Continue to Site

Eng-Tips is the largest engineering community on the Internet

Intelligent Work Forums for Engineering Professionals

Register Log in
  • Congratulations IDS on being selected by the Eng-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Touch Typists

Status
Not open for further replies.
kontiki99

kontiki99

Electrical
Feb 16, 2006
510
We’ve been talking about training lately and I’ve begun wondering about the number of people doing ALL of their work on a PC, that are two finger typists.

As I got older and my vision started to drift I picked up a typing tutor and worked through it on my lunch breaks.

Ultimately it’s saved me time and I’m certain I make fewer mistakes because I can spent more time looking at the screen.

I’m just wondering how many folks out there would buy into this sort of idea.

If your company fielded a typing tutor app on your PC installation and rewarded the achievement some milestone typing speed with a trinket, (time off or free lunch or something) would you bother? Think it would be valuable?
 
Replies continue below

Recommended for you

Sort by date Sort by votes
Pat, don't worry about the dyslexia. I'm dyslexic, my sister is even worse but we both learnt how to type (RSA1 typing) at school, she in the 80's me in the early 90's..

(I only took typing because I wanted to do computing but we only had a couple of computers in school so they couldn't offer it, I figured typing was the next best thing. This position was enforced when it became clear that if I didn't take typing I'd have to take Spanish - I had enough trouble with English & French thank you.)

While I was one of the worst in my class and struggled to pass the test (which only required something like 25wpm) and my sister failed, we learnt enough so that when we got jobs and came to use it we did OK. Last I heard she was actually a lot faster than be because when she worked as office admin/receptionist/secretary (or whatever you call them in these PC times) she used it more. I only managed about 45 wpm last I tested (I maybe faster now) and my accuracy sucks but I am still better than all the hunt and peckers.

So Pat, I'd say it will probably help you a lot, unless you're too much of an old dog to learn a new trick;-). The typing course I took emphasized memorizing key locations without looking at keys by lots of practice exercises. You don't really think about where the keys are, your fingers sort of just learn, not sure if it's that so called memory muscle or what. I really recomend you at least try learning, if nothing else it may help you keep up in your pub;-).

In these days of email, word processing, fewer secretaries etc. I'd doubt the judgment of almost anyone that wanted to work in an office setting or similar (not just engineering even) and didn't' at least try to learn to touch type.

I think indirectly part of the reason my boss got let go was he couldn't' type at all. This meant his emails etc. weren't very eloquent and he either had to delegate typing intensive tasks or do them slowly, which gave the impression he didn't' do much.

KENAT,

Have you reminded yourself of faq731-376 recently, or taken a look at posting policies: What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I would LOVE to get rewarded for typing achievements. I took typing in HS, but simply because I was already good at it and it was an easy grade to fill an elective class.

As a younger engineer, I can't fathom "hunting & pecking" today. And I have a feeling that those have held out on learning efficient typing thus far will continue to hold out until they retire. However, I would think the graduating classes of today are more than proficient at typing, regardless of if they took any classes.

I don't doubt that efficient typing at 50 WPM will become the norm for HS grads. I have also seen many students in college that take notes on laptops (works well in history, not so good where free-body diagrams are needed).

My only two questions for the future are:
1) Will the graduating classes of 2020 and beyond even know how to write by hand? Do they still teach cursive?
2) Will they start making computer keyboards to be used with your thumbs like texting? I hope not, because I refuse to text ever, so I'll be way behind! (My thumbs are large and better suited to a spacebar than the little keys on phones)

-- MechEng2005
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
My school days were slightly before computers appeared in schools, so the connection between typing and computers just wasn't there. In fact my first ever computer program was written by hand on a coding sheet and sent to the local poly, where a typist (mis)typed it into a computer. Probably typing too fast.

Typing was seen as a vocational option for those who seemed destined to be secretaries and/or typists. Simply put, those without further ambition. It wasn't even offered to people in the higher streams.

Anyway, our school's first computer was a ZX81. Try touch typing on that!



- Steve
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
MechEng2005,

I was sitting around with a bunch of friends a few months ago, all of us in our forties and fifties. We were trying to remember how to write in cursive. I, personally, can remember all the cursive characters, but my cursive writing is unreadable.

Critter.gif
JHG
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
It shouldn't take much to learn, so it's definitely worth the investment. I taught myself to type (on orders from my English teacher, who refused to grade my illegible assignments) back in the days before online tutorials. I'd read in the book Cheaper by the Dozen that each finger gets a different set of keys, and the kids in the book learned by coloring their fingernails and the typewriter keys corresponding colors, so I skipped the fingernail part but took a set of crayons to my grandfather's 1949 Royal. A year later I took a real typing class and found that I'd gotten one or two letters wrong, but I was pretty close.

What really solidified it, though, was spending my 17th year of life on the BITNET Relay. Live chat encourages fast typing. I can still do over 110 wpm.

Hg

Eng-Tips policies: faq731-376
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I learned to touch type in the same manner as Hg states. I made sure that I used the correct fingers on the correct key. At first I looked at where every finger went. this took the same amount of time as one finger typing. But slowly, but surely, I mastered touch typing.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
aaa sss ddd fff
aaa sss ddd fff

How many days I spent on that...
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Heard from a college official while discussing female attendance in the 1960's:

"About half the women in that class are touch typists. The rest are hunt'n peckers."

Ducking...

old field guy
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Mavis Beacon teaching typing.
IT's a game and it's great. I leared to type pretty gud after 30 years of working without typing.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Only pretty gud though.

Is that gud enough?

KENAT,

Have you reminded yourself of faq731-376 recently, or taken a look at posting policies: What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Back when I was around 12 my grandmother had an old typewriter that I would play around on. I remember sitting there thinking that I should learn how to type because it would be handy. So I would try and copy text. It wasn't until I was in high school that I had a formal class and those were on a typewriter as well. I wasn't bad but I had to break old habits from when I taught myself. Now I write quite a bit at work and use the economical split keyboards that microsoft was selling many years ago. I have been using them long enough that a normal keyboard feels awkward.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Those ergonomical keyboards were never economical.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You're right. It should have read ergonomical. Looks like i selected the wrong word in Firefox's list of suggestions.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Typing is now the vehicle for everybody. I took touch typing long before it was fashionable. My high speed buzz will turn heads, but is should be the norm now. It warrants retraining.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
We have two kinds of people here: current and former FEA jockeys and the rest. The FEA boys always hold the mouse with their left hand (because they are/were used to using their right hand on the numeric keypad).

- Steve
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I've had colleagues that did that on CAD. However I've used a space mouse a lot in my left hand. I just got one again after a break of a few years and I swear it's taking me longer to get used to it this time than it did originally.

But I'm thinking this is getting off track.

KENAT,

Have you reminded yourself of faq731-376 recently, or taken a look at posting policies: What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top Bottom