Sites or Software for a Budding Typist?

less touch, more typing asks: "Over the years I have worked with a number of IT professionals and software developers. Many of them have had excellent typing skills. Others, like me, have not. While I type passably with my own roguish style of finding the right keys, I would like to teach myself to type correctly. Too many syntax errors over the years are do to my lack of this basic skill. What software or web site would you recommend to learn to type? Is there something free or inexpensive that can turn someone with a lot of bad typing habits into a typing guru?"

Comments

Why would you want to do that?

[Cthefuture]

I have been typing for some 22 years, nearly every day since I was 10 years old. Usually 10-16 hours every day, 7 days a week (yes, even as a teenager). I use the "rogue" style. I have no idea how fast I type, but it's pretty fast.

I have never, ever, not once had any inkling of a repetitive stress injury. Now that's a crapload of typing to never have any problems. I chalk it up to using the rogue typing style which causes my hands and fingers to move around into different and sometimes bizarre positions (eg. I often don't hit the same keys with the same fingers).

and I don't think it's due to superior genes or somesuch because I also do 3D work and if I use the mouse for more than a couple hours at a time over the course of a couple of days then my tendons and hand will start to hurt like a sonuvabitch (I switch hands, don't use the mouse so much, and wait for it to heal when this happens).

Dvorak

[tdmg]

I personally use Dvorak, and my typing speed has increased a lot in a very short amount of time. A good typing tutorial for Dvorak is: http://www.gigliwood.com/abcd/abcd.html it is very simple but effective. I have a friend who can type 165 wpm, and he just did Mavis Beacon for 3 years straight as a kid for 2 hours a day. I switched to Dvorak so that I wouldn't get some stress disorder when I got older, and if you have the time I'd recommend the switch. While it may or may not improve speed (mine improved) it does prevent injury when typing.