Touch Typists
Touch Typists
(OP)
We've been talking about training lately and I've begun wondering about the number of people doing ALL of their work on a PC, that are two finger typists.
As I got older and my vision started to drift I picked up a typing tutor and worked through it on my lunch breaks.
Ultimately it's saved me time and I'm certain I make fewer mistakes because I can spent more time looking at the screen.
I'm just wondering how many folks out there would buy into this sort of idea.
If your company fielded a typing tutor app on your PC installation and rewarded the achievement some milestone typing speed with a trinket, (time off or free lunch or something) would you bother? Think it would be valuable?
As I got older and my vision started to drift I picked up a typing tutor and worked through it on my lunch breaks.
Ultimately it's saved me time and I'm certain I make fewer mistakes because I can spent more time looking at the screen.
I'm just wondering how many folks out there would buy into this sort of idea.
If your company fielded a typing tutor app on your PC installation and rewarded the achievement some milestone typing speed with a trinket, (time off or free lunch or something) would you bother? Think it would be valuable?





RE: Touch Typists
Boy, am I ever glad I did that.
RE: Touch Typists
--Scott
http://wertel.eng.pro
RE: Touch Typists
PS, the only way I really learned without cheating was to put a box over your hands & keyboard while going through the typing tutor. You'll thank me later.
James Spisich
Design Engineer, CSWP
RE: Touch Typists
David
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Patrick
RE: Touch Typists
I took typing in high school back in the 70s too. I grossly underestimated how useful it would be.
I still have a manual, portable typewriter, and I have used it a couple of times, recently. I cannot type on it anymore. I am now used to computer keyboards with their limited travel. To smack the keys hard, I need to go to two fingers.
RE: Touch Typists
Hg
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RE: Touch Typists
I'm no 'two finger' typist, but I'm certainly not as capable as someone who has formally learnt to type using a touch typing method.
I'd support such an initiative, though admittedly I'd find it difficult to break my current habits. As a side note, I was in a meeting with the other engineers in my office, and the manager at the time had enquired as to everyone's typing speed. Most of the engineers there were directed to hand mark and use others to type, though my typing speed was considered adequate. Clearly some places are considering these sorts of things as being important to increase productivity.
RE: Touch Typists
I still have never learned as the need gradually grew as initially I only did a few spread sheets then a few e-mail, then my own reports. I have had a computer since 1988, but I had a secretary until 1995. I know I should buy a tutor program and learn. I do have a problem with poor fine motor skills resulting in a mild form of dilesixa and this will probably severly limit my abilities as a typist and I expect I will still need to search foe keys.
Regards
Pat
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RE: Touch Typists
Since HS, I have been working on CAD...one hand on the keyboard, one on the mouse.
I can type good enough to get work completed on time, it has never been an issue for me.
Chris
SolidWorks 09, CATIA V5
ctopher's home
SolidWorks Legion
RE: Touch Typists
e.g. http://www.goodtyping.com/
I should do more as I am self taught and while I type reasonably well and reasonably quickly, I tend to look at the keyboard much more than the screen and have to do far too many corrections, usually for out of sequence key strokes.
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: Touch Typists
At the end of the day, typing is a task of repetition, and so there's no substitute for practice.
RE: Touch Typists
Typing was never offered as a subject when & where I went to school. If one wanted to learn typing, one went to a business school. These classes consisted almost if not entirely of young ladies pursuing a career as secretaries.
------------------------
The one I took was offered by the 'commercial' section of our high school, and the explanation given above was actually one of the other, usually unstated, reasons that I took the class...
RE: Touch Typists
RE: Touch Typists
"If you are going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance!"
RE: Touch Typists
my niece isn't that far away and is looking for some holiday employment.
Considering she had some privileges suspended for texting to the extent of $1000 in one month, I'd guess there isn't anything she doesn't know about fast texting - (or about how upset parents can get over such little things).
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: Touch Typists
There is no hope ever of getting any typing done by our secretary. We don't even get mail delivered any more. It gets dumped in a pile and we all have to go through it!
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(I only took typing because I wanted to do computing but we only had a couple of computers in school so they couldn't offer it, I figured typing was the next best thing. This position was enforced when it became clear that if I didn't take typing I'd have to take Spanish - I had enough trouble with English & French thank you.)
While I was one of the worst in my class and struggled to pass the test (which only required something like 25wpm) and my sister failed, we learnt enough so that when we got jobs and came to use it we did OK. Last I heard she was actually a lot faster than be because when she worked as office admin/receptionist/secretary (or whatever you call them in these PC times) she used it more. I only managed about 45 wpm last I tested (I maybe faster now) and my accuracy sucks but I am still better than all the hunt and peckers.
So Pat, I'd say it will probably help you a lot, unless you're too much of an old dog to learn a new trick
In these days of email, word processing, fewer secretaries etc. I'd doubt the judgment of almost anyone that wanted to work in an office setting or similar (not just engineering even) and didn't' at least try to learn to touch type.
I think indirectly part of the reason my boss got let go was he couldn't' type at all. This meant his emails etc. weren't very eloquent and he either had to delegate typing intensive tasks or do them slowly, which gave the impression he didn't' do much.
KENAT,
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RE: Touch Typists
As a younger engineer, I can't fathom "hunting & pecking" today. And I have a feeling that those have held out on learning efficient typing thus far will continue to hold out until they retire. However, I would think the graduating classes of today are more than proficient at typing, regardless of if they took any classes.
I don't doubt that efficient typing at 50 WPM will become the norm for HS grads. I have also seen many students in college that take notes on laptops (works well in history, not so good where free-body diagrams are needed).
My only two questions for the future are:
1) Will the graduating classes of 2020 and beyond even know how to write by hand? Do they still teach cursive?
2) Will they start making computer keyboards to be used with your thumbs like texting? I hope not, because I refuse to text ever, so I'll be way behind! (My thumbs are large and better suited to a spacebar than the little keys on phones)
-- MechEng2005
RE: Touch Typists
Typing was seen as a vocational option for those who seemed destined to be secretaries and/or typists. Simply put, those without further ambition. It wasn't even offered to people in the higher streams.
Anyway, our school's first computer was a ZX81. Try touch typing on that!
- Steve
RE: Touch Typists
I was sitting around with a bunch of friends a few months ago, all of us in our forties and fifties. We were trying to remember how to write in cursive. I, personally, can remember all the cursive characters, but my cursive writing is unreadable.
RE: Touch Typists
What really solidified it, though, was spending my 17th year of life on the BITNET Relay. Live chat encourages fast typing. I can still do over 110 wpm.
Hg
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RE: Touch Typists
RE: Touch Typists
aaa sss ddd fff
How many days I spent on that...
RE: Touch Typists
KENAT,
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RE: Touch Typists
- Steve
RE: Touch Typists
"About half the women in that class are touch typists. The rest are hunt'n peckers."
Ducking...
old field guy
RE: Touch Typists
IT's a game and it's great. I leared to type pretty gud after 30 years of working without typing.
RE: Touch Typists
Is that gud enough?
KENAT,
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RE: Touch Typists
RE: Touch Typists
Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
RE: Touch Typists
RE: Touch Typists
RE: Touch Typists
Which hand holds the mouse?
- Steve
RE: Touch Typists
KENAT,
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RE: Touch Typists
- Steve
RE: Touch Typists
But I'm thinking this is getting off track.
KENAT,
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RE: Touch Typists
Good luck,
Latexman
RE: Touch Typists
Good luck,
Latexman
RE: Touch Typists
Typing' has an association with old-fashioned typewriters not generally in use anymore. Keyboarding is the current term that includes not only typing skills, but also effectively using shortcut keys or key combinations for computers. (like 'command' C for 'copy' for Mac users like me.
"If you are going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance!"
RE: Touch Typists
My officemate is now in the process of learning keyboard shortcuts ever since she made the groundbreaking discovery that they are faster.
I miss the 10-function keyboards where one could do function key combinations with one hand.
Hg
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RE: Touch Typists
On my Linux box at home, my favorite text editor is vi. I can sit my fingers on the home row, and do practically everything with it. Reaching for the mouse is a distraction.
RE: Touch Typists
Just don't ask me to use the shift key on the right side of the keyboard, my right pinky, or to try and type fast on these damn cell phones.
RE: Touch Typists
The first time was in high school. I had fiddled with the budding computers (Tandy TRS-80 anyone?) and new it was the way to go.
Unfortunately, I have fat fingers and my hands got sore quickly, so I never got much over 40 WPM.
Then I subscribed to an online newsletter (www.thisistrue.com) in 1996 and got wind of the Dvorak keyboard from the proprietor, Randy Cassingham. After researching it, I decided to take the plunge. It took me about a month to learn the keys (I used stickers; by the time one wore off, I had memorized that key), 3 more months to pass my old speed of 40 WPM, and about 3 additional months to level out at my current 60 to 65 WPM. No, it's not fast, but it is much faster than I was before and I can type page after page without pain in my hands.
The neat thing is that almost every computer comes with the layout built into the operating system (Macs too!) so wherever I go, it's not a problem. Macs are even smart enough to keep the keyboard shortcuts for cut, copy and paste in the same place, even when you switch to Dvorak. Bill's boys haven't done that yet.
You can read about the layout here:
http:
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RE: Touch Typists
Back when we did have secretaries, I would from time to time sit at their desk and type something out, usually something personal that I didn't want to ask them to type and they would usually be pretty amazed at my speed. It kind of helped keep them on their toes knowing that I could type faster than they could.
The wife walked by me typing on the computer a few years ago and she thought I was just playing around pounding keys at a rapid pace until she looked over my shoulder and saw that I was actually typing a real letter. It was an angry letter to someone and I was all fired up so I was typing at warp speed. She was quite surprised as she hadn't known before that that I could type that well or fast.
Now when I got my first Blackberry I really had problems for a while because I wasn't a hunt'n peck typist and didn't know how to do it with two fingers much less two thumbs. I soon learned, however. My last manager at my last place of employment was a two finger typist and I was pretty amazed at how fast he could get around that keyboard.
Now the typing classroom as a homeroom for a bunch of sophomore or junior boys.... Very bad idea. The typing teacher, a male, and not a candidate for any of the sports teams if you get my drift, knew to send the student who used the Royal typewriter where I sat at homeroom to my first period class and look in the trashcan in that classroom for the roll out of that Royal. A ritual repeated every morning of the year. I still don't remember how I got out the door with it. We did all kinds of other types of sabotage on those poor machines. I think the next year that room was used as a homeroom for girls.
rmw
RE: Touch Typists
She was much sweeter three weeks later when she had to have a typed paper turned in...
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RE: Touch Typists
RE: Touch Typists
RE: Touch Typists
Jeez, to me that's like going back to clay tablets.
Hg
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RE: Touch Typists
I can see it now - I'll be telling one of my grandkids, "You know, we used to actually talk to each other on cell phones."
If you "heard" it on the internet, it's guilty until proven innocent. - DCS
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RE: Touch Typists
Hg
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RE: Touch Typists
When I was in highschool I abandoned my unreadable (but academically acceptable) cursive style for print, when I started doing serious exams. I've never been inclined to start cursive again.
Cheers
Greg Locock
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RE: Touch Typists
RE: Touch Typists