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 “proper” typing form when I was in elementary school. But what really thought me touch typing was trying to chat in games. Not only do you need to stay looking at what’s happening, but you need to type fast so you can get back to playing.
I’d more or less mastered touch typing by the beginning of middle school. By high school I got to about 100wpm which is where I’ve capped out since then.
Playing WoW
See message from QT3.14 Dranei boy
Press numlock, type out ‘sup bb LFR BT?’
Left and right mouse click to halt and continue killing. The good old days
I learned how to touch type in grade school, but quickly forgot after that. It’s just not that ergonomic to keep your hands in that position. However, it did give me the necessary memory of where all the keys are. My hands can magnetically reach each key without a lot of difficulty. I could type pretty quickly if I wanted to but I’m usually limited by my speed of thought and usually make quite a few typing mistakes.
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.
Yes I can touch type after learning from keybr and then practice on monkeytype
I semi-touch type, with three fingers and one thumb, and form that looks like an arthritic hobo. But I still get the job done.
However, I can work a numpad or a ten-key calculator like a pro athlete.
I do touch type, but I don’t use the standard finger placement. I had typing class in school, which I’m grateful for, but what really got my typing speed up were ICQ and AOL Instant Messenger.
My parents made me take typing lessons when I was in primary school. I had to learn on an extremely heavy electric typewriter with the keycaps taped off.
It was a lot of work but I’m still enjoying the benefits of it.
Fun little difference was that we used QWERTY, but the ‘;’ was replaced with a ‘ij’I use DVORAK on my phone and after a day was faster than with querty.
I also use a keybeard called unexpected keyboard (via the fdroid app store) that does not have autocomplete but instead its really fast & still accurate to type non letters and numbers without holding the key down and wait and then choosing something. Also it can do shortcuts like ctrl+a, +c & +v which is quite pleasant
Yes. Parents made me learn touch-typing with QWERTY when I was growing up
I actually made the effort to switch to Colemak-DH less than a year ago. Because getting a properly labelled Colemak-DH keyboard is so difficult (my laptop keys are still QWERTY layout), I… basically forced myself to learn how to touch type in like 2-3 months. Still can’t do the multilingual symbols very well (I always forget where the ^/circumflex is…), but I think I have a >98% accuracy on everything else
Unfortunately I forgot how to touch type with QWERTY after learning the new setup…
Colemak claims to not remove QWERTY proficiency, but I think that’s wrong.
I use Colemak at work and QWERTY at home. That way I keep my proficiency at both. I also game on my PC and I can’t be bothered to edit the keybindings for every single game I play
I zan tough ty[e thos well.
I can touch type. A typing teacher would probably be horrified at my form because I followed absolutely no rules about finger placement whatsoever, but I hit a peak 138wpm before so I feel zero need to change to a more conventional style.
For what it’s worth, funny story but I learned both to touch type and to type so fast from playing Runescape.
Back before they added a central auction house you used to have to sit and type like “white:wave2:selling rune scimmy 25k - camel” amongst a sea of people doing the same thing. And your text disappeared after a few seconds so you had to keep repeating it over and over. I used to trade like that for hours every day and that repetition of just typing things over and over really quickly taught me to type like I do now.
Mostly, sometimes I have issues with thezxcvbnm row.
I can’t NOT touch type. I need to see what I’m typing to know if I’m typing without mistakes. When I look at the keyboard, I make so many mistakes.
I was never able to touch type up through middle of high school despite typing papers and taking formal typing courses. Once I got into online PC gaming and also programming I got good at touch typing very fast. Is typing a skill you use daily? Natural practice beats forced if you already have the fundamentals down. QWERTY for me.
