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Fast medium slow?
Bullshit. That's not how good musicians learn. Good musicians play a piece close to "at speed" 95% of the time, because hand motions are completely different at different speeds, and it's largely a waste of time to learn the piece at a speed you're not going to eventually play it at.
That doesn't work for typing because there isn't "at speed" like there is in music pieces. You just want to go faster all the time.
So how should you practice typing?
Considering a major cause of speed walls is confusion in the brain, it's a good idea to practice the hand motions separately (reducing complexity), rather than together. Once you get the hand motions right for both hands separately, it's easier for the brain to coordinate the hands together.
If you don't have tutoring software that can do this, just get creative and rearrange the letters in a phrase so that all the letters for the right hand come first, and all the letters in the left hand
For example if you were trying to type the phrase "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" in the colemak layout, you would type:
Tqcbrwfxpsvrtazdg heuikonojumoehelyo
Left hand, right hand, left hand, right hand, etc.
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... i didnt know "touch typing" was a separate category.
I always thought it was just "typing", and those that needed to look were called "poking".
Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing is good
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Touch typing is really useful.
Learning it will take you 2 weeks at most if you use it constantly and happen to type a lot (e.g. when posting crap on forums/blogs or chatting on IRC or IMs). Use a program to help you learn it, there are a lot of these available. I used KTouch for Linux/KDE back then.
Once you start learning it you should never go back to your old style. Force yourself to use only 10 fingers from then on.
You'll still be slow after these 2 weeks but you should be comfortable with it, which is the important thing... high speed will come later, automatically.
The benefits of touch typing:
- you don't have to look at the keyboard, ever
- it's always faster than other styles, even though some <10 finger typers can become quite fast
- it's ergonomic (less hand/finger movement, less stress on a few single fingers)
(Although... a Starcraft player in 2009 would never understand why anyone would want that *g*)
You also don't have to follow the rules 100%... you'll develop your own style anyway, for example I'm fairly sure that I don't use the "correct" fingers for pressing B, N, or the special characters to the right. But these are details. Important thing is that you get the basics right.
The Colemak layout is probably great, but I would only recommend learning it if you only use a few machines and can have the layout installed on them.
If you use multiple machines/keyboards for whatever reason, it's probably impossible to use Colemak on all of them, and so you'd have to stay with qwerty at certain times anyway.
Almost everyone uses qwerty so using something different can be problematic at times.
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I touch type but not properly, want to learn it correctly some time.
For example when I type "type" I use my left index for the "t" and "y", right ring for "p" then left middle for "e".
I hardly use either of my pinky fingers and sometimes type the bottom row keys with my index fingers.
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On April 09 2009 05:56 Nytefish wrote:
I touch type but not properly, want to learn it correctly some time.
For example when I type "type" I use my left index for the "t" and "y", right ring for "p" then left middle for "e".
I hardly use either of my pinky fingers and sometimes type the bottom row keys with my index fingers.
something similar for me, i type "type" with Lindex for t,y Rring for p and Lring for e.
Actually this thread got me thinking, i went and filmed myself typing -- i went to typingtest.com picked out a random text i've never written before (or if i have i definitely don't remember it at all), and for 2 minutes straight went away at it. Ended up with 120+wpm before errors, and 117 net (all of the errors were due to punctuation and stuff that i don't type often, such as dates and their annoying habit to put a comma before "and")
It looks so awkward watching me type, i don't get it. I guess i definitely have no technique but i type fast enough without ever getting tired so whatever.
I could upload the video after i rotate it (it was recorded upside down O_o) to youtube or something :p
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I switched from QWERTY to Dvorak about a year ago, and I think it was a good decision. It just takes a lot of time and practice to unlearn QWERTY and to commit the new format into muscle memory. I used to type at about 70wpm QWERTY, but when I started typing in Dvorak it was down to 15wpm, and now, a year later I am at 90wpm (I think that Dvorak does increase your wpm when you get used to it).
But in the end, my hands are much more comfortable with the Dvorak layout. I barely have to use the 'q' or 'z' key (it's the apostrophe and semi-colon key in Dvorak respectively), and the most common letters are on the home row meaning that Dvorak requires less finger movement.
The only downside is that most people use qwerty so if I need to use another comp, I have to hope that their computer supports the Dvorak layout or else I'll just have to deal with typing in qwerty until I get back to my comp.
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Yeah switch, you'll average like 100 wpm once you get used to touch typing no problem.
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It won't make that big of a difference since you're at 80WPM already without it, but you might as well. It's easy as hell and you can probably easily get 130WPM ish in a few weeks time
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Baa?21242 Posts
Learning Dvorak or Colemack sucks I would think, since if you went to anywhere besides your own computer and needed to use one, you would type slow as hell.
I'm with fine with QWERTY, I can do 130 WPM. I don't see the need to switch to the much-lauded alternatives that don't actually seem to significantly improve speeds. IIRC, all the research leads to there being no significant difference between people typing on QWERTY and on Dvorak or Colemack...
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On April 09 2009 00:51 EsX_Raptor wrote:
My current typing style, which is very disorganized (I mostly use the index and middle fingers to type), has yielded me an average of 80WPM, but a good deal of that is backspacing lol.
WTF? How is it even possible to attain 80wpm just using the index and middle fingers to type? Are you sure you wrote that correctly? o_o
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whenever someone talks to me and i'm typing something up, i just keep typing while talking to them and maintaining eye contact. usually i get some "do you even know what you're typing?
... it's one of those things that if you do it often enough it's no problem.
like ... playing the piano without looking at the keyboard... playing a guitar without looking at the frets or watching your strumming... walking without watching where you walk (careful!)... writing without having to... hmm... can't say that i can write in a perfectly straight line without checking every now and then...
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On April 09 2009 10:37 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:
Learning Dvorak or Colemack sucks I would think, since if you went to anywhere besides your own computer and needed to use one, you would type slow as hell.
I'm with fine with QWERTY, I can do 130 WPM. I don't see the need to switch to the much-lauded alternatives that don't actually seem to significantly improve speeds. IIRC, all the research leads to there being no significant difference between people typing on QWERTY and on Dvorak or Colemack...
I quit qwerty cold turkey, learned colemak, and relearned qwerty after.
I'm only slightly slower in qwerty than I used to be (by about 10~20 wpm). I can still type 90~100 wpm in qwerty.
So it's perfect possible, at least for colemak and qwerty, to use both layouts concurrently. Dvorak and qwerty together is more difficult, because more keys change.
Anyway, it's just if you want to give it a try. I'm not saying I have anything better than anecdotal evidence. I just feel a lot more comfortable in colemak, and I do type faster in colemak than I ever did in qwerty.
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EPT
