Touch or hunt and peck

[milo bloom]

I am trying to learn touch typing again, I gave up last time once I realised that until I mastered it my typing speed dropped by quite bit. So if anyone has any tips or tricks I'd be glad to hear them.

I'd recommend Das Keyboard, completely blank keys are a great way to force you to learn touch typing

I just think it's incredible people will pay $129 for an old IBM keyboard painted black and letters removed.

Yeah, I was thinking to myself, for $10 and some Cinnabons I'll come to your house and spray paint all your keys black


I took typing in HS and like others, it has been one of the most useful courses I ever took. This was late 80's early 90's, and we were on IBM Selectric typewriters (which my uncle helped design back in the day, IIRC).

I think we even had a thread here some time back (either in Misc or TNZ), where someone asked "of all the things we learned in school, what has helped you the most to this day?" And after the comments like "how to lie; how to talk to people; how to lie to people" the most commonly noted skill was typing.

I think one of the reasons I've done well at my job is my typing speed. A lot of it is rote work, but since I can get through it quicker and focus on other stuff sooner, I think that makes me look better.

 

[Miss Chicken]

I voted hunt and pack but in reality I am a hybrid of the two. I actually use several fingers but often have to look down for certain letters.

 

[scotpens]

Touch type. 2 years at school learning 'the quick fast fox jumped over the lazy dog' did it for me. I hated it, but it has worked.

It's "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog." Actually, to contain all the letters of the alphabet, the sentence has to be "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." Either that, or fox or dog has to be plural; otherwise, you're missing the letter S.

. . . The Remington didn't even have an Enter/Return key. It had a long lever-like "carriage return" that you hooked with your pinkie and pulled to the left at the end of the line (once you gauged where the margin should be).

Don't you mean "pulled to the RIGHT?" Unless you were typing in Hebrew.

Yes, that's how all manual typewriters worked. And the margins and tabs were set manually with mechanical stops. And that damned bell would ring to tell you that you had only five characters left as you approached the end of a line. And that messy ink ribbon had to be changed when the type started to fade . . . and the typebars would jam and stick together if you typed too fast . . . and you could never type proper quotation marks, or accent marks, or fractions . . .

You kids today, you've got it easy!

 

[RJDiogenes]

I took a typing class in 8th Grade, but I had already been typing for about a year, so I'm a touch typist with an odd style. I mostly use just three fingers on each hand and my hands cross over to the wrong side of the keyboard from time to time. It used to drive my typing teacher crazy because I would do everything wrong and still be the fastest in the class.

 

[RoJoHen]

I'm a self-taught touchtyper, but I'm lazy and don't use my pinky fingers cause it feels awkward.

I think the only pinky I use while typing is my right pinky (which I use for the shift key). I can't think of a reason to ever use my left. Your hands can effectively cover all the keys with just four fingers.

Oddly enough, I use my pinky, but I use neither of my ring fingers. I never officially learned how to touch type the "proper" way, but I type just fine without ever having to look at the keyboard.

 

[K'Ehleyr]

Touch type. 2 years at school learning 'the quick fast fox jumped over the lazy dog' did it for me. I hated it, but it has worked.

It's "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog." Actually, to contain all the letters of the alphabet, the sentence has to be "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." Either that, or fox or dog has to be plural; otherwise, you're missing the letter SYes, that's how all manual typewriters worked. And the margins and tabs were set manually with mechanical stops. And that damned bell would ring to tell you that you had only five characters left as you approached the end of a line. And that messy ink ribbon had to be changed when the type started to fade . . . and the typebars would jam and stick together if you typed too fast . . . and you could never type proper quotation marks, or accent marks, or fractions . . .

You kids today, you've got it easy!

At least I know how to type pedant!

Yes ~ caught me out
and that why I can't find 's'

 

[SVD]

... It used to drive my typing teacher crazy because I would do everything wrong and still be the fastest in the class.

nice!

 

[bluedana]

Don't you mean "pulled to the RIGHT?" Unless you were typing in Hebrew.

For whatever reason, my dyslexic brain remembers the handle being on the right hand side -- probably because that's where the enter key is now. Odd.

 

[The Boy Who Cried Worf]

I am a hunt and peck guy. I am really fast at it I can do 40wpm, but I also make a lot of mistakes. I have been meaning to learn to type properly for like 20 years, but it is one of those things that never becomes a priority until you need it and then usually when you need it you are so busy with the thing you need it for you don't have time to learn. It will come in very handy in a new career I am preparing for so I really have been meaning to start now. Plus at times it is just kind of embarrassing.

 

[Holdfast]

Another self-taught touch-typer.

Not really self-taught though. Taught implies some active conscious process. More just gradual acquisition of the relevant motor skills over time, so I'm not as fast as a professional, but still, it's touch-typing.

 

[mimic]

I had to take a class when I was 11 or 12 years old. The end of the class was interrupted by a sewage spill, so I missed out on learning the numbers. I'm just okay with those.

I always use the shift key on the left, never the right. Otherwise I pretty much follow the rules.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Oddly enough, I always use the one on the right. I don't know why.

I also realized that, if we're talking about numbers, I have to look. I'm not even close to a touch typist for them.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

I'm a touch typist except for a few rarely used keys. Posting on forums has made me a much faster typist. Thanks, internet!

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

If the calculation is made WITH allowances for the time it takes me to fix my typos, I can generally get between 80-90 WPM, and I have to wonder if I could hit 100 on a really good day with few errors. My typing is NOWHERE near proper, though...I don't look, but it's definitely not proper form, at all. So touch-typing, but very unconventional. Aside from using them for special keys, I really only use six fingers (the middle 3 on each hands) for the letter keys, and my right hand reaches over and does a disproportionate amount of the work.

Just took 3 tests--the same test, but 3 different passages, and scored the following (the test doesn't count it against you if you go back and fix something). And this was having to compensate for unusual British spelling and punctuation rules, AND the fact that you have to manually start and stop the clock on this particular test. AND I was on my laptop keyboard. I think based on this I could break 100 WPM under the most ideal conditions.

First try: 86 WPM
2nd try: 94 WPM
3rd try: 83 WPM (this sample had REALLY messed-up punctuation.)
4th try: 91 WPM (with 1 mistake I didn't catch)
5th try: 97 WPM (1 "mistake" that frankly I think was a typo in the sample that I corrected.)

 

[SVD]

something else I note about my typing:

Finger I use for the space bar: right index, along with most every other key on the right hand side.

 

[kathryn i am]

Another self-taught touch-typer.

Not really self-taught though. Taught implies some active conscious process. More just gradual acquisition of the relevant motor skills over time, so I'm not as fast as a professional, but still, it's touch-typing.

Same here - when I was doing my BA I minored in Psychology, which meant I took 7 Psych credits over the course of three years. My university was tiny, so there was only one Psych professor, and he required a 15 - 20 page research paper for each class. So much typing, hunt and peck was no longer an option

 

[Holdfast]

I'm a touch typist except for a few rarely used keys. Posting on forums has made me a much faster typist. Thanks, internet!

Another self-taught touch-typer.

Not really self-taught though. Taught implies some active conscious process. More just gradual acquisition of the relevant motor skills over time, so I'm not as fast as a professional, but still, it's touch-typing.

Same here - when I was doing my BA I minored in Psychology, which meant I took 7 Psych credits over the course of three years. My university was tiny, so there was only one Psych professor, and he required a 15 - 20 page research paper for each class. So much typing, hunt and peck was no longer an option

Exactly.

I had the same experience when writing up my dissertation. Oh, and as Locutus says, writing reams of nonsense on boards like this.

 

[Mary Ann]

Touch type thanks to the nazi keyboard teacher i had back in high school.

I don't remember seeing you in my class!

I learned touch typing on manual and monstrous electric typewriters, and I'm grateful I did. It's so much faster than the hunt and peck method that I'm sure I've saved hundreds of hours since the days of those scary typewriting teachers.

 

[Wynterhawk]

Mmm, I didn't learn touch typing, I just practiced. Though I'm working on getting much faster.

 

[Jack Bauer]

hunt and peck. I never could master touch typing. Still I hunt and peck pretty fast but not as fast as I would do if it did touch typing.