Touch typing?

[jadefyre]

I learned how to touch type in elementary school, where we were fortunate enough to have a computer lab. I remember always having to look at my keyboard, but I had juuust gotten to the point where I was testing myself and not looking when our teacher came around with a sheet of paper and held it over our hands as we were typing to see how we were doing. It was a pretty great moment when my typing wasn't interrupted at all!

That said, I always had trouble with the numbers directly above the letters (not on the number pad, but most of my keyboards growing up didn't have one of those), and consequently also many of the symbols. I have trouble with hitting certain keys correctly and am always one key off on some, like trying to get the # key consistently is almost impossible lol.

I definitely encourage you to learn how! It's a very satisfying skill to have.

[CATBYTE]

i practically only type like this(touch typing). i find looking down at the keyboard slows me down significantly because it makes me think instead of feel where keys are. the only time i will look usually is briefly when i am adjusting to a keyboard i have not used before.

i have on average a 100+ wpm on days when my carpal tunnel is being kind. like a lot of people who type fast, i type in a funky way that tends to look a bit silly.

my typing skills stem from my extensive use of computers ever since i was really young.
we had typing classes in my later years of elementary school, but by the time i was in the grade that took those classes in the computer lab, my wpm was on average 90+. i'd always finish the activities much faster than anticipated.

i wholeheartedly believe it's a skill worth investing time in. i think the best way to learn is just to type more (within reasonable limits of course) and build the muscle memory. try to make a conscious effort to not look down, and work on accuracy from there. most importantly, make sure to be kind to your hands when typing for long periods!

games like typeracer or speedtests like monkeytype are great exercises that can also serve to show your progress, but ultimately the more you type in general the better you will get and speed will come with time.

[wangobangy]

I think I can touch type pretty well. I have been using a computer for a very long time, but I got really good at it after I learned where my hands are supposed to go.
You put your pointer fingers on the F and J key, where those little notches should be.
The only time I really struggle with it is when I am using a keyboard that I am not familiar with. My typing becomes a big mess because my muscle memory is used to my usual keyboard.
I do look down at the keyboard occasionally, if I make an error while typing or if I need to hit a key that I don't usually use.

[Swiftpaw]

My system can type pretty quickly, and we generally hit 100 words per minute. People usually remark when they watch us type that we go extremely fast and we don't really think about it too much.

I think the reason for this is we were actually taught touch typing in elementary school, and its been a really useful skill for us. We also use a lot of keyboard shortcuts like hitting the down arrow to go to the end of a sentence or using alt+backspace to delete a whole word/alt+arrow keys to progress a whole word. Especially with the alt key, we can type and edit extremely fast.

Though we don't really use the bumps on the F and J keys even though we probably should. We'll usually get an issue where our hands are completely off on the keyboard and we accidentally type gibberish. This is more of a problem in online games though (off the top of my head we always have to change the keybinds in Minecraft or never hold any items when doing other things because we kept throwing our items when we tried to move).

[Salty]

I hope that this is the right area to ask this sort of thing, but how many of you know how to touch type? As in, you type & don't need to look at your keyboard. (I would create a poll, but I'm not even sure if I can do that or how to do so). I can sort of do it, but I've been considering doing little online lessons or something... I guess that I just want to hear from others about it. Do you think it's worth it? Particularly in the realm of coding & whatnot? My thoughts are that it's gonna be a pain to learn, but it'll probably save me a lot of time in the future.

I learned touch typing in school. I had typing classes every year, I think, from 4th grade to my beginning year of high school. I knew how to type fast before that because of Runescape, but honestly I think everyone should have to learn some form of it.

HOWEVER,while speed and accuracy are great, I think what hasn't been said here yet is that the most important thing you gain from proper touch typing is a reduction of strain on your hands and wrists. If you don't type with proper form (preferably on an ergonomic keyboard) then you are definitely causing unnecessary strain to your wrists and hands. As someone in their mid-20s with carpal tunnel, I can tell you it is completely worth learning how to take care of your hands if you live a typing and controller-heavy lifestyle. Waking up every day with pain and numbness in your hands is horrible, and I really wish I would've taken form and posture more seriously in my teenage years.

[seraph]

I don't know so I'll test it.

Test 1: hi my name is seraph and i like a lot of different foods. some are tacos, rice, pasta, ramen, cearal, and lastly, chidken curry

Test 2: peter piper picked a peck of picckles peppers, if peter piper picked a peck of pickles pipers how many pickled peppers did peter piper pick?


I typed the first one without looking and I typed the second one how I normally do, mostly not looking but looking down every handful of words

They're about the same accuracy wise, but the first one is slower, so no I can't

[grovyle]

I think I look down to the keyboard every few seconds?? Trying it now feels like when you suddenly become conscious of your breathing lol so I don't think it's genuine. But I think I could touch type in my usual keyboard. When I was in uni, I used to copy my hand written notes into a Word document and I only ever looked at the notes. By the final years, I even had a TV show on in the background, so I definitely don't think I needed to look at the keyboard hahaha. But I may have become a bit rusty since then.

The carpal tunnel comments on this thread left me thinking! I have an old wrist inkury that flares up from time to time, and I didn't know touch typing was supposed to help with that. I've been getting better at using most of my fingers when typing since someone said to me a few years ago that I onlu used my index fingers and it made me self-conscious lmao but now that I know that it comes with some health benefits, I'll try a bit harder to get better at it.

[klonpa]

i can type with my eyes closed pretty accurately i think. (<-- did it just now with this)

the only thing htat gets me is if my hands start in the wrong position . but idk as long as i feel where F and J are im fine! i rest my hadns in a weird position on the keybaord though and i always feel like im typing wrong when i do it w my eyes closed (and yet.. when they open.. perfectly fine!)
i can feel typos when i type with my eyes closed too (i usually keep them its just part of how i talk at this point... somtimes ill do them on purpose even)
typing on a physical keyboard comes naturally to me esp since ive been using computers Genuinely as long as i can remember. my dad always brings up how my preschool teacher thought i was somehow just.. mimicking the ability to use a computer? and didnt understand it? he was very adamant that i Did know what i was doing lol. i couldnt read yet to my knowledge but 3 yr old me knew how to navigate computers enough to play my winnie the pooh preschooler game by myself
i have vague memories of hating typing class in school because i already had MY way of typing and it worked FOR ME... could not tell you what it was now though lol

so basically: touch typing is not an issue for me. looking at the keyboard is not something i really think about! the issue comes with Phones......

It's funny because I think I've been able to type without looking at the keys since I was like 10 due to being obsessed with computers from a very young age and having unrestricted Internet access as a kid 

ditto for me near exactly LMAO

[aoeu]

I can touch type and, in my eyes, touch typing is worth the time it takes to learn, if only because it feels a lot more comfortable to type things when you don't have to look at the keyboard from time to time.

[Rrim0]

I had no idea it was called "touch typing". I would've called it something like "blind typing". I don't really know where the key are by touching them. I just know where they are because my hand is used to the keys' position.

I think I learned to do it when I was in middle or early high school and started to write more in forums and chatrooms. I have no idea what proper form even is. I use all my fingers (little fingers and thumbs only for "special keys" like space, ALT, CTRL etc), but move my hand around a lot.

I have an adjustment windows when I use different keyboards. I used to have a work laptop with a different layout (Japanese keyboard instead of my usual Italian) and when I was writing mails sometimes I had to check where the various punctuation keys where. I still have to do it when I type in Japanese with my Italian keyboard even if I KNOW where they are. >_>
The same thing happened when I switched back and tried to write on my Italian keyboard after not touching it for a few days. It was very frustrating for the first 20 minutes or so.

Sometimes I still need to look at my keyboard when I do symbols or press key combinations I'm not overly familiar to.

For example, since I began coding about three months ago, I had to learn how to do type { } and I had no idea how before because I didn't really need to. It took me a couple of weeks before familiarizing with the position of the keys.
Now I can it mostly without looking, but sometimes when I'm particularly tired I still need to check it out.

the only thing htat gets me is if my hands start in the wrong position . but idk as long as i feel where F and J are im fine!

As klonpa is saying here, I need to start with the right position. If not I just start pressing all the wrong keys.

[OneMillionFurries]

thanks to this forum thread, i actually started learning how to touch type! im still very new and bad at it, but its been a fun challenge so far! ^^ tysm! it was my second day of learning yesterday and today im gonna work on it some more after work :D

[woahitskarma]

I learned to touch type on www.keybr.com and would definitely recommend you try it. After learning to touch type https://monkeytype.com is the best place for typing tests (and it's open-source :D)

I type at 120ish WPM.

[manyface]

we know how to touch type! it's not from any typing lessons, though (we had to do those in elementary school). it's just from using the computer a lot to type lots of things. it's a skill we picked up over time without really trying.

i think it's really useful to be able to type fast and confidently if you do a lot of writing online, but that it's no big deal if you don't know how to touch type and that people (in education?) place more importance on it than it actually warrants. like, it's cool if you know how to do it, but it's fine if you're still learning.

if you want to do a course to learn it, i don't know if i'd recommend that, because it might just be dreadfully boring. i think that if you keep writing/typing stuff, it's a skill you'll just... develop over time. you'll be typing some day and realise that you don't have to look at the keyboard at all.

[petrichoran]

i can touch type!! i had a ton of typing classes in elementary school but i didn't learn anything from them, it mostly comes with so much practice typing essays for online classes starting in middle school. i use qwerty on my computer and colemak on my phone; my goal is to use colemak for actual touch typing eventually!

[varve]

I can touch type as well. It's useful if you type more than the minimum on a computer.

I never found the game-style typing tutors fun enough to stick with them, and the more formal lesson types programs as I recall put things in an order that didn't match what I wanted to actually do with the computer.

So, at idk, 10-12 years old and writing a novel, I decided to teach myself to touch type by transcribing my handwritten first draft. I would read a sentence, close my eyes, type it, open my eyes, fix any errors, repeat. Over time, I spent less time fixing errors, then eventually I could keep my eyes on what I was copying and just type continuously. Punctuation beyond the ones commonly used in fiction came later, when I started to need them.

I have no idea what my typing speed is and it doesn't matter to me. It's slower than someone talks, but a lot faster than I can compose a scene for my story. Since I don't transcribe people talking and I do write fiction, it's a speed I'm happy with!