And now a word from our life hacks correspondent.

[reddragdiva]

Please, please, please, I beg you:

Learn to touch-type. Learn to type with ten fingers.

Computer programs and websites to do this abound. If you find one that's horrible to use, find another. But persist until you do.

I am appalled at how many people I know who use computers typing for hours a day, and never learned how to drive a keyboard. They insist they're just as fast as they would be touch-typing (they're not), and then complain of sore fingers from doing weird stuff to adapt to their inability to type properly.

Anyone reading this uses computers enough, to type text, that they should know how to type. I would estimate (based on my geeky friends I've seen at a keyboard) less than 20% of you can touch-type properly.

HOW THE HELL DO 80% OF THE COMPUTER-MAINLINING GEEKS I KNOW NOT KNOW HOW TO TYPE. HOW DO THEY NOT BOTHER TO LEARN HOW TO USE THEIR PRIMARY MODE OF HUMAN INTERACTION. Figuring that out will be a study in human cognitive biases, for sure.

Set up your desk, chair etc per the handy how-to-avoid-RSI diagrams that one can hardly get away from in any setting. Then LEARN HOW TO TYPE. And don't make an excuse for why you're a special snowflake who doesn't need to.

By the way, when I discovered IRC big time (1996), it took my speed from 60wpm to 90wpm. Complete sentences, they're your friend.

My daughter is three and a half. She is already more skilled with the computers at nursery than the staff are. (Can get from the CBeebies games to watching Octonauts on the iPlayer in the blink of an eye!) I'm going to make sure she learns to type properly as soon as possible after she learns to read, dexterity allowing.

Don't post excuses for not bothering to learn to type. If you have ten fingers and they work*, you don't have an excuse.

* or are not otherwise incapacitated

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I know how to touch type, but sometimes I lose my home row and then oy qpp t03w 50 eu96.

[ciphergoth]

Just tried to replicate that and got "96 wpp y04e 60 eu96"...

[greylock]

I don't care to touch type. I get by on (basically) two-fingered typing.

[darren_stranger]

I was surprised years ago to discover i was doing an improvised two to four fingered kind of touch typing that i'd slipped into without even noticing, just from the amount of typing i'd been doing at computers. Now i've lost a lot of that as i spend much less time writing and more reading or clicking when at the computer. I suppose i could learn to touch type properly, but i don't feel the amount of time i spend typing is enough to warrant it when i could be doing something more interesting.

[reddragdiva]

When I said "to type text", I was specifically thinking of the social areas of the Internet.

You type enough to bother.

[aster13]

I touch type!

[reddragdiva]

GOOD!

[flick]

I can't touch type. The only* time it causes me problems is when Parallels has a hissy fit and sticks down the virtual Windows Key.

I have a faster typing speed than many people I know who learnt how to touch type. I got that by bashing away on a VIC-20, frantically writing my secret diary, alt-keys enabled, in a non-re-readable form.

(Although I'm fully able to not only type fast and accurately but also do funky shite with Word, most of what I do is in Excel, so actual typing skilzz are less important. Similarly, I know a huge number of geeks who can't actually type a coherent sentence on IRC. the only one I know is the one I'm married to, and he still edits obsessively.)

Why does it matter?

* Ok, not only: I'm struggling now because I'm pissed [g]

(Fully agree that people need to learn to type, dammit, but touchtyping? No.)

[sharplittleteeth]

I can touch type. But only if I don't think about it.

Same as I don't remember what half my passwords are, but my fingers do.

[quiet000001]

Same here, more or less. That said, at any given moment in time if someone watches me typing, I may or may not be doing it properly, as I can also type minimal amounts one-handed. (A skill developed as a result of wearing a wrist brace on my right wrist off and on - unless I can get the keyboard lined up just right, I can't use my right hand to type because I can't bend my wrist - so if I've got my laptop on my lap to make a quick note or I'm reading LJ in bed, I might not be able to get situated properly.)

But being able to type properly and with speed has made life so much easier for taking notes in classes - the prof talks and I just let my fingers go and I can pay attention to what is being said without figuring out the shortest way to phrase something because I can only write for so long with a pen. (Stupid arthritis.)

[karen2205]

Hmm, yes touch typing = very useful skill (and one I basically taught myself whilst at university, just by typing a lot). I'm not sure the standard software for teaching it is terribly useful to those who can already type a bit, as it tends to take people back to a frustrating place involving limited numbers of fingers and the home keys.

[reddragdiva]

That's the annoying bit of the learning process. I can't really think of a way around it. Mostly I got faster initially by determinedly typing with ten fingers, even thinking about the letters, slower than I could with two, but training that muscle memory.

[ideological_cuddle]

I learned to touch-type when I was about 14 or so. On proper real ancient clunky typewriters, none of this electric stuff, let alone computer keyboards.

(With hindsight, had I been rather more confident it would have been an *excellent* way to meet girls, seeing as I was one of two boys in a class of 30.)

That said, I don't think what I do now quite qualifies as "proper" touch typing. It's sort of vaguely *like* touch typing, but my hands kind of float all over the place and now I'm thinking about it I'm using the middle finger on my right hand a lot more than any of the others on that hand. Probably down to the placement of keys, though.

[jauncourt]

If I didn't already think you are amazing and one of the few good things about humanity, I would after reading this.

Personally, I suck at speed typing, but that's never kept me from trying to overcome my natural tendency to forget which hand I'm typing with. Ambidexterity is NOT a typist's friend.

[tangent_woman]

Oh, bite me.

I've dashed my hopes against the rocks of innumerable attempts to learn to touch type. And still I cannot.

It turns out that while my ten fingers work to spec, my brain does not.

Not a special snow flake. Not unwilling. Simply unable to master touch typing or guitar playing or skills of that ilk due to being defective in an otherwise trivial way.

So if you are going to be contemptuous of me for not doing as you prescribe, go right ahead because such scorn (and I get plenty of it from ignorant, judgmental folk) is nothing compared with the frustration of being flat out and eternally unable to type proficiently.

[katieastrophe]

+1 to all of this.

[oonh]

And don't be afraid of learning dvorak, either.
I know both dvorak and qwerty and I can switch between them without a problem. Scratch that. I can have multiple windows, some of which in dvorak and qwerty, and I can instantly switch my brain between the two layouts.

[oonh]

(and I should admit, that I'm planning on learning more layouts, because every time you constrict your communications pipeline, you get just a little more creative).

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not sure using proper fingering and all ten matters that much. Growing up on a computer but with no formal typing training I somehow came to a style that relies on just the index finger on the right hand while using all five fingers on the left. 120 WPM, so I really have not felt any burning desire to unlearn the instinctive behavior. But have some pity for us kids and our weird ways. :)

-Phil Sandifer

[gths]

We did get an electric typewriter (one of those cheapish Canon things) while we were at high school, my brother went and did a typing course at TAFE and I sort of learnt from his textbook, but I guess it was incomplete. I went to TAFE myself a few years later and got rid of most of the bad habits.

Anyway, the weird thing is that I touch type with all the fingers of my left hand (even though I'm righthanded) but my right hand sort of wanders all over the place, partly because I have to use the number pad quite a lot at work. But that works out OK, because the Qwerty keyboard, while definitely somewhat suboptimal, does have most of the common letters on the left side or the top row.

The main point of course is learn to type to the point where you can type out what you're thinking without having to play hunt'n'peck, and to do so that doesn't cause wrist discomfort.

The other neat thing is that the discipline also gives you better control over your fingers (the ring finger is the hardest to bring into line) so you can potentially learn how to play an instrument more quickly.

[jld]

I probably can't touch type on my phone.

Regular kybards, however, fine. I'm typing this with my eyes closed right now, in fact. I'm pretty sure there are a few parts of my touch typing that would horrify a purist (not quite the right finger kind of stuff in a few edge cases), and I seem to recall having been driven to frustration by those "ergonomic" kybards on the rare occasions when I encounter one, but it works for me.

We were taught typing in middle school as part of the regular curriculum, first on (electric?) typewriters and then on computers, as they swtiched from one to the other between two of the years in question.

I don't particularly want to hear about Dvorak, though. I have a friend who converted to it, and swore up and down he could still use qwerty fine, but whenever he had to type something on one of my systems the most bizarre typos kept turning up. Again, works for me.

(I confess I have opened my eyes to edit for content, but not tyops.)

[rbarclay]

Does glancing at the keyboard when needing seldomly-used characters (like §$%öäü~{[]}) still count as touch-typing?

[reddragdiva]

Or programming, for which I tend to glance to hit that cluster at top-right. Though usually I'll have a stab at the key blind with my right little finger and miss a few times.

[ciphergoth]

Figuring that out will be a study in human cognitive biases, for sure.

It's called hyperbolic discounting.

[reddragdiva]

I always thought of that as a passive thing, not an active one like I see in so many touch-typing denialists. (And yes, I do think it can reasonably and usefully be thought of as denial.)

[fluffymormegil]

I touch-type (as in, I type with nine fingers, not looking at the keycaps) and have done for decades. (Side note regarding RSI: It is badly placed mice that are the TRUE EVIL. Keyboards are relatively minor sinners.)

That said: I don't use the normal "home keys" on computer keyboards. Hands aren't that shape! AERV NIO' is a much more comfortable rest position on a computer keyboard than ASDF JKL; is. Also, I strike almost all chords using the left-hand modifiers, because the right-hand modifiers on a computer keyboard are too far away from anything to be usable.

[gothgeekgirl]

Re: mouse placement: Hear, hear!

*Your* hands aren't that shape, perhaps :) I just tried your rest position, and for me it's as uncomfortable as one of those fancy ergonomic keyboards (perhaps because they tend to put the home row in a similar arrangement). Turning my arms and wrists that far in hurts after about 5 min.

Now I'm wondering how much "ergonomic" key placement relates to hand size. My hands aren't particularly small for a woman, but they're still noticeably smaller than most mens' hands.

[nitoda]

Interesting discussion. I was taught touch typing at school. It was one of the most useful things I ever learnt at school after writing, grammar, and arithmetic. (I was already reading before going to school.)
I've often said that schools should add touch typing (or call it keyboard skills) to the curriculum if they are teaching kids to use computers, but it's been suggested to me that touch typing will no longer be required by the time these kids leave school because PC input will no longer be by keyboard. What's your take on possible developments in inputting technology rendering keyboarding obsolete?

[rbarclay]

Having 100+ keys with hundreds of possible combinations right at your fingertips is fast, so as long as we don't get thought-processing I don't see what could usefully replace it.

[gothgeekgirl]

My mother insisted that I learn to touch type when I was 10. I hated it at the time, but I've never regretted it (nor have my wrists). Never did learn the right finger for all of the numbers 2-0 though, just some of them. Yes, this was long enough ago that we learned to use a lower case "l" for the numeral "1". My ancient manual typewriter has no separate "1" key. It does, however, have ¢, ¼ & ½ on the keyboard (as opposed to using meta keys or the cute widget I keep on one of my gnome panels). So ner.

[sidhedmento]

Typing's girly.

[reddragdiva]

It is true that I no longer type with my fingers, instead just whipping out my monstrous penis and slapping it across the keyboard (coincidentally rewriting the complete works of Shakespeare with each thump).

[naath]

I touch type but sometimes ,glhs,; ijalud; kjd vdtpatsfk sl md alh kjdl G ktrd ofnng;jeeee

(I used to touch-type badly on qwerty, which was making my wrists hurt. So I learned to type properly on dvorak instead; which doesn't hurt my wrists, probably because I'm not using the wrong fingers rather than because dvorak is intrinsically any better)

[reddragdiva]

Oddly enough, there's a fair bit of anecdote that Dvorak is not faster but that it is way, way easier on the hands. The Wikipedia article mentions this in the first paragraph, and Microsoft even claim it as well.

[thekumquat]

I taught myself how to type fast thanks to the BBC Micro's KEYBOARD program on the Welcome disk, which I used a lot between the ages of 7 and 10 partly because any game on disk was better than a fab game on tape which took half an hour to load.

Fingers weren't big enough to touch-type, though. Then my parents were convinced I'd failed all my GCSEs and made me do a secretarial course, so I learnt touch-typing the classical way with manual typewriters. I escaped after a week so had learnt all the letters but was still a bit ropey on numbers and symbols.

Add a gap year where I spent 9-5 Mon-Fri on essentially chat forums (oh the joy for the deaf girl and the stuttering guy of being equal and in fact more fluent contributors to conversations! We were in our element. And got together. :) )
Then RSI hit - despite all posters, in most workplaces it's impossible to get a chair that enables you to have an obtuse elbow angle as well as a supported wrist for mousing. So I had a couple grim years of one-fingered typing.

Result is I touchtype with about 8 fingers, pretty much 100% by touch for letters, but having to look for symbols etc. I also have very small hands so physically can't comfortably type 'Y' without shifting my whole hand. I'm much closer to touchtyping on this keyboard which is on my netbook, as it has smaller than standard keys. On a big keyboard I'm usually using my thumbs to hold my balance.

[reddragdiva]

You can get smaller keyboards! I plan to start Freda on a netbook while she's little. A 7" netbook keyboard is too small for me at all, but would be much better for a small child.

[mirrorshard]

I taught myself to touch-type because I needed to be able to write as fast as I could think, and then when mudding. I used to crash telnet on a regular basis from typing (and sending commands) too fast.

I don't do it perfectly (I have no real home keys) but it's damn fast when I get into the groove.

[vatine]

I don't touch-type. The typing method I use has evolved from touch-typing, however (yes, I had typing-classes in school, for a year-and-a-bit, IIRC).

[lnr]

I don't touch type, I don't get RSI*, and I don't need to type any faster than I already do.

Do you still think I should bother?

* small exception: if I spend two to three hours playing a fast-paced reaction-critical mouse-driven game my right little finger locks back uncomfortably at the middle joint and I need to stop and rest. I do not think learning to touch type will solve this particular problem.