This is for the touch typers here, ever wonder how your fingers know which keys to type on.

[texanwitch]

If I have to look for the letters I can't find them.

If I touch type no problem.

Weird isn't it.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

1. No, it's kinesthetic learning.

When you take a touch typing course, you have to associate each finger with particular keys.

[texanwitch]

2. I learned how to type in junior high a long time ago.

We learned old machines, the school was changing over to electric machines that year.

Not everyone got a new machine, maybe a third of the class.

We learn the letters to these old records, songs like Turkey in the Straw.

I can still hear the noise that class room, and tired fingers.

We typed the whole class period.

Maybe learning on the old machines was better.

I never could get faster then 40 wpm, I am a lot faster now.

Thanks to Lounge.

[Iggo]

8. Something that the guy in your avatar pic...

...and the rest of us guitar players...are well acquainted with.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

25. I'm a musician too.

I am auditory and kinesthetic, so I learn music with finger memory and auditory feedback (wrong notes).

My piano teacher told me that Arthur Rubinstein was visual. That he could imagine a piece of piano music in his head and just mentally pick off the notes. I don't know if that is true or not.

[HopeHoops]

3. Yeah. Her name was "Mrs. Hunter".

I came out of the class doing 50wpm without a mistake. A couple of years later I was up to 80wpm without mistakes. I can still do that.

[texanwitch]

4. If I tried to type faster there were a lot of mistakes.

I am so happy to be typing on a computer keyboard now.

[HopeHoops]

6. We used IBM Selectrics. Correcting mistakes was a royal pain in the ass.

[texanwitch]

9. I don't remember how we corrected mistakes.

The teacher counted mistakes against your grades.

I just stayed at 40 wpm which isn't that bad.

[Worried senior]

15. Learned on the old manuals,

had two electric typewriters but the class pets got those, no taking turns there.

Thought I was in heaven when I got the selectric, loved that machine.

Remember the yellow tape we used for correcting errors? Correcting the carbon copies was something else but White out was a great invention that made that chore easier.

[Still Blue in PDX]

5. Similarly, my kids who haven't spent 40 years with a QWERTY keyboard text much more quickly than I.

I don't get it. Last time I took a test my net typing speed was in the 140s, but I can't text with a durn.

[texanwitch]

7. I can't text well either.

If I really have to text it takes a long time.

I see people texting reallly fast, I don't know how they do it.

[Chan790]

19. It's automatic mostly.

2-A
22-B
222-C
3-D
33-E
333-F
...
etc.

After a while you immediately think B and hit 22. It's no different than learning to type on any other repetitive-stroke or multi-simultaneous keypad like the ones for TDD and braille typewriters...after a while you just do it automatically without much thought.

[Baitball Blogger]

10. Muscle memory. Lots of repititious exercises that reinforces muscle memory.

[texanwitch]

11. We got plenty of that in that class.

I wished we had better records to listen to.

[MiddleFingerMom]

12. I type with about 6-8 fingers most of the time...

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... and regularly glance at the keyboard. I've been tested (as an adult) at about 55-60 wpm...
although my tester at Kelly Temps years ago (I used to tell people that, "Yes, I'm a Kelly Girl" --
a term they gave up so long ago that it used to draw a lot of blank stares) told me that I was the
first applicant she had ever seen with ZERO typos.
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Not so Type A (haha - get it?) about typos now.
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And in answer to your question?
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Duh.
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[texanwitch]

13. The finger on the right has strange eyes.

Or really looking at something.

[MiddleFingerMom]

14. Or they're not eyes... and that's a pretty common and natural effect of gravity!!!

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[pipi_k]

16. Long ago

I learned touch typing on the manual machines. It was hard for me to type the letters with my pinky fingers because they are double jointed, and I couldn't get enough pressure on them to type the letter without the end of my pinkies going backwards.

The IBM Selectrics were a life (and finger) saver.

Later, in business school, I learned simple data entry using the numbers keypad. I thought I would NEVER get it and was so discouraged. Luckily, the teacher liked me and was very encouraging. Eventually I learned, and I got very proficient.

Then I got a data entry job in the offices of an HMO. Where the computers they used had keypads with numbers reversed from what I used in school. Took a while, but I learned, and I got even faster, being able to whip off literally thousands of numbers per day.

Anyway, I see it as my fingers having little brains of their own. Just like my hands or feet. I can walk up or down stairs with no problem, but if I pay attention, I'll fall up or down the stairs.

Auto-pilot is cool.

[pinboy3niner]

17. It's spooky. My fingers just seem to know where to go...

[nolabear]

18. I never learned to touch type but I don't really look either.

If I don't think about it I rip along really fast but I do have to have my gaze in the vicinity of the keyboard. Once I look up at the screen I get all fumblefingered even though I don't exactly look at what I'm typing. My style used to be called "journalism typing" after reporters who learned on the fly. Now I think it's just "typing".

[grasswire]

20. touch typing is the best thing I ever learned in school.

But I wonder why I don't have to think about each individual letter as I type words and sentences and pages of stuff that's flowing out of my thought process. It just comes. I think, and my fingers move, and the thought is on the screen instantaneously. Weird and cool.

[texanwitch]

21. I had stopped typing for awhile, before computers were common.

I had to take a computer class for work, and I had forgot our to type.

After about a week the skill came back, suddenly I was touch typing.

In junior high we had to take typing, everyone.

[trof]

22. 'Business College' typing class. Black keys, no letters.

The summer I was 13, mom sent me to business school.
'Massey Business College'.
She was a working, single mom and I guess she
1. Wanted to try and keep me off the streets and out of trouble for the summer, and
2. Let me learn a valuable skill.

The classroom had about 3 dozen desks with typewriters.
No letters or numbers on any of the keys.
In the front of the classroom was big chart with the keyboard layout depicted.
This was the only reference we had as to what letters were where.

The instructor told us where to place our fingers.
Left fingers on ASDF - right fingers on JKL;.
You'd reach UP to the QWERTYUIOP line and DOWN to ZXCVBNM,.line.
As I remember it, the only thing thumbs were used for was the space bar and CARRIAGE RETURN!
A few spaces before the end of a line a warning bell triggered and you'd hit the return lever with your right thumb and and hear that satisfying ZZZZZZ of the return ratcheting down to the next line.

There was no 'spell check'.
Not even 'white-out'.
We had a thin wheel abrasive eraser with an attached brush to clean the erasure debris from the paper.
If you erased too much or too hard you wore a hole in the paper.
Not good.


We began with simple exercises. 2 and 3 letter words, and progressed from there.
I got very adept at touch typing.
Unfortunately, if you don't use it, you lose it.
I'm still pretty good at typing, but strictly 2 fingers now.

[benld74]

23. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy brown dog. Ad Naseum in high school

[MissMillie]

24. I learned to type in high school

DECADES ago.

If the teacher caught you looking, she'd tape a piece of paper on the typewriter so that it would cover your hands and the keyboard.

I got such a charge over the TV commercial for EZ Eyes keyboard that makes the numbers and letters bigger on the keys. I thought the whole point was not to look at the keys.