workplace” and non-secretarial work although it’s a term I’d expect to hear more from a web designer than a receptionist. If you enter the words Dreamweaver, Macromedia and 80 wpm in Google you get page after page of resumes from people who claim to type at that speed and who are not looking for work as secretaries. They must know that they need to be that fast.
