×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

Touch Typists

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?

RE: Touch Typists

Back in the late 70s, when I was in high school, before the era of PCs, I decided that taking a typing class would be an easy way to fill out my Grade 12 schedule without being too hard.

Boy, am I ever glad I did that.
 

RE: Touch Typists

I haven't hunt and pecked at the keyboard since I was a little kid.  Typing 70-100 words per minute is a godsend when you need to get something done.  I can't imagine how long that would take if I was going after a key at a time.

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

In the '60s typing was mandatory in Grade 10 in my school.  A skill I've appreciated ever since.  Funny, in Grade 10 I got up to the minimum passing speed of 32 words/min (all the words had to be spelled properly and I've never done that very well).  Using the same skill set (with a built in spell checker) I'm up to around 80 WPM nearly 40 years later--talk about a life skill.

David

RE: Touch Typists

I too took a course during High school and I never thought it be so valuable. I'm pretty sure only lazy people would not want to take such course. But if you care about productivity then you really need it. Unless you go the voice recognition way!

Patrick

RE: Touch Typists

TenPenny,

   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.   

               JHG

RE: Touch Typists

You can always tell, just by sound, those of us who learned to type on manual typewriters.  TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP!!!!!

Hg

Eng-Tips policies:  FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies

RE: Touch Typists

As someone who grew up more with computers and keyboards and as a result has been used to using them quite often, my biggest issue is that I've not formally gained the touch typing skills that others would.

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

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. For a young man to attend he would have been considered gay. I know I know, but that is how it was there and then.

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
See FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies for tips on use of eng-tips by professional engineers &
http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm
for site rules
 

RE: Touch Typists

I never had a typing class, never learned.
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

There are some free online typing programs and when I get time, I try them.
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

I type faster than I can think (more of a reflection on my thinking?), and subsequently prefer to write as much of what I can by hand.  Sure it means having to type it up later into an e-mail or report, but I use this as my proof-read of the content and structure leaving just a quick check for any typo's later.

At the end of the day, typing is a task of repetition, and so there's no substitute for practice.

RE: Touch Typists

patprimmer wrote:  
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

Me too, TenPenny.  I took typing in about 1960, mostly to be around the girls.  As long as you played sports or took shop classes, nobody thought you were different.  That was before the word gay changed meanings.  

RE: Touch Typists

Learned to touch type in high school on an IBM Selectric.  Right now I'd be more interested in a class for texting with two thumbs instead of the old fashioned method of using one index finger.  

"If you are going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance!"

RE: Touch Typists

Cass,
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

Having taken typing in HS, I can type about 100 WPM.  Good thing too because in my office we are down to one secretary for about 70 engineers.  A very far cry from the secretary ratio in "Mad Men".

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!



   

RE: Touch Typists

I took typing in 8th grade back in 1973 and it remains one of the most useful clasees ever taken. And there were no letters on the keys either!

RE: Touch Typists

I took typing in high school during my senior year (92).  I'm very glad that I did it,  but I recall it being a pain at the time.

RE: Touch Typists

Pat, don't worry about the dyslexia.  I'm dyslexic, my sister is even worse but we both learnt how to type (RSA1 typing) at school, she in the 80's me in the early 90's..

(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 trickwinky smile.  The typing course I took emphasized memorizing key locations without looking at keys by lots of practice exercises.  You don't really think about where the keys are, your fingers sort of just learn, not sure if it's that so called memory muscle or what.  I really recomend you at least try learning, if nothing else it may help you keep up in your pubwinky smile.

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,

Have you reminded yourself of FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies recently, or taken a look at posting policies: http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?

RE: Touch Typists

I would LOVE to get rewarded for typing achievements. I took typing in HS, but simply because I was already good at it and it was an easy grade to fill an elective class.

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

My school days were slightly before computers appeared in schools, so the connection between typing and computers just wasn't there.  In fact my first ever computer program was written by hand on a coding sheet and sent to the local poly, where a typist (mis)typed it into a computer.  Probably typing too fast.

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

MechEng2005,

   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.   

               JHG

RE: Touch Typists

It shouldn't take much to learn, so it's definitely worth the investment.  I taught myself to type (on orders from my English teacher, who refused to grade my illegible assignments) back in the days before online tutorials.  I'd read in the book Cheaper by the Dozen that each finger gets a different set of keys, and the kids in the book learned by coloring their fingernails and the typewriter keys corresponding colors, so I skipped the fingernail part but took a set of crayons to my grandfather's 1949 Royal.  A year later I took a real typing class and found that I'd gotten one or two letters wrong, but I was pretty close.  

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

Eng-Tips policies:  FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies

RE: Touch Typists

I learned to touch type in the same manner as Hg states.  I made sure that I used the correct fingers on the correct key.  At first I looked at where every finger went. this took the same amount of time as one finger typing.  But slowly, but surely, I mastered touch typing.   

RE: Touch Typists

aaa sss ddd fff
aaa sss ddd fff

How many days I spent on that...

RE: Touch Typists

Who can type "reference" 100% of the time?

- Steve

RE: Touch Typists

Heard from a college official while discussing female attendance in the 1960's:

"About half the women in that class are touch typists.  The rest are hunt'n peckers."

Ducking...

old field guy

RE: Touch Typists

Mavis Beacon teaching typing.
IT's a game and it's great.  I leared to type pretty gud after 30 years of working without typing.  

RE: Touch Typists

Back when I was around 12 my grandmother had an old typewriter that I would play around on.  I remember sitting there thinking that I should learn how to type because it would be handy.  So I would try and copy text.  It wasn't until I was in high school that I had a formal class and those were on a typewriter as well.  I wasn't bad but I had to break old habits from when I taught myself.  Now I write quite a bit at work and use the economical split keyboards that microsoft was selling many years ago.  I have been using them long enough that a normal keyboard feels awkward.  

RE: Touch Typists

Those ergonomical keyboards were never economical.

 

Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

RE: Touch Typists

You're right.  It should have read ergonomical.  Looks like i selected the wrong word in Firefox's list of suggestions.  

RE: Touch Typists

Typing is now the vehicle for everybody. I took touch typing long before it was fashionable. My high speed buzz will turn heads, but is should be the norm now. It warrants retraining.

RE: Touch Typists

Big question...

Which hand holds the mouse?

- Steve

RE: Touch Typists

We have two kinds of people here: current and former FEA jockeys and the rest.  The FEA boys always hold the mouse with their left hand (because they are/were used to using their right hand on the numeric keypad).

- Steve

RE: Touch Typists

I've had colleagues that did that on CAD.  However I've used a space mouse a lot in my left hand.  I just got one again after a break of a few years and I swear it's taking me longer to get used to it this time than it did originally.

But I'm thinking this is getting off track.

KENAT,

Have you reminded yourself of FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies recently, or taken a look at posting policies: http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?

RE: Touch Typists

I've been a hunt and peck typist for 30 years.  I really wish I had taken typing in high school!  I fear if I learn to type now, I'll regress back to hunt and peck once done with the course having done it so long.  Any one in a similar situation been thru this care to share?

Good luck,
Latexman

RE: Touch Typists

My kids are taking "keyboarding".  What's the difference between this and "typing"?  Less WPM?

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

Back to the mouses:  the more comfortable you get with touch typing, the less interested you are likely to be in taking your hand off the keyboard to do something with the mouse.

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

Eng-Tips policies:  FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies

RE: Touch Typists

HgTX,

   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.  

               JHG

RE: Touch Typists

I'm a product of the internet generation.  I've been able to type without looking at frantic pace for as long as I can remember now.  

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

I learned how to type twice!

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://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboard


If you "heard" it on the internet, it's guilty until proven innocent. - DCS

http://www.eng-tips.com/supportus.cfm

RE: Touch Typists

I took typing as a sophomore in High School in the late '50's and it was a mixed class; boys typically took it too.  There were no electric typewriters to be found.  Do it wrong and you spent a lot of time unjamming letter keys.  My homeroom one year was a typing classroom and you were allowed to practice.  It didn't make me a typist, but later when I went into the Navy they tried to make a radioman out of me for a while.  The method of receiving Morse code messages (yes, that was still in vogue then too) was to listen to the transmission over a headset and type the code one letter at a time on a typewriter.  I think that is what really taught me how to type accurately.

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

My girlfriend in college (now my wife) laughed at me when she found out I could type.  It still wasn't very common for boys in high school and she hadn't taken it either.

She was much sweeter three weeks later when she had to have a typed paper turned in...


If you "heard" it on the internet, it's guilty until proven innocent. - DCS

http://www.eng-tips.com/supportus.cfm

RE: Touch Typists

I'm also a product of the internet generation.  Frantic typing in AIM conversations has boosted my WPM up fairly high.  I haven't noticed typing being much of an issue since computers have become a necessity in the workplace.

RE: Touch Typists

In high school I took a business class to meet my vocational credits. We learned typeing and 10-key, by touch.  I can say that I have used both skills ever since (can't say that for shorthand.  The only thing I noticed is that I have difficulty writing letters by hand.  

RE: Touch Typists

I saw an ad recently for some snazzy new tablet computer where the big thrill was you could take out your stylus and *write*!  

Jeez, to me that's like going back to clay tablets.

Hg

Eng-Tips policies:  FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies

RE: Touch Typists

HgTX - that thought crossed my mind when tablet computers first touted the stylus writing capability.

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

http://www.eng-tips.com/supportus.cfm

RE: Touch Typists

Somewhere, somewhen, I forget if it was a cartoon or a science fiction story, but there was a chronicle of going from purely oral communication, to writing developed with a trained group of scribes doing it, to everyone writing, typing, to word processing, to voice-activated word processing, and back around to purely oral communication (albeit electronic) with no one but a trained group of scribes knowing how to write (or maybe it was type).

Hg

Eng-Tips policies:  FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies

RE: Touch Typists

Very slight tangent... most of my writing these days is sums, or numbers. Have you found that your written numbers have deteriorated as much as your alphabetic writing?

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

SIG:Please see FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

RE: Touch Typists

I find that I share some traits with several of the posters here.  First, I gave up cursive right out of high school.  All my hand printing (which is as little as I can get away with) is in capital block style letters so that there is some hope of people (including myself) being able to read it later.  Second, I took typing classes in USA high school (I graduated in 1973) but I did it only because my dad INSISTED that I needed to know because if I went to college, I would HAVE to be able to type if I wanted to succeed.  Since at that time I was leaning towards aircraft maintenance and I assumed I would NEVER need typing, I argued to the best of my ability.  That is the ONLY class he demanded I take (he gave me the option on all others) and since I have left high school and went to college and now have entered the computer age, it is the high school training I probably use most often every day more than any other except the ability to spell and use grammar properly to communicate.  And believe me over the years before I lost my dad I thanked him over and over and over again for his unwillingness to budge!

RE: Touch Typists

I learned by talking to girls on instant messenger. For some reason, most of my peers find it amazing that I can type almost as quickly as I can talk.

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources