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Correcting Poor Typing Technique?
An anonymous reader writes "When beginning to use keyboards I did not pay much attention to touch typing technique. Instead, I eventually achieved decent rates by simply doing what felt natural to me. These days my qwerty typing speed is in the range of 90-110 WPM, probably more toward the lower end. While this isn't too shabby, I feel some awkwardness in my technique (such as not using my little and ring fingers when I really should). Has anyone been in a similar situation, wanted to fix it, and actually done so? What do you reckon is the best way to fix half-broken typing? Touch training sessions? Should I switch to Dvorak and pretty much learn typing from scratch, but properly this time?"
I'm personally fine with my awkward typing technique. I say if you've reached speeds that you're happy with and your typing method is not causing you any issues such as tendinitis, why change? I've never understood the obsession with you must do it "the right way."
But, this is my advice and it's worth what you paid for it.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
As someone who uses dvorak, it's a great deterrent to people who frequently need to borrow other keyboards for a moment...
Not to mention the amusement of watching them type something, look confused, repeat a few times before they say something.
In terms of speed, I don't know about that, but dvorak does leave me a bit more comfy as I leave the home row less.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I type perfect touch type style. At my best, I do about 90-120 WPM, same as you. I know I'm quite a rapid typist, almost able to keep up with natural-rate speech. If you are matching me, what are you really trying to achieve?
It's pretty obvious that whatever the metric, you are well within the realm of where other factors are far more likely to make a difference than typing speed. Of course, if you want to "touch type" like other "trained" folks, do like anybody else, and force yourself to actually do it.
I recommend any of the many touch-typing software packages out there. You don't even have to pay much, 30 seconds of GIS brought this up and it seems quite serviceable!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Some years ago, I read a study by a woman who looked at the technique of several great pianists (eh, one keyboard's the same as another). She found there were some few things that they all played the exact same way. Her conclusion was that for these few things, they played the same way because there was only one way for the human hand to possibly do it. For the other things, their technique varied drastically. There was no uniformity at all in styles. Her conclusion was that if it works, it is correct.
Thus in your case I suggest that if you feel your fingering method for typing is slowing you down, then try to figure out what exactly is slowing you down and see if you can speed it up. That will be easier than trying to use some arbitrary rules that may or may not make a difference.
This is especially true when we are talking about arbitrary rules taught to beginners, where the teachers are often not experts, and the rules are often formulated to make it easier for beginners to learn, not to make you as fast as possible. Going back to the piano example, beginners are often taught to play with their wrists held high, fingers curved, playing on the finger tips. This is decent advice, but sometimes it's faster and more precise to play with your fingers straight and flat (Horowitz did this on fast black-note passages sometimes).
Actually I can give a ton of examples where the 'rules' weren't necessarily the best, and the people became the greatest in their field by breaking those rules (appropriately), but I'll leave it at, "if it works for you, use it."
Qxe4
Speaking from experience, typing qwerty is like riding a bike. No matter how many other vehicles you learn to drive, you never really lose the hang of it.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Higher speeds is just going to stress the tendons.
In most cases this is not true. The worst tendon stress come from eccentric contractions opposing the main movement of the finger. If you try to type faster by 'pushing' your fingers harder, you are going to increase the muscle contractions and the eccentric contractions, which will be felt as stress in your fingers.
Getting to speeds of 90 or 110 wpm is almost impossible by 'pushing' your fingers harder, though. Your muscles just can't adapt fast enough when they are also fighting against themselves, so what you need to do is reduce the eccentric muscle braking. You need to only use the smallest number of muscles possible when moving your fingers to the proper place. This will feel like you are 'relaxing.' If you are moving faster by relaxing, this is what you are doing, reducing the eccentric muscle opposition in your body. Baseball pitchers have to learn to do the same thing to get the ball moving faster.
Qxe4
I switched after High School. I learned about Dvorak in wandering the Internet (pre Wiki days) and thought it made sense. Even if the "X much faster" claims were biased, leaving the home row and less finger movement sounded good.
After my last project my senior year I figured this was the last time I would ever be able to 'switch' because from here on out it'd be College then Work nonstop.
Printed out a keymap and kept it next to the monitor. Kept up my IRC/AIM chatting. It took 2 weeks to get back to my 'old speed'. And within a month I was up +30 WPM where I eventually settled.
DV Assist is a great tool for Windows users who don't have admin access, I keep it on a thumb drive at all times, plug it in and run and switch. And it's not like you 'forget' QWERTY, it's always printed in front of you.
The worst is passwords.... I really don't "remember" my passwords. So a password: 1234',.paoeu is just the first 3 lines of the keyboard on the left... but when I go to a QWERTY keyboard I have to think it through...
Bear in mind that *everyone* greatly embellishes their wpm.
I'm old enough to have taken typing in school - on IBM Selectric typewriters, no less - and feel as if I've got a reasonably accurate idea of what 60 wpm looks like. I have heard a lot of computer guys ("self taught" typists) guesstimate they can type 60 or 70 wpm, but when I watch them (not coding, just typing a letter) it's pretty obvious they're lucky if they're touching 30 wpm.
I take issue with the word "embellish" though - I just think they are crappy at estimating.
One thing I do find funny... when I was on a typewriter, I was pretty consistent at around 40-45 wpm (my "final" was about 60 wpm, but I'm almost certain the teacher lost track of time). However I have tested myself on a computer, and find I can easily do 50-60 wpm now because I don't have to worry so much about mistakes.
#DeleteChrome
Sure maybe you can jam 100WPM if you're picking the content, but really? I mean on one of the reputable typing tutors that does things like make you use the whole keyboard, all the punctuation and type things like "The forge of the marigolds: Lo! Eleven, thirty-comes early| 35# of sheeps-head costs $87 despite your 11% discount."
Probably I'm just old, despite being a long time geek I learned to type simply because it was an easy class to take in high school. (I already knew how, because my handwriting is awful, so I took lessons young) On the one most of you didn't have to learn to hammer hard enough for a big old Royal manual, on the other hand most of you never knew the pure joy that was the action on the IBM selectric. Seriously, we need those for computers, I'll pay a couple of hundred dollars I don't care, that would be amazing.
That study is bad, and had an ulterior motive.
The Fable of the Keys is an article by some economists (who don't claim to know anything about typing) who are trying to disprove something called "Excessive Inertia Theory". Basically, "Excessive Inertia Theory" uses the Dvorak vs Qwerty history as anecdotal evidence for what the theory is describing: Dvorak is better, but people still use Qwerty because they don't want to go to the trouble of changing (nevermind that almost no one has heard of Dvorak...) The writers attack the theory by claiming that Dvorak isn't actually any better than Qwerty, and that's why it never became popular.
The holes are rampant in their argument, but the most telling is that the study they used was poorly conducted, probably biased, and the original data from it was destroyed. No other study has ever corroborated the results.
On the other hand, August Dvorak himself wrote an entire book called "Typewriting Behavior" about typing, Dvorak's area of expertise. (Instead of a book on Economics for example!) With the knowledge gained and research conducted in the writing of that book, he designed a keyboard layout. People who have used that keyboard layout almost unanimously attest to its improved comfort, efficiency, and ease.
A number of more in-depth responses have been written to "The Fable of the Keys" and its offspring, and I won't embarrass myself by trying to out-write these gentleman: Marcus Brooks: The Fable of the Fable and Randy Cassingham: Letter to REASON Magazine.
(Quoted from here
Back in middle school, we had a typing class on a bunch of apples 2es. I got numbers ranging from 300 to a thousand or so words per minute. Of course, that was because I realized that it counted "words" based on how many spaces you typed, so if you held down the space bar, then backspaced, then held down space again, and so forth, then erased the whole thing and typed in the message you were supposed to type correctly, you'd get a huge score.
Stale pastry is hollow succor to one who is bereft of ostrich.