Reply to: Can you touch type?

[FJ1200]

Yes. Of course ... sometimes. Er - No..

Well sometimes I can. I hate it when I've been typing for ages then look up and found it's in the middle of a totally different paragraph!

Wifey is an audio and touch typist - learned at school in the early 80s. She can be holding 2 conversations with me and the kids, working out what to have for dinner AND type fast without dropping a letter. It's SO humiliating. She also does it do show off. Especially when I try to put her off by tickling her neck. Still says the DOS version of WordPerfect was the best WP she's ever used.

[unixman]

Touch type on the command line isn't as important as tab expand, or searching through your command history.

It is also (great avatar BTW) a pain due to all the special characters.

I could type faster than the Dragon 32 could cope with.

Are you talking about an emulator? I typed like a storm on that nice (for the time/price) keyboard. Don't recall any missed characters. In the MESS emulator it is a different story - missed characters everywhere.

Did you have a TATUNG PIPE

[FiveTimes]

I bit the bullet because constantly looking at the keyboard is mentally tiring. TT seems to make your work flow better. Definitely a boon for emails. I am trying to use it on the unix command line too.

Touch type on the command line isn't as important as tab expand, or searching through your command history.

[unixman]

fr4ffr4f.

Yes, learned from a book, typing on a Tatung Einstein, back in the mid 80s.

Which was handy when typing on a PC with a different keyboard layout.



Most odd when using a MAC kb, which has those little knobbly marker things on the middle finger keys, not the first finger keys.

Wonder how much time I have spent looking at the keyboard vs. someone who learned TT in the 80s. Dragon 32 FTW.

[unixman]

I was on holiday in Paris a few years ago and had to send an email from the hotel internet cafe. Took me ages to compose using a German keyboard.

I've been using keyboards for 30-odd years and always meant to learn to touch type but still battering it out with two fingers and looking at the keyboard

Not sure how many fingers I was using in non-touch mode. Definitely more than 2, maybe 6. I am still faster like that, for the time being.

[SimonMac]

Yes I can, no idea how I picked it up, I just did!

[Batcher]

Poll added. No AndyW option as this isn't General.

I can touch type on both UK and German keyboards. I just kind of picked it up - no formal lessons or anything.

I was on holiday in Paris a few years ago and had to send an email from the hotel internet cafe. Took me ages to compose using a German keyboard.

I've been using keyboards for 30-odd years and always meant to learn to touch type but still battering it out with two fingers and looking at the keyboard

[Ticktock]

I'm an OK typist - fairly fast and accurate (no means perfect). I use a lot of fingers, glance at the keyboard from time to time (although thinking about it while typing this post has meant I haven't actually looked down).

I was thinking of getting The Typing of the Dead game to help improve further.

[NotAllThere]

Poll added. No AndyW option as this isn't General.

I can touch type on both UK and German keyboards. I just kind of picked it up - no formal lessons or anything.

[unixman]

I bit the bullet because constantly looking at the keyboard is mentally tiring. TT seems to make your work flow better. Definitely a boon for emails. I am trying to use it on the unix command line too.

Yep learned using mavis beacon when i was 15 or so with a view to getting a data entry part time job. Served me very well in my professional life

Ah. I was wondering when someone would mention Mavis. For the record I used Touch Typing Online Lessons . I wonder how women used to do it, with long finger nails and heavy manual typewriters

[BrilloPad]

After using computer keyboards for 34 years, I just took the plunge and learned to touch type. Can you touch type ? How did you learn and how is it going ?

This was meant to contain a yes/no poll not sure if it worked.

I hope you get on better than you did when trying to add the poll...

[Scruff]

I csn tough tyke too. Somtines made mistajes but not ofen

[No2politics]

Yep learned using mavis beacon when i was 15 or so with a view to getting a data entry part time job. Served me very well in my professional life

[barrydidit]

I did a few lessons during 6th form. This was on the old style carriage return typewriters with a former secretary tutting at us. It was a bit of a laugh, taught in a room full of birds and it's something (other than spelling, grammar and arithmetic) that I use day to day although not entirely as taught, but certainly good enough.

[mudskipper]

Not properly, but I do use all my fingers and type pretty fast and usually pretty accurately. I didn't look at keyboard/fingers when typing this post, for example.

It does sometimes come unstuck - usually displaced by one character. Like when I was entering data on the test system, and my comment, which was supposed to be 'test' ended up as 'twat'...