I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that I probably type more words in a day than I actually speak aloud (slightly skewed as I've been at home for a bit and my family currently based here tend to be at work a lot of the time), and I get the impression that this isn't so unusual for people of my age and interests.
It used mostly to be the case that people who had to use keyboards (once that group had expanded beyond professional typists) would either "learn to type" (that is, learn to touch type) or rely on a so-called hunt and peck method where you physically look at the keys and pick out the ones you want with one or two fingers, usually the index fingers on each hand. The system that I and a lot of my friends have ended up with is a hybrid system, where we can type blind (without looking) fairly quickly, but not using the classic touch typing method (which uses all the fingers in a regular pattern).
Key Points [link]
One of the little projects I've been working at since I last posted here has been learning to type "properly", i.e. according to proper touch typing technique. I'm still getting the hang of it (I'm typing this post using it, easily at about half the speed I could type with previously), but I think it's a worthwhile thing to be able to do.
I got to this point by going back to looking at more efficient ways to get text into a computer than the standard QWERTY layout (such as Dvorak, Colemak and even chorded stuff as well as steno), which at the end of the day is all really interesting, but looking at the amount of time and effort involved (and the fact that there's no guarantee that someone else's setup will have or support your favourite alternative) made me think it'd be more useful just getting better at QWERTY for now.
Why bother? [link]
When I'm learning a new skill (for instance a new instrument) I think it's important to make sure I've got the basic techniques right. If you're lucky, bad technique just makes your job harder, and after a certain point you have to go back and laboriously re-muscle memorise a load of core stuff, which is annoying, and happens a fair amount in self-teaching (I had to rework a load of stuff on guitar one year in, for example). If you're unlucky, you won't notice your sloppy technique until you do yourself a serious injury at some point, meaning you may not be able to carry on doing your thing or indeed several others. (I heard someone say recently that tendinitis has killed more music careers than heroin - us drummers have to watch our backs as well.)
If you type using a hybrid system you've slowly come up with over the years through frequent Internet use, the chances your index and middle fingers do most of the work. This means there's a fair amount of stretching and shifting going on to get to the different parts of the keyboard, and where there's a lot of uncomfortable stretching going on carpal tunnel syndrome may be waiting on the other side. The idea with touch typing is to balance the work as evenly as possible between your fingers, which also reduces the amount of hand movement you'll need to do. As a bonus you'll probably eventually be able to type faster as well, though be prepared for your words per minute rate to fall dramatically at the start if you do try it out.
Settling In [link]
Good news! If you can already type blind (without looking), you've got a leg up over a lot of beginner typists. The focus will then be on retraining your fingers to pick the right keys unprompted.
To start, we'll get the home position down.
How to get into the home position
- Lightly rest the index finger of your left hand on the F key and the index finger of your right hand on the J key. (They should both have some kind of dot on so you can find them quickly.)
- Rest the other three fingers of each hand in a line next to them, so that the keys you're touching are ASDF and JKL; respectively.
- Finally, rest your right thumb on the space bar (your left thumb can just hover; it isn't used in classic touch typing) and raise the angle of your hands slightly so that your wrists are in the air.
At Home [link]
Very slowly (slow enough that you can do it without making any mistakes - the temptation to rush is natural and treacherous) practise keeping your fingers in the home position and typing each letter. I suggest getting into the habit of pressing each key as lightly as will register to reduce wear and tear on the keyboard and more importantly your hands. If you like, try saying each one aloud to associate the finger movement and the key better - I found that the spacebar came pretty naturally, as did the commoner letters, but getting a handle on J, K and ; took quite a while, especially once I starting having to move around a bit more.
If you like, try typing these venerable chestnuts of the touch-typing world that only use home position keys:
| AS | ADD | LAD | JADA |
| LA | SAD | LASS | FLAK |
| JA | FAD | FADS | FLASK |
Yes, there aren't many with J. Sorry about that, it's almost like it's a really uncommon letter in English or something.
Playing Away [link]
You may have noted that the keyboard and indeed the alphabet contains more than eight keys/letters, which is inconvenient but difficult to avoid. The way we get past this is that each finger is responsible for the keys above and below it.
So, for instance, you type an E (a useful skill) by moving the middle finger of your left hand from its home position on D up a row, and then as soon as it's finished it goes back home again. That's very important, and why we practised picking out the home position again before - the method only works if you run things primarily from the home row.
A thing that I came up against is the fact that the keys slant a bit between rows, presumably in some misguided attempt at being ergonomic, so sometimes when working things out I found it helpful to slide my hands into a home position a row up or down (so for instance moving up to QWER UIOP or down to ZXCV M,./) to see where I was aiming for.
To test this out, I suggest you (slowly) work out how to type each of the vowels (not including Y just for the moment), again saying the key aloud to bind the motion to the letter And Then Going Back To The Home Position. While you're at it you may as well get to grips with the comma and the full stop (which you're welcome to call a dot or a period if that makes you happy) as well.
Worth Pointing Out [link]
Something you might have noticed right from the off is that the home position and its up- and down-versions leave an awkward gap between your hands (on the home row, covering the G and H keys). To get these ones you stretch the respective index fingers across a key. I know I said before that we're trying to avoid stretching, but with the amount you're avoiding in general I don't think this'll hurt too much.
Going back to the unhelpful key camber, this means that your left index finger is responsible for B as well, which on my keyboard is about an inch from the home position. I still get my right index finger reflexively hopping over and hitting it an annoying amount of the time, but it's worth sticking to the proper fingering so that you can type faster and cleaner in the long run.
A thing that I had fun with and might help you as well is coming up with a mnemonic for what letters are used on each finger, going home-up-down as the home positions are the most memorable. Make yours as silly or lewd as will stick best. I came up with:
| A QuiZ | KI-KOMMAn | (,) | ||
| Some WaX | FoR VeGeTaBles | HYNJUM! | LOw-DOT | (.) |
| DECoys | SEMA-Ph-OR | (; /) |
(Kikkoman is a brand of soy sauce that I noticed in the family kitchen and amused me. Please don't DMCA me, guys...)
Whether you bother with my daft system or one of your own, I've found it useful to sit down before doing some typing and do the type-and-say-aloud association game going through each finger in the order above (so going AQZ SWX DEC FRV-GTB and so on).
Out Of The Comfort Zone [link]
The home row and its neighbours we've looked at make up the majority of what you'll need to type, but there's also some important stuff to the right of the semicolon and elsewhere. What you do there (and for keys to the left of the A key) is to stretch with the little finger of the relevant hand. Yes, more stretching, but still less than hybrid or (perish the thought) hunt and peck. The bigger keys over here like Backspace, Enter and Shift are easier to get at because of their size, apart from which you'll probably only really need the apostrophe and the question mark with any regularity. (Unless you're one of those tiresome people that refuses to nest round brackets and switches to other ones [like this {or this}] in which case you're on your own.)
Which brings me to an important point: how to touch type the Shift keys. The idea is that you use the Shift key with the little finger on the opposite hand to the one you want. This takes a fair bit of getting used to, but once you've got it down it really helps to keep your flow when you need to use a capital letter or a symbol like the question mark (which is what that abrupt segue was playing off, if you're feeling a little conversational whiplash).
Your Number Is Up [link]
For the sake of simplicity I've left the number keys out till now, but you just treat them like another upper row on top of the letter keys (so the relative home position is 1234 7890 with the index fingers covering 5 and 6 as well). It's tempting if you need a quick symbol like an exclamation mark or a pair of brackets just to go for it with an index finger, but as always If You Use The Right Fingers There Will Be Cake. Plus I find it kind of fun to do the slightly ridiculous finger gymnastics for an exclamation mark.
Some Footnotes [link]
That just about covers the standard keys. I don't know if you go in for keyboard shortcuts (though if you're seriously considering effectively relearning how to type for efficiency I imagine you might be), but I haven't found much consensus about how you should go for Ctrl, Alt, Start, F0 keys and so on (probably because they're a comparatively recent addition since the days of the typewriter).
I tend to alternate between left and right Ctrl in the same way as for the Shift keys, and as I'm on a laptop with an Alt and AltGr combo (and I use enough weird characters that my AltGr key sees actual use) I've found it comfortable to put my left thumb to work for when I want to use a keyboard shortcut that involves it (and move my right thumb off the spacebar for AltGr). I imagine that probably won't be a problem for especially many people, though - same with the function keys. (They're infrequent and cumbersome enough on a laptop I don't mind about breaking touch typing flow to get at them.)
If you have and use a numeric keypad to the right of the standard keys you might see that the 5 key has a marker on it like the F and J keys, which is for using your right hand with your middle finger on the 5 and using that row as a miniature home row. If you do a lot of data entry it might be worth working at, but I deal with few enough numbers in my pampered humanities world that the normal number keys are fine for me.
As a last remark, you're actually doing a pretty significant amount of rewiring, and in all probability suddenly putting your smaller fingers to a lot more use than they've previously had to deal with. It's normal for your wrists and forearms to ache a bit after a good typing session when you're first switching over - if that's happening, maybe have a break and come back to it later the same day or leaving it till the next.
In Summary
A more colourful version of the above. Source
If you've gone through all of the above then congratulations! You've got the basic knowledge you need to make a go of touch typing. There's plenty of online games and resources to work at your speed and precision (I like http://www.typing-lessons.org for a gradual walkthrough of the various zones and http://www.typingstudy.com for letting you practise with your local layout rather than assuming you've got a US setup) but I've found I got and get as much satisfaction (if not more) from just opening my text editor and typing what I'm thinking or chatting to people (apologising for any mis-hits in advance...) as from sitting there and typing things against the clock that beep when I get something wrong (as useful as that is).
Since I've started touch typing seriously I've found that the activity of typing is much less tiring than it was (even if I still get the wrist aches after a protracted bout, though less than at the start), as I'm no longer hopping around with my hands as much and so can approach typing with a smoother rhythm, if that's not too abstract a way of putting it.
Good luck! I hope this little interlude is helpful. I'm putting the finishing touches on one or two pieces I thought would fit in here, so hopefully see you in a week!
