Slashdot Mirror
Is Typing a Necessary Skill?
cloudwilliam asks: "The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting article on how many schools have stopped teaching touch-typing as a necessary office skill and are now often saying that basic computer skills are more important. I'd agree with the latter, but what about typing? I learned to type on an IBM Selectric II (and still own one, as a matter of fact) in the mid-1980s, and the last time I was tested, touch-typed at around 60 wpm. Is this an obsolete skill? With handwriting and voice recognition technologies, is using a QWERTY keyboard with nine out of ten fingers something worth knowing anymore?"
Better to understand how the computer works, and learn to type as you use it. I don't think that voice and other technologies are going replace the KeyBwa anytime soon though.
Last time I was tested, I was at around 105 wpm with 99% accuracy. That's just a byproduct of using computers day in and day out for years though, and not a result of any typing class. I gradually developed my own touch typing system, I guess.
I dont thiunk typiong is a necasary skil ath all!
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
Too many people I know don't know how to type correctly and use the hunt-and-peck method. They're amazed when I'm able to type up a 100-word paragraph in a few minutes, when it takes them up to half an hour. (I'd also classify them as AOLers, i.e. people that say "wut r u doing 2nite?" on IM services.)
I had typing in the 8th grade, and it was the single most practical class I ever had in school, period. You can type so much faster when you learn properly. There's a closer connection between your thoughts and getting them down in the computer. If anything, the prevalence of computers is making typing skills MORE crucial, not less. Before e-mail and word processors, bosses had clerical staff to type. Now the boss himself has to be able to type, too. So everybody needs basic keyboarding skills.
*resists teptation to correct typos*
I think taking tpyeing wuold have helpeed me now, since I'm rather poor at it today. No wonder the backspage key on my keyboars is worn out.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
No. I typed this with body parts that you don't want to know about.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Ask adults who use compuers a lot and can't touch type if they wish they could. I hear a lot of, "Yes, I wish I could type."
60 WPM isn't necessary. 25 would be better than hunt-and-peck.
It's a pity one of those keys isn't "shift" every once in a while.
Is this an obsolete skill? With handwriting and voice recognition technologies, is using a QWERTY keyboard with nine out of ten fingers something worth knowing anymore?
Uhh... Last I checked, it's the year 2004 and we haven't stopped using keyboards. How could typing, in the furthest stretch of the imagination, be an "obsolete skill?" Let's ask this question again in a decade from now when people might actually stop using keyboards. Unless I'm horribly misinformed, voice recognition is nowhere near popular and just about 99% of the population is still using the QWERTY layout.
I call shenanigans. I don't see how using two fingers on a standard keyboard could ever be faster and more accurate than using ten. Your 80wpm...is there any kind of accuracy metric to provide along with that?
There is no gravity...the earth just sucks.
Good typing means wrists raised in order to get the most strength and endurance, needed with the old manual typewriters. This also means better blood flow, which prevents RSI, at least to some degree.
It also means less time waiting for your hands to catch up with your mind, and so gets out of the way of the creative process.
All the technology in the world won't hide your lack of vision, talent, or understanding.
Here's your reason to learn to touch-type: Speed.
People who are good and very experienced at the index-fingers method often say "I can type 40wpm easy" (or in your case, 60wpm), as though that's incredibly fast.
But computing professionals who touch-type can hit 110-130wpm (I get 110-120 on a good day). That's about twice as fast. When you're trying to hit a deadline, especially as a writer, it's a big deal to be able to type twice as fast, and that much closer to the speed of your thoughts, not to mention the fact that if you have to type for long periods of time, your accuracy won't suffer as much and your hands/arms won't get as tired if you touch-type, because there's less movement and fewer large muscles involved.
There's also the matter of keystrokes, something that most people aren't as familiar with. The number of keystrokes per minute is at least as important for a hardcore computer user (keystroke tests use additional keys like ctrl, alt, shift, Fn, etc. and also test for number and punctuation skill). The ability to perform ctrl, alt, or Fn keystrokes in the midst of a stream of text typing without pausing and without having to look at the keyboard provides an additional serious speed increase in real-world computer use.
And don't underestimate the drag of having to look at the keyboard, even a little. I can fill a spreadsheet at 110-120wpm, staring at a sheet of paper full of numbers the entire time, using tab and arrow keys for navigation, no pauses needed, just a continuous flow of keywork. I never once have to look at the screen and because I touch type, I know the minute I have made a typing error and can backspace and fix it, all without looking. I would guess that it would take you more than twice as long to enter a page full of numbers and formulae into a spreadsheet application, even if your measured typing speed is half of mine.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I was speaking to a colleague who was running interviews for a post in his organization when he told me that part of the interview he made them do a typing test.
:)
His reasoning was anyone that has spent a decent amount of time in front of a computer will be a good typist - it was a good way to see who was just talking the talk without the know how.
Pretty clever I thought
Yes - it should be taught....with
The Typing of the Dead!
As stupid as it sounds - this game is SO cool. And it showed my how badly I really can't type.
Heck yeah, typing is essential. I would argue that it is especially essential to any programmer or network administrator. The faster and more proficient you are at typing the faster you can get your ideas into production or solve problems. Not only typing out words, but also keyboard shortcuts in programs you use everyday will make you a better programmer/network admin. The less you reach for a mouse the faster you go and the less breaks in thought a worker will have. Also, when working with other people it is a great help. For example, if I ask a coworker to help me debug some code, typing proficiency makes the process so much easier. If you can navigate as fast as you or your fellow coworker can think there is no hindrance to your work (navigating with a keyboard is much faster than with a mouse in most cases). Bad typing skills, just slows everything down. This is costly when your work environment demands results ASAP.
Nuttles
(although I do type incorrectly, I can hit over 80 WPM)
This comment made me realize that I had no idea how fast I could type (never took a course). So, after a quick search here are some free on-line typing tests:
TypingPal.com
TypingTest.com
Turns out that I'm in the 2nd decile with a respectable 58 wpm (mean is approx. 40, and anyone who claims >100 is either in the 99.8%-ile or is full of BS). A thorough analysis of typing speeds can be found here.
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
There's a limited amount of time to teach students how to do anything in school and even students who want to go into technical careers need to learn the other things. I'd certainly rather hire a developer who is proficient at mathematics than one who can type using all his fingers, let alone the two superfluous nubs we call pinkies.
/.ers and people who make money from computers, shouldn't we do all we can to keep people away from them to keep our wages up?
Lets say students have 2 hours a week of mandatory computing classes, It would be better spent teaching them how to learn to use a computer on their own, or how to research things, how to figure stuff out, how to have fun and otherwise get the most out of a computer so they'll want to learn more, rather than forcing them to pound on keys.
If high speed typing is so damn important the school boards should switch to Dvorak and we all know it.
Besides most jobs really require very little computer use, even good jobs and seldom do they require touch typing. Only typists, dictators and secretaries would truly benefit from spending hours learning that over say learning how a computer works.
And as
If you're talking about clerical work, typing is absolutely still a necessary skill. Whoever said that employers no longer specify WPM or that 30 WPM is sufficient for most clerical jobs was simply wrong. Read the want ads. I got a typing test at each of the three temp agencies I've worked for and over the last 5 years been administered several typing tests applying for jobs.
It is not a substitute for computer skills. You need both in any modern office job with an emphasis on writing. I don't think typing should be required (I never took it in school, I taught myself to touch type, it ain't rocket science). But it should be offered.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
That's a problem. It brings accents into the typing realm. British people AOLspeak very differently from Americans. Australians tend to just type relatively well, which is odd, but they do have their own short forms.
The various slangs are based on whatever shorter way there is to spell the way the typist pronounces a word. Unlike the original online abbreviations such as LOL and ROFL, these new ones are not based on the typographic version of the word.
Accents online is something we don't need. The beauty of someone typing properly is that anyone can read that text and understand it, short of something like "lift" vs. "elevator". I couldn't walk into Manchester's poorer districts and converse reliably. I now find the same is true of typing with Manchester residents.
With Brit AOLSpeak, the first phrase you have to learn is "soz wot" which I think means "sorry, I don't follow." The second phrase is "i fink u spk 2 mingin posh u bastard" meaning "I am angry that you don't type the way I do." I'm not making that up, though I profess no great mastery of the form.
Even within the single local group, the AOL speak tends to vary based on what kind of half-assed typing is being used. People who use three fingers on each hand choose different short forms than those who use only the indexes.
Just as we need other web standards, we need a standard way of writing. It's not unprecedented... consider italic and cursive.
Picture little Scotty, 10 years old at school, whining, "But Mrs. Crabapple, when are we going to use a keyboard?"
"Quiet, Mr. Scott, and just do the assignment!"
Turns out she was right. If Scotty had skipped class that day, the earth might not have been saved.
Same goes for the day when Mrs. Crabapple taught the class how to use 300-year-old MacPaint as a chemical engineering program. You just never know when the little trivia you learn, may be useful.
Kirk probably couldn't have done that, because when he was in school, he hacked the computer to let him run a real chemical engineering program, instead of MacPaint.
"Stupid Mrs. Crabapple. I bet she never rotated the display of a Aluminum alloy structure in 3D, by using the airbrush tool. Well, I'll show her!"
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Consider the interaction between a person and a computer as an information processing system, analogous to a PC. In building an optimized system, one must consider the task and the likely bottlenecks. In building a gaming PC, for instance, disk speed and even CPU speed are often less important than the speed of the graphics card.
When a person types on a computer, the bottleneck in accomplishing most tasks is not the bandwidth through the keyboard (typing speed) but the latency introduced by other elements of the system. Specifically, the speed of the user's reading comprehension and the speed of the user to make decisions and mentally transform ideas and concepts into text dominate typing IO for most tasks. The tasks where typing speed dominates, like rote transcription, involve very little need for comprehension, decision making, or complex thought - certainly much less than composing an email or a complex report.
--Pat / zippy@cs.brandeis.edu
words per minute? you insensitive americans. i believe the SI measumerunt is l/s (letters per second).
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
As bash.org says in one of the best quotes:
Capitalization is the difference between "Helping your uncle Jack off a horse" and "helping your uncle jack off a horse".
--
Shameless Karmawhoring for Charity
When you're trying to hit a deadline, especially as a writer, it's a big deal to be able to type twice as fast
At 130 wpm you could write a short novel (40k words) in 5 or 6 hours... that's not how it works. I suppose it might be different if you were writing very systematic technical documentation, but generally the bottleneck is almost always thinking time. It doesn't make much difference if you're typing at 30 or 130 wpm.
Which is not to say touch-typing is not useful -- it's much more comfortable and means you don't have to look at the keyboard, as you say.
Touch-typing is probably the most useful skill I taught myself before going to university. (I wasn't allowed to take "keyboard skills" at school previously - that was apparently for kids who couldn't cope with any other classes. I wonder if they think differently now).
There's nothing that can humble you more quickly than playing trivia on an IRC channel. Knowledge is often only about 50% of what's required. Speedy and accurate typing is just as important.
Unfortunately capitalization is not required in these games, which is why you're probably seeing a bunch of people bragging about their 110 wpm typing skills with a complete inability to capitalize a sentence properly.
Shawnmchorse and all you other typing speed demons, you're fast becasue you're already plugged into the computing world; you have to type fast to keep up. The article is more about kids who are being shut out of computing because they don't have the KB skills to get in the door yet.
I touch-type in two different systems; my SO hunts and pecks at amazing speed. Both of us are the product of using computers for over 20 years (and, probably more importantly, MUDs and IM for over 10).
Should young kids start being introduced to basic keyboard skills in school? Absolutely! We don't need to mass-produce 60-WPM touch-typists, but we owe it to the kids to teach the skills they need to effectively use computers.
What's special about the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard is its more efficient key placement. QWERTY was purely intended to reduce typewriter jams (though not necessarily make typing slower), with no regard given to letter frequency in the english language (Why is "e" not on the home row?) nor the difficulty of reaching different rows. Upon viewing the layout it should be quite apparent to the layperson how much simpler it is than QWERTY. The Dvorak layout not only allows for faster typing, but also a lower occurrence of repetitive stress injury.
I say it time and time again...
The only class that I ever learned anything from, and still use the skills from, is my high school typing class.
100% Insightful