I’ve recently started trying to improve my typing speed, which has probably been held back by my somewhat unconventional typing style. Formal touch typing was never a part of my education, and while years of computer use eventually led to me being able to type without looking, I’m probably not as efficient as I could be.
Can you touch type - and with proper form? QWERTY, DVORAK or other layout?
I learned to touch-type QWERTY in late 90s chat rooms. By 2006, I was bragging about my 100 WPM speed in my online dating profile. I met one girl who challenged me to a typing contest. She won, then I won, and then we called it a draw. We’ve been married for 13 years and had our third child last month.
When I was learning to touch type, I found it helpful to practice in my head even when I was away from the keyboard. Like whatever I’m thinking about, I’m picturing a keyboard in my head and where each letter of each word is. It slows my thoughts down a little, but that’s not always a bad thing.
Yup, I can type about 90-100 wpm on a QWERTY keyboard if it’s normal conversational English. Probably half that if it’s something that contains a lot of long technical words. The thing that got me over the hump with getting good at typing was a game called QWERTY Warriors. It was a Flash-based web game that I was playing like 20 years ago, so I don’t know if it’s around anymore, but it was a tower defense game where you had to defeat enemies by typing the word underneath them. It was a pretty painless way to practice touch-typing.
The people responsible for archiving the gold mine that is old flash games are really doing gods work out there!
This is incredible and I thank you for bringing this to my attention
Yes, but definitely not proper form, as my left hand rests on WASD+CTRL/Shift+Space.
I’m around 100 wpm, so maybe it doesn’t matter.
While I completely understand people who can’t get to 100 wpm (much like people at 110+ completely understand me), I cannot fathom young adults who cannot touch-type (barring disability, obviously).
Yes. You have no other choice when you’re blind. I prefer unlabeled keyboards.
Yep.
Went to an all-boys Catholic High School and there were no technical programs (shop, auto, woodworking) bc they couldn’t afford the programs, nor the space. Barely had a gym.
Anyhoo, ‘options’ were typing, bookkeeping, and Latin.
Took typing for 2 years, buddy and I would race-type song lyrics out of our heads (lyrics often weren’t included in the liner notes).Elton John - Razor Face - GO!
Yes, QWERTY. My dad made my brother and I use Mavis Beacon as kids (SHOUT OUT TO MAVIS BEACON!!!) and I had keyboarding class in middle school. WPM is 70 to 80 depending on what I’m typing.
Yes with one quirk. I don’t use the right shift, just the left. Not sure why I’ve ended up this way, or if it’s a common variation.
EDIT: looked it up. It’s very common
Yes, I can touch type. I had a computer class in my year of high school where they taught us all how to do it.
I can touch type, but not with proper form. I use a really fast “hunt and peck” method with my two index fingers and my other fingers for specific keys such as backspace, shift, space, ctrl, etc. I can typically type between 70 - 80 wpm with high accuracy.
Thats me, I the ring finger only gets involved if I need to press 2 of ctrl/alt/shift at the same time
Mostly, sometimes I have issues with thezxcvbnm row.
I’ve actually leaned that in school, on a fully mechanical typewriter. But i don’t use this skill, as touch type is completely useless for programming.
Yes. My kids would laugh at me when I worked from home because I would not stop typing when I looked up to answer something they were asking me. I suck on the phone keyboard but good with QUERTY big keyboard. My fingers can talk on those
I do the same with my colleagues. Then again, I’m using the Moergo Glove80 tilted at 50° (3D printed stand), so I can’t see what I’m clicking lol.
Yep. One of the best investments I ever made tbh. It has paid so many dividends over time.
Yes, I use Colemak DH, but can also touch type on QUERTY when needed (when working on my laptop).
I noticed that, while gaming helped me a little, it also taught me to put my fingers on the wrong keys (WSAD is not correct for typing), also QUERTY is really bad, I never tried to put fingers on the home row, because you barely use home row keys in QUERTY.
It took me two months of regular training to switch to Colemak but it was worth it. I type much faster and I feel like a skilled pianist when my fingers fly smoothly over the keys, and somehow I am even better with QUERTY now than I was before!
I didn’t learn to touch type until I overpaid for a keyboard with blank keycaps. I didn’t make much of an effort other than struggling to type without a way to check what keys I was about to press, but it seems to have mostly worked. As a consequence I never learned dvorak because qwerty was tough enough, maybe next month I’ll switch 😅
My typing speed feels faster but it’s probably not great for things I don’t normally type, plus I haven’t measured it
