Learning to touch type

[chojin]

I was sent on a course by work to "Sight & Sound" in Manchester for 5 half days, just myself a load of wannabee secretarys, never felt so out of place in my life... I was taught on an old ass typewriter with no letters on the keys.. and you had to push damn hard to get the thing to type.. but after 5 half days I came out being able to type 43wpm @ 93% accuracy.. after that I used mavis beacon to hone my skillz.. although having to set a million recruitment ads every day at work certainly helped the process immensely.. still hasn't taught me to spell correctly

[Madbury]

Contrary to all the other posts in this thread I learnt by using free trial download typing tutor packages from the internet.

Learning to touch type was the best thing I ever did next to learning to drive. Took about 2 weeks to learn from the position you're in practicing only an hour or two a day.

In my opinion if you don't train your fingers to assume the right positions and to use the right keys you will get yourself into some really bad habbits that will prevent you from becoming a really fast and accurate typer. It's far better to get into good practices now rather than try to unlearn stuff later on.

[John Beaulieu]

infocom text adventures ... nothing else comes close to teaching you how to type fast and accurately whilst having fun at the same time

When i was at college I had to take a typing course as part of my full course - had to go to a secretary college for the course, and was a total waste of time. I could type quicker than the majority of people there, I was breezing through a full days typing lessons in a couple of hours and then spending the rest of the time oggling the lasses ... fun days indeed.

Only problem I have now is that I use a natural keyboard at home (one of the ones with a split between the middle keys so your hands fall into place naturally) and a regular keyboard at work - the regular keyboard feels way too cramped now.

[Friction]

I've never been taught to type either and I can say that for me it's just been a case of practice practice practice!

I find those typing progs a bit annoying and never as good as them as I actually am at typing - I find it better to type natural as it seems to flow better, rather than forcing it so to speak.

Whilst not perfect and I do make the odd mistake I can touch type rather well.

And as Vertigo said (Hello mate if you read this!) Newer keyboards can really throw you off our game a bit! I got a wireless MS keyboard a while back and because of the extra scroll wheel on it, it throws me off because the size is different to the key position and I sometimes am one key over from where I should be.

Did that even make sense?

Needless to say I touch typed that well enough

[Madbury]

When it comes to keyboards there can be only one



Picked up a Northgate last week (inverted T cursor version which is slightly different to the one above). Fantastic board. Clicky (each key is microswitched), but not too loud and very tactile. Very solid construction (steel base). Additional function keys on the left will take some adjustment, but ultimately it means less reaching. Nice groove along the top of the board to rest your pencil or pen and a series of dip switches underneath the logo in the top left which let you remap the layout or configure it to run on other systems.

[randombs]

the trick is to just not look while you're typing. i can touch type 99% of the time, but sometimes i'll be off-centre on the keyboard and type a bunch of stuff hitting every key to the right of the ones i want, which is a good laugh:

lmifs ;olr yjod (kinda like this)

i'm crap on typing speed programs, as i find it difficult to type sentences that i'm reading off the screen. when it comes from the heart it just flows...

[Concept]

Talk on MSN a lot, it did wonders for my touch typing.

I've never been taught to type either. It does come naturally through using the net, forums like this and general email.

It's come to the point now where talking on MSN can be frustrating at times if people spend two minutes typing a sentence out that would normally take me ten seconds. Awful, I know.

[Hohum]

Thread resurrected from the depths!

Have been trying to learn touch typing for the past week now but my progress seems very slow despite the effort I'm putting into it (gone from 10-11wpm to 15-16wpm with errors, jeez), can anyone give me a rough idea of how long you need before you can type without thinking where the keys are? At the moment it just feels extremely difficult, and I usually need to think for a second or two between hitting keys (and even then end up hitting one I didn't want). Mavis isn't being too helpful either, what with it recommending I be accurate instead of fast, yet sticking a timer on all the tests resulting in it telling me I was too slow halfway through.

All in all very frustrating and makes me feel bloody useless, just wanted to get a rough idea of how long it took you lot.

[toythatkills]

I find that if I try to touch type I can't do it, I just mess it up. I can only touch type when I don't realise I'm doing it.

That probably doesn't help, but yanno

Can you type quickly when you're not touch typing?

[Hohum]

Erm yeah, relatively... 35-38wpm ish if I don't touchtype. I do agree about the trying thing; I'll be doing fine, then I seem to become 'aware' of what I'm doing (best I can describe it) which promptly causes me to screw up big time, lol. Touch typing is something I would really like to be able to do, but I have to say I do sometimes feel I can't achieve it (yeah, I have little self confidence ). I just hope it comes with time.

[sj33]

Everyone I've met who has learnt to type using some kind of course or program always has a really wierd, almost freaky 'stiled' way or typing that looks completely unnatural, a bit robotic.

It really is a skill that comes naturally, your body just adapts and gets used to it, so don't need to think about it. If you use a computer on a daily basis, it'll happen.

[VR46]

Practice, practice, practice is the way I learnt, up to a steady 70 words a minute nowadays

[Hohum]

Yeah well I'm ditching Mavis, I now know which fingers I should be using for various keys so that will suffice. Just have to hope that regular PC use will help me grasp it now... god help the poor sods who will have to endure me on MSN, lol

[sj33]

Yeah well I'm ditching Mavis, I now know which fingers I should be using for various keys so that will suffice. Just have to hope that regular PC use will help me grasp it now... god help the poor sods who will have to endure me on MSN, lol

God I've never thought of such things in my life! No offense at all mate, but the whole touch typing thing is such nonsense, because ultimately people who type all the time natually type much faster than anyone who's typing to some kind of fixed 'system' anyway. There's no reason natural, fast typing has to follow a set system.

Honestly, you'll develop the ability to type fast and naturally all on your own, don't even give it a second of thought.

[Hohum]

Yeah, I may well end up mixing things up a bit if I find another method easier, but I feel I have a good starting point at the moment... see how it goes. I'm well aware people do things differently I know I'll be using my own style for numbers for a start, the 'proper' method is too uncomfortable for me.