Typing Tutor

[Armin]

Although I can type quite quickly, I've developed some very bad habits over the years. Share typing tutor programs you've had good experiences with so I won't waste my time guessing what's good.

[Maddi]

What you mean bad habits?

I don't follow any tutor, my hands just roam around the keyboard. I find my way much faster.

My technique:
Place your closest and most comfortable finger where the next key is going to be while you are pressing the current key.

Not:
This finger hits these keys, this finger hits these keys, etc.

I seem to be typing about 130wpm with my way.



I didn't know there were bad typing habits.

[iago]

I definitely have some bad typing habits, all of which stem from my complete non-use of the left-shift key. So, if I have to type, say, "<", (or even the quotation marks themselves), I have to remove my hands from home row.

[Sidoh]

I seem to be typing about 130wpm with my way.

Are you using Dvorak or something?  Barbara Blackburn, who was (is?) the world record holder for highest sustained WPM was only about 170 wpm, and she was using Dvorak, which typically increases typing speeds by about 70%.

[Krazed]

I seem to be typing about 130wpm with my way.

Are you using Dvorak or something?  Barbara Blackburn, who was (is?) the world record holder for highest sustained WPM was only about 170 wpm, and she was using Dvorak, which typically increases typing speeds by about 70%.

I was right at 130wpm in my typing class in high school..

[Sidoh]

I seem to be typing about 130wpm with my way.

Are you using Dvorak or something?  Barbara Blackburn, who was (is?) the world record holder for highest sustained WPM was only about 170 wpm, and she was using Dvorak, which typically increases typing speeds by about 70%.

I was right at 130wpm in my typing class in high school..

For how long and at what accuracy?  "Burst" WPM is kinda meaningless.  The longer you type, the more accurate the measure is.

[iago]

I do ~100wpm on "difficult" text (ie, Shakespearean).

(this site: http://www.typeonline.co.uk/typingspeed.php)

[Maddi]

Are you using Dvorak or something?  Barbara Blackburn, who was (is?) the world record holder for highest sustained WPM was only about 170 wpm, and she was using Dvorak, which typically increases typing speeds by about 70%.

No. I have my own unique typing style with my sexy QWERTY.

I do ~100wpm on "difficult" text (ie, Shakespearean).

(this site: http://www.typeonline.co.uk/typingspeed.php)

Yeah, my highest score on that one is 135 I think.

[deadly7]

Although I can type quite quickly, I've developed some very bad habits over the years. Share typing tutor programs you've had good experiences with so I won't waste my time guessing what's good.

Type To Learn is what we used in elementary school. It's tedious is all hell, and I don't even think it's sold anymore, but it taught me my typing habits, which are for the most part on par with what they're "supposed" to be to be optimal.

[Sidoh]

Are you using Dvorak or something?  Barbara Blackburn, who was (is?) the world record holder for highest sustained WPM was only about 170 wpm, and she was using Dvorak, which typically increases typing speeds by about 70%.

No. I have my own unique typing style with my sexy QWERTY.

The thing is, though, no matter how you use a qwerty keyboard, the keys are still spaced inefficiently.  It was designed to limit typing speeds.  It's impressive that you're able to attain (and hopefully sustain?) 130 WPM using it.

I have a friend who has been using Dvorak since she learned how to type.  I'd like to see what speed she can get to.

I'm only able to get 100-110 using conventional qwerty.  I would really like to switch to Dvorak.

(This is intended for the programmer-types): I've seen "Programmer's Dvorak" layouts.  I assume that this means they place semi-colon, braces, parenthesis, etc closer to homerow than on conventional Dvorak, but I'm not sure.  Have any of you guys tried it out? 

[Maddi]

The thing is, though, no matter how you use a qwerty keyboard, the keys are still spaced inefficiently.  It was designed to limit typing speeds.  It's impressive that you're able to attain (and hopefully sustain?) 130 WPM using it.

I have a friend who has been using Dvorak since she learned how to type.  I'd like to see what speed she can get to.

I'm only able to get 100-110 using conventional qwerty.  I would really like to switch to Dvorak.

(This is intended for the programmer-types): I've seen "Programmer's Dvorak" layouts.  I assume that this means they place semi-colon, braces, parenthesis, etc closer to homerow than on conventional Dvorak, but I'm not sure.  Have any of you guys tried it out? 

Well I don't see how QWERTY would limit typing speeds.
Homerow is highly over-rated.

[iago]

The thing is, though, no matter how you use a qwerty keyboard, the keys are still spaced inefficiently.  It was designed to limit typing speeds.  It's impressive that you're able to attain (and hopefully sustain?) 130 WPM using it.

It's not designed to limit typing speeds, it's designed to put characters that are used in conjunction away from each other.

[Falcon]

I think my typing habit is the worst here, I type mainly with my left hand.

[Sidoh]

The thing is, though, no matter how you use a qwerty keyboard, the keys are still spaced inefficiently.  It was designed to limit typing speeds.  It's impressive that you're able to attain (and hopefully sustain?) 130 WPM using it.

I have a friend who has been using Dvorak since she learned how to type.  I'd like to see what speed she can get to.

I'm only able to get 100-110 using conventional qwerty.  I would really like to switch to Dvorak.

(This is intended for the programmer-types): I've seen "Programmer's Dvorak" layouts.  I assume that this means they place semi-colon, braces, parenthesis, etc closer to homerow than on conventional Dvorak, but I'm not sure.  Have any of you guys tried it out? 

Well I don't see how QWERTY would limit typing speeds.
Homerow is highly over-rated.

It actually has very little to do with using home row.  It's how the commonly used letters are spaced from each other.  In Dvorak, all of the commonly used letters are bunched up, limiting the amount of moving around you have to do.  My understanding is qwerty was purposefully designed without this property.  When typewriters were still the common application of keyboards, the heads would jam up if the typists went too fast, so limiting how fast they could type was an advantage at the time.

The thing is, though, no matter how you use a qwerty keyboard, the keys are still spaced inefficiently.  It was designed to limit typing speeds.  It's impressive that you're able to attain (and hopefully sustain?) 130 WPM using it.

It's not designed to limit typing speeds, it's designed to put characters that are used in conjunction away from each other.

Isn't slower typing speeds a side-effect of this?  If you have to move around the keyboard more often (which you do if you want to satisfy the property you gave), isn't it the case that you'll be typing slower than if you didn't have to move around as much?

I bet there's a simple study you could do to see if this is the case.  The rough frequency of appearances of characters in English is common knowledge.  If you do something to compute the offsets of each key from every other key, then multiply by its frequency and average that, it seems like it'd be a good rough measure of how "efficient" a keyboard layout is.

[Newby]

Yeah, my highest score on that one is 135 I think.

First try on a laptop with a keyboard I'm unfarmilar with (CTRL+BACKSPACE doesn't work like that on a Mac!) in which I took probably close to a second to drag my mousepad to the "stop timer" button. So eh I'm not really impressed. :/

And iago: I never use the right shift key. :)