Do You Use Two Fingers?

[Mr__Bill]

I too took a typing class in the ninth grade. Today if I just type and don't think about it I still use all my fingers and thumbs. But as soon as I stop to think about it I start having to hunt and often can't find the right key. What I do do is often type with the wrong hand but right finger resulting in mistyped words that the spell checker has a real hard time with. Often too one hand is faster than the other.

On an electric typewriter my father using only two fingers and his thumb on his right hand and a finger and thumb on his left could type 187 WPM. Except all he could type that fast was a paragraph, yup 187 words long that went "And all other household good including....."

Bill, on the Sunny Oregon Coast. I don't misspell I just mistype

[crokett]

I don't use my pinkies when I type.

[twistsol]

I hated typing in high school, but it was a required course. They had special typewriters where all the keys were black. A quarter century later, I can now type close to 70 WPM. The biggest problem that I have is that the shift key doesn't come up quickly enough so I often get double caps at the beginning of words.

I use a program called MacSpeech Dictate, and it keeps up with dictation with very few errors, certainly fewer than if I were typing it myself. Yes, I do feel stupid talking to my computer but I work alone in my basement most of the time.

[RAFlorida]

As Lee, Mike and Hank Lee posted, I too

took class in high school. My girlfriend then was in the class and I figured that was a way to spend some time with her. Yeah, I was the only dude in the all female class, but it was a lot of fun! Haven't seen her in ages, but I can still type around 40 wpm without the use of my eyes.

[cabinetman]

took class in high school. My girlfriend then was in the class and I figured that was a way to spend some time with her. Yeah, I was the only dude in the all female class, but it was a lot of fun! Haven't seen her in ages, but I can still type around 40 wpm without the use of my eyes.

Was she your type?
.

[jackellis]

I type with whatever fingers work, usually about 7 or 8. I did not take typing in high school and I still have to look at the keys sometimes, but I can type fast enough to get by in a job that requires a lot of writing.

My mother was a very fast typist on both manual and electric typewriters - one of those who could type faster than the machine would allow. She would have been terrific on word processors and computers, but they hadn't been invented yet when she passed away.

I don't have any nostalgia for correction tape and correction fluid. Or paper, either. Most of what I write stays in the form of bits and bytes.

[Knottscott]

Our typing teacher was young and HOT! Alot of guys took typing at our high school! ...and that was before PC's were popular.

[JR]

How nice it is to remember my typing teacher, Miss Spencer ("Do not call me Mrs., I am not married!"). She was was wellcrafted, a little beamy, but a nice prow. Her friend, Miss Potter, who taught French, was pretty, smart and nice. Oh, the dreams of a 14-year-old.

Snort. Wah? Oh, yeah. I am a touch typist, but my years as a repairman tought me to have a light touch, which sometimes causes misspellings. F7.

JR

[RayintheUK]

Like many others, I've developed my own system - a sort of "super-peck" that works very well for me. I'm fast and accurate, using quite a few fingers, until I have to think about it!

I tried "doing it properly," but that slowed me down so much, I just couldn't persevere with it. I've also tried speech recognition technology, but what a pain that was/is. More time spent correcting than dictating, even with loads of "training." Could be my accent, I suppose.

Ray.

[JR]

Could be my accent, I suppose.

LOL! Lucky you're not from Yorkshire!

JR

[JimD]

I also took typing in high school. I do not frankly remember why at the moment. It could have been girls or it could have been I thought it would be an easy A. In any event I type about as fast as my admin. I slow down a lot if I have to use anything other than letter keys and a period. I do not remember the year but it was on a manual typewriter. Must have been in the early 70s.

Jim

[cabinetman]

Could be my accent, I suppose.

Ray.

I don't detect any accent.
.

[Schleeper]

My mother recommended I take typing in HS, but I didn't want any part of it. I took German, instead. (A lot of good THAT did me! I took two more years after that, and I still can't speak it.)

I hunted and pecked (or had my wife type) for years, until I became a computer junkie. Then I found Mavis Beacon, and now I'm fairly adept at the keyboard. (Still look at the keys sometimes, though.)

[shoottx]

I was drug into typing at all. First I am old enough to be apart of the generation that changed from slide rules to calculators. I had always been a science guy and saw no need for any typing. And as a scientist English was also a foreign language. Then off to work and a real change of perspective.

In the great cosmic sense of justice, now all I do now is write. So my evolution of typing skills started with two fingers, slowly increased to several fingers while looking at the keyboard to Voice recognition. The problem I had was the buffer constraint in my head. I could not type as fast as my thought process. This creates a huge jumble on the screen. I use voice recognition for most of my work, I still don't use it for stuff like this yet.

[sscherin]

I guess I'm what you would call a modified hunt and peck..
I started as a 2 finger hunt and peck but then found the BBS world in the 80s..
Then I wasted way to much time in the 90's in IRC and got quite fast with what I can only be some evolved 8 finger hunt and pack scheme.. It works for me but I still have to look at times.

When I first started doing desktop support I would sometimes run across the data entry people who has no letters left on their keyboards.. They just wore them away typing all day long.