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Ask Slashdot: Typing Advice For a Guinness World Record Attempt?
An anonymous reader writes "In fifth grade, I amazed my fellow classmates when I demonstrated what 132 words per minute looked like. Recently, an acquaintance of mine saw me typing out a word document for graduate school and was impressed by my typing abilities. He suggested that I seriously contemplate attempting a Guinness World Record with such abilities. At the moment, I can manage an average of about 155-160 words per minute, with bursts around 180-185 words per minute (in the typing world, five characters defines a word, in case you were wondering). That aside, I have a few questions to pose to Slashdot readers (whom I am sure have been typing much longer than I have): What are some tips to fully maximize one's ability to type at the fastest possible rate? Do you have any specific keyboard recommendations that will improve my speed? Has anybody here ever competed in a typing event or thought about going for the world record? Is it worth learning Dvorak for the sole purpose of attempting such a record? How difficult would it be to improve my typing abilities from where they are now to where they need to be to acquire such a record?"
If I copy a whole document into my buffer and then paste it, I can do way more than that ;)
Therefore fake.
Most /.ers are far from good typists. You can tell by the typos.
Don't listen to the people who are invested and have learned to type on Dvoraks: scientific evidence shows that Dvorak is no better than a regular keyboard layout. So you will just be re-training yourself to be unable to type on QWERTY's and type slower on Dvorak's.
In the editing world, editors edit documents in the editing world in case you were wondering.
Cotnact me if your gonig for teh recrod. I am a nexpret in tiipyng and can gvie you ltos of usfeul tips .
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
PS2 VS USB?
what one can handle faster input?
Seriously as there are many people here (myself included) that do not respond to Anonymous Cowards. I would have thought the person doing this would want everybody to know who they are so that they will gain noteriety in the lead up to their attempt.
Very impressive numbers, but I would have thought there would be a YouTube video or somesuch which backed up the claim.
If I submitted as AC, would the editors accept my claim to my questions regarding my unusually long eyebrows, which irritate my eyes and I can't control with shaving, waxing, plucking, laser or electrolysis as well as let me know who else has this problem and what they are doing about it?
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
I learnt it during a summer internship in about a week, and never looked back to qwerty. This is purely a preference, and I heard both positives (speed) and negatives (fingers don't move as much so causes more rep strain injuries). It def improved my overall typing speed, but caused some grief when using CTRL+ZXCV and also in various games with one hand on keyboard (usually switch back to qwerty for them). You won't have as much problem switching because you already got the motorics skills down, just need to have the new layout in your head. Btw, switching back and forth between layouts takes about a few seconds for my head.
I'm a speedtypist as well (130-150WPM average, 160+ bursts) the issue that you will run into is that it gets incredibly hard to add the extra WPM, and last I checked your goal is above 200.
Good luck but you generally peak out eventually.
Does that typing test require use of a mechanical interface? Learn how to use a direct Brain-Compuer Interface and bypass the fingers and the keyboard. (Makes the PS2/USB argument moot.)
Dear god why?
Try a keyboard with mechanical switches. They're a bit noisier than the cheap ones, but I find them much faster and I make fewer typos. My fingers also get less tired. You might be able to scrape out another percent or so.
As a typing amateur I offer this advice:
Don't Do It.
It's too Hard.
You will Fail.
You Can't do it.
As somebody who doesn't like those kind of comments I offer This Advice:
Go For It!!
Kick Your Boundaries in the Nads!!
Practice! Practice! Practice!
And ENJOY THE ATTEMPT!!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_curve
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects
Gaining a little bit if typing speed is easy, it's the ever increasing difficultly of getting faster and faster that can stretch training out for years.
According to Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute
The fastest typing speed ever, 216 words in one minute, was achieved by Stella Pajunas in 1946 on an IBM electric.[6][7][8][9] As of 2005, writer Barbara Blackburn was the fastest English language typist in the world, according to The Guinness Book of World Records. Using the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard, she has maintained 150 wpm for 50 minutes, and 170 wpm for shorter periods. She has been clocked at a peak speed of 212 wpm.
One of the most notable online records considered genuine is 256 wpm (a record caught on video) on TypeRacer by American Sean Wrona, the inaugural Ultimate Typing Championship winner, which is considered the highest legitimate score ever set on the site.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
Not sure if stenotype counts. Probably not, because otherwise the record would be much higher than 180wpm continuous. This form of typing is typically used by court reporters and closed captioners, who regularly achieve 250wpm. Plover is an open-source tool you can use to steno-ify your keyboard. (Disclaimer: I've never used it, so I don't know how well it works.) You'd want a keyboard with full n-key rollover (NKRO), since steno involves "chording" keys, i.e. hitting many at once to achieve a desired effect. Many gaming mechanical keyboards are NKRO.
If you aren't interested in stenotype, you can also look at the Colemak keyboard layout, which has been gaining steam more recently, and purports to be better than Dvorak and QWERTY. That said, I think the current world record holder (outside of steno) is a QWERTY typist.
Do YOU want a Guiness Word Record, and why?
I mean, you've already demonstrated this ability to your family, friends and peers. Do YOU really want a go at "being the fastest / strongest / wittiest", etc., a record that is SURE to be broken by someone else some day anyways?
If you REALLY want this, I'm not sure why you ask on /. You then definately will grow ideas on your own. Probably being faster than anyone else on this site, you'd probably only be hampered by bad advice from would-be armchair record holders.
- Practice, Practice, Practice- --10,000,000 anonymous piano teachers
- See the ball, be the ball- --Chevy Chase in "Caddyshack"
- Use the force, Luke- --Obiwan Kenobi in , you know, that one show...
- Lay off that whiskey and let that cocaine be- --Johnny Cash-- "Cocaine Blues"
What can I say, go for the record.
I had a friend, of simple mind and scheming disposition, who in his drifting sought donations to fund his time and sojourn to Ireland to demonstrate for Guinness his ability to bicycle backwards continually. For months he drifted around the country putting on exhibitions and demonstrations of his talent amassing quite a warchest. He traveled to Ireland, pretty much free of charge and being free of responsibility for months in pursuit of his dream. He did then bicycle around the Guinness buildings for 24 hours and change , setting the record. The next week a local Irish held the record. There are no losers in this story. Cheers and Happy Holidays!
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
I understand why you asked for advice, but I think your reasoning is flawed (ie. your assumption that Slashdotters would know technical stuff about typing). As an IT worker who can type at a good (for an IT guy) rate, my observation is that I am lots faster than most IT people and I am not even close to being fast enough to do secretarial work. Most IT people are terrible at typing. It's not that uncommon to find 2 finger typists in IT. Since a lot of Slashdotters are IT geeks, you're asking the wrong folks to begin with. I'm sure we'll get a few people to post who are the exception to the rule, but again, they are the exceptions.
Dvorak has its detractors and fans. You'll likely get some who swear that only by using it can you achieve your goal and they will possibly cite some studies to back this up. Then others will cite their own studies that show that QWERTY is even faster than Dvorak. I've seen QWERTY vs. Dvorak religious wars here and I doubt that you'll come away convinced of anything.
You could have bothered to look up the current record which is at 256 words per minute. There are several documented cases of people typing over 200 wpm. An average over 150 wpm is nice but it's not going to get you the record.
Find someone who plays the clarinet and ask them how they mastered Flight of the Bumblebee?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
If you can type that fast on a normal Querty keyboard, I would not try anything else. Retraining the muscle memory may really mess with your speed. That being said, I once switched to a Kinesis Advantage keyboard to help with tendinitis, and saw my typing speed increase after a couple weeks. Note: I am not a speed typist just a systems administrator who types on average 50 wpm, but was averaging closer to 70 on the Advantage...
"I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions."
When attempting a typing record nowadays, do they deduct all the words underlined with red squigglies from your total?
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Get a decent mechanical keyboard if you want to go for the record - probably a Filco Majestouch 2 with Cherry MX Blue switches, although you could also go for a Topre Realforce if you wanted something a bit quieter and lighter.
games journalism blog
I type for a living on a voice recognition system that handles medical reports for a large university hospital in a major metropolitan area in the Southeastern US. I can achieve an effective rate of 300-400 69-character lines per hour using a word expander program called Shortcut for Windows while editing voice recognized text. If our physicians are well scripted in their dictation, using the same phrases and format as usual, I can easily double that as I learn where the VR usually fails, move to those spots quickly, make necessary changes, then quickly verify the reports matches the audio with a listen in high-speed playback.
Some of our reports are typed in toto and I can average about 250-280 lines per hour if I use word expansion macros, usually 3-5 character mnemonic abbreviations that expand into difficult to type words, often used phrases, and even whole pages of boilerplate when necessary.
I do fairly well, but the transcription industry has been whittled away by substandard work delivered by overseas workers who are willing to work for half of what we used to make, and all the good shops are being bought up by big transcription businesses that love to ship work to overseas employees, if they can get away with it.
First--A woman I met in an unemployment line, got a job because she changed her email address to "200wpm@whatever.com" (an honest assessment of her abilities, she claimed.) Second, as for dvorak--I type dvorak. I can't say it's increased my speed, but it DID lessen my RSI. That being said. . .since my company doesn't use a client/server network with wandering profiles--my computer annoys everyone who sits down at it. Which. . .I feel is a good thing.
If you want speed, the Cherry Blue keyboard switch is ideal. It requires only 55 grams of force to depress (compared to 70-90 grams for a buckling spring) and has a loud click and tactile feedback for when the keypress is detected. You don't need to bottom out the keys, though you can do so if you are used to it. The Blues are a bit loud if you are working near other people, but they are the perfect high-speed typing switch.
You have a high speed in QWERTY I presume, not DVORAK. I therefore recommend that you practice QWERTY for the record. You may have an innate ability to type fast, but you will be throwing away years of practice if you start with a new layout. Also, you will find yourself prone to errors on uncommon words when your muscle memory defaults to QWERTY on slightly-confusing words.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Regardless of the relative merits of Dvorak vs. Qwerty, there's absolutely no benefit in this situation in throwing out however-many years of muscle memory on one layout (which is absolutely critical to speed-typing), to start over learning a different layout.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
make sure you lube those fingers up real good just before you get started
"(in the typing world, five characters defines a word in the typing world, in case you were wondering)."
If you are in the typing world,
and you want to communicate
something in the typing wold,
and you can avoid repeating
items in the typing world,
you would have less time spent
typing about things in the typing world,
and then you would go through documents
really fast as you type then in the typing world.
GO SPEED RACER, GO!
Can cause errors like this:
... on what are the main factors that drive your typing speed. I'd go find some smart people / physicists and get some data to figure out where you are weak (in typing) first and what possible avenues you could take.
It might be redundant but he/she typed the sentence really fast.
in the typing world, five characters defines a word in the typing world, in case you were wondering
Redundant much?
Why do you think he needs to type so fast?
"To prevent this day from getting any worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD THING" 1GJU8xLuDKDxEs4KLf8fAGyptoDsqvEsBT
Play lots and lots of video games. You'll type really quickly if your teammate is about to screw up a raid. I seriously type around 98WPM and it's 100% by letting my fingers do the logic subconsciously, crossing over all the time, and generally breaking every proper rule of typing and just doing it my way. Considering everyone doing it 1 way hasn't broken the record, doing it differently might. You know how at the Olympics, every 16 years or so someone invents a new way of doing the sport because they didn't want to beat everyone a their own game and blows everyone away and the next time everyone is doing it? Case in point.
Also, use a low press weight keyboard. It speeds you up more than you think. Also, lots and lots of caffeine.
Yes, but if you read it really fast you don' t notice the redundancy. Think of it as ECC or parity.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
I personally use the dvorak layout and love it, and I think it's certainly much easier to use and far lower stress. However, aside from individual cases, every study I'm aware of has concluded that dvorak doesn't actually improve to typing speeds. So while I personally think you should try it anyway, it might not help with this particular goal.
In what world does 5 characters define a word?
When I took a typing class back in the mid-70's on an Underwood 5 manual typewriter, I do believe that a word was 5-characters -- and that does not include the space between the words. The standard is surely older than you are, whipper snapper.
--Richard
Jokes are supposed to be funny.
Our first response is usually obscenity laden and we realize before hitting send that if we send it, we're going to be paid a visit from HR. Again. So we have to clear out the line and start over. Then we realize that saying someone doesn't actually know how to do their job will still cause that visit from HR. You're lucky if it's just two minutes, sometimes it takes half an hour to craft a diplomatic response with just the right level of passive aggression. "Oh look, SOMEONE killed the database server. Again."
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Around the end of January I made the leap into Dvorak, rewriting some 15 years of muscle memory. I still feel I'm in the process of learning it, despite having gotten back some 95% keyboard typing effectiveness. Some notes:
:) This best illustrates what I mean:
1. Your right pinkie is underdeveloped. With qwerty, your right pinkie doesn't do nearly as much typing as the rest of the fingers. Under Dvorak, it's new responsibilities will include 'S', one of the most used letters in the alphabet. In addition, 'L', question marks, 'Z', hyphens, and others. You will notice that your right pinkie being a bit of a bottleneck at first.
2. You'll be somewhat "dyslexic" when typing, as you learn Dvorak. I think this because each half of the brain have gotten used to always being in charge of a letter. The right side always handled 'S' for example, but now the left side will handle it. That's just one example, but you'll find yourself making weird typos until your brain gets used to the new layout.
3. Keyboard shortcuts will require some work. Things like Ctrl C, Ctrl V, etc are now undoable with your right hand. This was unacceptable to me, so I downloaded a custom keyboard layout called "US - Dvorak - QWERTY" that basically makes it so that when you hold down Ctrl, the keyboard is mapped as QWERTY again. This works pretty good 99% of the time. But keep in mind Windows doesn't have this built in.
4. The social aspect. One of the biggest 'challenges' to the new layout is the social aspect. People won't be able to just jump on your machine and start typing, and you won't be able to get anyone else's computer and type without looking at the keyboard, making typos, etc. If they don't know about your alternate keyboard, they may make the assumption that you don't know how to type, which can be a bit embarrassing. In addition, I hear growls from my wife when she starts typing on my computer, and realizes she needed to switch back to qwerty (which, thankfully, can easily be done from the taskbar with the language toolbar)
So, was the switch worth it? Yes. I'm still learning, but when I see others type, it almost looks ridiculous how their fingers are going crazy on the keyboard, smacking almost randomly. Whereas when I type, 70% of everything I write is done without my fingers ever leaving the home row
"It has been estimated that in an average eight-hour day, a typist's hands travel 16 miles on a QWERTY keyboard, but only 1 mile on a Dvorak keyboard."
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
""The fastest typing speed ever, 216 words in one minute, was achieved by Stella Pajunas in 1946 on an IBM electric.[6][7][8][9] As of 2005, writer Barbara Blackburn was the fastest English language typist in the world, according to The Guinness Book of World Records. Using the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard, she has maintained 150 wpm for 50 minutes, and 170 wpm for shorter periods. She has been clocked at a peak speed of 212 wpm. Blackburn, who failed her QWERTY typing class in high school, first encountered the Dvorak keyboard in 1938, quickly learned to achieve very high speeds, and occasionally toured giving speed-typing demonstrations during her secretarial career. She appeared on The David Letterman Show and felt that Letterman made a spectacle of her.[10]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute
"There are 11 kinds of people: those who know binary, those who don't, and those who could not care less!"
"In a world where all words are five letters... one man can make the difference between brilliance and darkness..."
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
In the late 1980's, I had occasion to meet a young woman who apparently had a typing speed of just under 180 words per minute. She had won several regional competitions on account of her skill (I imagine largely attributed to her youth... she was not even 20 years old at the time), but she did not hold the title of international record holder.
(To be frank, I don't even know if she or anybody else even bothered to check if she was a record holder or not. All she had ever told me in that regard is that she had won a few typing competitions, but the subject of actually holding a world record never came up.)
I remember it was so weird watching her type on a computer, it was more like watching a 300 or so bps modem spewing text than it was watching somebody actually type stuff.
Google seems to indicate that the current world record typing speed is 212 wpm.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Then learn how to speed talk and use voice to text. You'll never type as fast as that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute#Speech_and_listening
Type as fast as you can!
-- Cheers!
Yes, it is worth learning Dvorak just for such an attempt - but you will not be faster with it for at least a couple of weeks. It's worth learning Dvorak for many other reasons too - one of the most important being minimizing long-term wear and tear on your hands, which gets to be absolutely crippling at times if you aren't careful.
now, you can probably type as fast as lightning if the judges don't have to read your opus. writing is easy. reading is hard.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
yeah, you have to keep looking to see where the keys are
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
There was an epsiode of Late Night with David Letterman back in the 1980's where they invited the world's fastest typist for a demonstration of her skills. Having gotten their hands on her typewriter before the show, they detached the metal ball with all the typefaces on it and reattached it in the wrong orientation. All her typing came out as complete jibberish. I still laugh when I think about that gag.
<movietrailervoice>"In a world where all words are five letters... one man can make the difference between brilliance and darkness..."</movietrailervoice>
"Innna world where allll words arrre fiive lttrs... onnne mannn cannn maake theee dfrnc betwn brlnc annnd drkns..."
There's a neat web-based type racing site at www.typrx.com, which allows a person to measure their word-per-minute score either by themselves or against strangers or (in the case of "private" races) friends. The current top score on that site is a bit over 200 words per minute.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department. Looks right to me!
I recommend playing Z-Type all the time... :P But maybe I'm not a good one to take advice from:
(Of course, you can't really judge your WPM from that (spend time waiting for new "targets"), but it's an interesting concept.)
I use the "truly ergonomic" keyboard, blank, clicky, and dvorak. Obviously I'm no where near 150wpm -- really if I could program that fast, I'd be done my day in twenty minutes. I probably average 3wpm, but programming's more thinking than typing. Anyway...
At your speeds, dvorak isn't a speed boost. But it will give you something important. Assuming you're typing in english, you'll have fewer and shorter finger movements. So you'll have increased stamina, especially if the record requires you to train a lot to reach.
This particular keyboard's key layout is a better shape. It's columnar -- vertically the keys are aligned -- but waved horizontally to match your fingers. I find it much faster than typical layouts because I can slide from one key to the next much better -- and they are full proper keys.
Obviously, being noisy and having proper tactile feedback, it's far faster. But I'd suspect that you don't wait for feedback of any kind at your speeds. But if you do, it's a great thing to have.
The force fall-off is phenominal, and this keyboard or another, that should be your most prized feature. That, and a large buffer. I'd hate to think of your being limited just because you've exhausted the keyboard buffer.
As far as actually transitioning from qwerty to dvorak, it's an annoying two weeks, but that's it. It's easy, it's simple, and you'll be stunned at how many words are typed without leaving the home row. Then you'll be shocked to realize how few words require the bottom row at all.
Use IRC a lot, and always type in full, grammatically correct sentences with correct punctuation. This alone got me from 55wpm to 90wpm.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Not all functions have that luxury. "Half an hour to get back in the groove" can be seen as "wasting time". In the place I worked, emails meant that you had a little bit of time to answer it, IM's meant that every minute you burned answering it was some one else's minute they couldn't do their job, so you were the one on the "timer". And no, you could maybe squeak 7 minutes to "get back in the groove" before something else popped up.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I used to have 100+wpm typing abilities, in my late teens and early twenties. My speed has remained roughly the same, but my accuracy has been slipping lately (I'm turning 35 this year). If you are going to go for the record, just do it. Do not wait.
i would suggest getting a life.
i guess you're proud of having impressed some fifth-graders with your amazing super-power but, really, it's a pretty lame claim to fame.
fame is over-rated, and the desire for fame just marks you out to be a wanker - and a desperate one to be striving for such a trivial "achievement".
The two changes together have made it much, much easier for me to type. And at very fast typing speeds, the 13% reduction in effort over Dvorak is nothing to sneeze at.
Keep in mind that for a layout like Colemak to be a real benefit you have to be a good touch typist. OTOH if you are using some kind of personally-adapted hunt and peck method like Sean Wrona then it won't make as big of a difference. There is some good discussion of typing speed and comfort at the colemak.com forum.
Speaking of Wrona, he sometimes participates in tournaments both online and in person. I've heard that typing is taken pretty seriously as a sport in some other non-US countries.
Some of the better keyboards available now are the Matias QuietPro (tactile but quiet), the Topre Realforce (uses capacitive springs), the TrulyErgonomic and Kinesis Advantage (both have split and unstaggered key layout) and the relatively inexpensive CM Storm QuickFire Rapid.
You need to talk to Mavis Beacon.
This is the most appropriate "Redundant" moderated post I've ever seen.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
- Evelyn Beatrice Hall
If you look at studies like Carpalx (http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/), the Patrick Gillespie layout analyzer (http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/) or even just one of the layout homepages that compares itself to others (http://normanlayout.info/compare), then you'll see there are more efficient keyboard layouts than Dvorak without it's traumatic learning curve. If nothing else, Colemak is widely adopted by all but Microsoft and is probably a better efficiency choice than Dvorak.
Back in grade school, the typing software that we used clocked me at about 232 wpm. Don't know how accurate it was or anything, but I still can't imagine you'd be anywhere near a record attempt at the level indicated in your submittal.
I use a RealForce tenkeyless. The key travel, return and feel is absolutely second to none, you won't believe the difference. If you want the "Cadillac" and are willing to spend more for something you'll have for a long time, I'd consider a Topre based keyboard like the RealForce.
Short of that, get any keyboard with Cherry MX switches. I prefer brown but some people have a different preference. Good luck!
Keinesis contoured keyboards. A little relearning necessary, but much faster in the end. You can even get them with DVORAK layout, I believe.
http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/
They sell lots of ergomatic stuff. Look for the keyboards with two wells of keys, one for each hand.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
What are some tips to fully maximize one's ability to type at the fastest possible rate? Do you have any specific keyboard recommendations that will improve my speed? Learn Velotype. A good velotypist can type up to 1000 characters per minute. Velotype is an old Dutch invention, see http://velotype.com/ and Wikipedia. Good luck, Dirk
Brought to you be the Department of Redundancy Dept.
I agree with those who say don't bother with Dvorak. I taught myself Dvorak around 2000 until giving it up in 2004 (fighting with library computers throughout the intervening years). I might have been a little faster in my prime at Dvorak, but not much, and that training probably could have been better spent practicing QWERTY.
In theory, maybe Dvorak is faster for someone like you, whose typing is fast enough to challenge his max raw finger speed, because of reduced stretching for common letters. But I would say with the retraining there is *risk* -- learning a new layout kills your old muscle memory. Seems all too possible you might confuse your muscles, tangle up your pathways and never get to where you are at QWERTY, or back to where you were if you switched back.
It is true that the world's fastest English-language typist used Dvorak, however. Barbara Blackburn was a certified Guinness record holder, a Dvorak electric typewriter typist who once maxed out at 212 wpm, and for her efforts was once on Letterman. The Letterman segment is very silly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NndiiezGkNY. NB, the days of the true specialist expert typists are past, alas.
If you think you are pretty good, check out video of Sean Wrona competing at SXSW in 2010. Seems like there is a little circuit where you can try out your stuff and maybe win a bit of cash.