I think there is only one real explanation.
I often show people a technique they can learn in a few seconds that will save them fully five percent of all their time spent typing. I even have some practice exercises and software that I will give them to support this.
But a few days or weeks later, when I see them and ask how it’s going, the look at me rather sheepishly and say, "Oh, I started to use that technique. But eventually I stopped it because it was just too much trouble to switch over when I wanted to use it.
Well, it only takes a split second to “switch over”. So we both know that’s not the real reason.
The **real **reason IMHO is that people just don’t like change and they will not change unless it presents a finacial advantage or someone forces them to change.
Want to know the techniqe that will save anyone 5 percent of all the time they spend typing? Here it is:
If you examine any English document (including and piece of English text people have typed over the internet, you will notice one very interesting phenomena.
There is one word that is used more than any other. In fact, this word is used so often that if you just replace it (like you want to replace the word “and” with “&”, it wlll enable you to type 5 percent less keystrokes. It’s a little diffrent however.
The word is “the” and if you consider a sentence llike the following,
“Hit the ball over the fence.”
You would type it as follows:
“Hit/ball over/fence.”
I recommend you use the forward slash (for many reasons). But you can use any key you prefer.
The important difference is that when you type the forward slash, that actually types 5 chars for you - not just 3. It types the leading and traiilng blank.
So, what happens when the word comes at the beginning of a sentence or you want to send a capitalized version? You can just use the char “?” instead of “/”. It’s easy because “?” is just the upper case of “/”.
Note that when you type the “?”, that will actually type 6 strokes, i.e. ". The ". If you like to end each sentence with two spaces, you can arrange for the question mark to send the 7 strokes - ". The ", where there are two spaces after the period.
Of course there is more to discuss. Like for example, supose you want to use the forward slash or the question mark. What do you do? Well, it turns out there are a few alternatives but it’s not really appropriate to get into that discussion here.
The software I use to do these translations is quite simpe. It only takes one quick keystroke to turn it on or off. Hence whenever someone tells me, “I just got to be too much troulbe”, I know that is not the real reason. The real reason is that most people just don’t like change. Or they are afraid of change. Oh well.
I know when there is a financial advantage, it’s a completely different story. Many people work as transcriptionists and are paid by the keystroke - not the number of keystrokes they type. But the number they produce - big difference.
If they type a word using 5 keystrokes but use the wrong word, they have to delete that word and then type the correct word. Obviously, they don’t get paid for the original (wrong) word they typed.
These people love using my technique because they make 5 percent of their money “for free” (as it were). They only type one stroke. But they get paid for the 5 strokes their employer sees in the document they produce. Neat, huh?
Of course, when I give this technique to a professional transcriptionist, the first thing they want to know is if they can add more words and increase the amount that are produced “for free” as it were.
Of course they can. But it opens up a whole new way of using the keyboard.
I don’t write mine like the traditional style, though. I used to do a backwards-3 style E with a vertical line through it. But since my printing and writing is extremely small (seriously, really really tiny), it felt a bit too cluttered. Now my ampersand is a bit more stylistic - it floats in the middle of the line space and is more like a cursive lower case c with a dot above and below.