HA!
You had it easy! I had to get up three hours before I got to bed and learn it on manual typewriters we had to carry from the typewriter closet to the desks ourselves...
Touch or hunt and peck
- Thread starter Kibbin
- Start date
HA!
You had it easy! I had to get up three hours before I got to bed and learn it on manual typewriters we had to carry from the typewriter closet to the desks ourselves...
there actually appear to be many more touch typists here than I would have expected. I've noticed in my personal life - even at work - that it seems most people appear to be more hunters and peckers, especially when web surfing. Who knew?
Were you sleeping in the middle of the road in a cardboard box at that time?
I'm a touch typist. Took typing in school and learned to do it correctly (with proper form), without even thinking about where the keys are - it's second nature. I type about 90 wpm, last time I checked a few years back.
I can touch type... it's not the most standard way, but it works for me and allows me to type 90 wpms if I'm really focused.
Reading these responses, I wonder how many people think like I do while typing. It would seem to me that if you are a hunt & peck sort of typist, you are spelling out the words in your head as you type. Whereas I don't even think about the letters - I just 'talk' inside my head and the words just come out my fingers. I don't think about individual letters at all.
I'll say this though - I am eternally grateful for my high school typing teacher: forcing us to type correctly, putting us through all those drills, etc on those old IBM Selectric electric typewriters. Being a quick typist has served me well over the years in my career. I rarely write much of anything, because I can take much better and more detailed notes in meetings if I type on my laptop rather than write.
I'll say this though - I am eternally grateful for my high school typing teacher: forcing us to type correctly, putting us through all those drills, etc on those old IBM Selectric electric typewriters. Being a quick typist has served me well over the years in my career. I rarely write much of anything, because I can take much better and more detailed notes in meetings if I type on my laptop rather than write.
Throwing down the gauntlet, eh?
I had to rewind and re-ink the double-coloured red and black tapes every morning while chained up in the school's basement to the boiler. On occasion I was thrown a stale french fry that was swept up off the cafeteria floor and you don't want to know what I drank, but I was grateful, I tell ya!
Your turn.
I only think about the letters when I run into a word I don't know how to spell.
Throwing down the gauntlet, eh?
I had to rewind and re-ink the double-coloured red and black tapes every morning while chained up in the school's basement to the boiler. On occasion I was thrown a stale french fry that was swept up off the cafeteria floor and you don't want to know what I drank, but I was grateful, I tell ya!
Your turn.
I went to school in Kentucky.
I definitely "talk" through my fingers as I type. But then I also think differently from most people (as revealed by the poll that I had several months ago here), and I do not hear my thoughts as a spoken voice per se, but rather I SEE them in my head as written words. I may, as I see those words, get in my head a sensation of what it would feel like to type them, or what it would feel like to speak them (though not really the SOUND of it--it's more a feeling of mouthing the words), but I don't truly hear them unless for some reason I am thinking of someone else's voice and imagining them saying something to me. (And even then it goes into writing.)
So what I'm doing when I'm typing is quite literally transcribing something that I'm reading from inside my own mind. I don't translate from voice to type...I literally just copy what is written in my own mind at that moment.
(In fact, when I just went back to edit this and make a correction, I SAW the edit--just pictured what it would look like onscreen in the completed post--and wrote it as I saw it. The thought was not truly "voiced" in my mind until after it was formed in written words--and even then, it's only a soundless mental sensation of speaking.)
Another in the self-taught touch-typist category. And, of course, now that I'm thinking about it, I'm making errors left, right, and centre. 
I have a pretty weird style, though, brought about by the fact that I started to learn how to type when I was just a kid, on my parents' 486. By the time I started getting lessons on how to type "properly" (which was maybe in grade two or so?), I was pretty much cemented in my methods. Basically, I tend to use just three fingers to do the majority of my typing: both index fingers and my right middle finger. Basically, my left hand covers from EDC to the left, while my right hand roves around taking care of everything else. Pinkies and ring fingers are occasionally employed to take care of things like shift, tab, control, etc.
It's not terribly efficient, I'll grant, but I've been typing this way forever, and I can still average around 60 or 70 WPM, generally speaking, so it really doesn't make much sense to try to teach myself differently.
I have a pretty weird style, though, brought about by the fact that I started to learn how to type when I was just a kid, on my parents' 486. By the time I started getting lessons on how to type "properly" (which was maybe in grade two or so?), I was pretty much cemented in my methods. Basically, I tend to use just three fingers to do the majority of my typing: both index fingers and my right middle finger. Basically, my left hand covers from EDC to the left, while my right hand roves around taking care of everything else. Pinkies and ring fingers are occasionally employed to take care of things like shift, tab, control, etc.
It's not terribly efficient, I'll grant, but I've been typing this way forever, and I can still average around 60 or 70 WPM, generally speaking, so it really doesn't make much sense to try to teach myself differently.
I type very fast, but on the other hand, it takes me like, 10 minutes to compose a text message on a phone. And that's why I don't text.
Oooh, yeah, I hate that the rules have changed. I've gradually learned to drop the second space when typing online, as most text fields ignore a second space anyway. But sentences still look crammed together to me without the extra space after the period.
One of the worst things for me was an old laptop I used to have access to that had a half-size backspace key. Oh my word! HOW many times did I hit the stupid slash key they had parked in the space the backspace should have extended into!!! I wanted to scream at someone.
I wonder if one's preferred method of typing has anything to do with whether they like texting and/or typing on their phones. I was just thinking that one of the reasons I absolutely loathe texting or typing anything of any length on my phone is that the typing just takes SO LONG with only two thumbs.
Okay...so then do you think it would be fair to say that you don't do 'hunt & peck'...but really more a 'touch typing peck' kind of thing? Because it seem like 'hunting' implies looking for the letters.
That is really interesting! I mean, I don't think I've ever spoken to anyone about this, so I don't know if there's a 'norm' here...but I don't 'see' words like you describe. I 'hear' them in my head. And so my typing is like taking dictation from myself. But that 'voice' is not audible or anything - it's just in my head like you said: a sort of mental sensation of speaking. Almost under the surface of my other thoughts. Very difficult to describe, but I sort of vaguely 'hear' the words under the surface, even though I might be thinking more 'loudly' about something else - the next thing I want to say...or an edit I want to make, or thinking about if I have covered the topic sufficiently.
I wonder what that means, in terms of how you and I process information in general.
Interesting!
Don't know about others...but I'm a touch typist who uses all my fingers correctly, etc on a regular keyboard...and I HATE texting. I mean, I really, REALLY hate it. In fact, I don't do it except in emergencies when someone texts me first. And I do not pay for texting on my mobile phone. Waste of money, given that I send about 1 or 2 text messages a year, max.
