Do You H & P?

[cabinetman]

I performed a bit of a test last night. Being a rightie, I was having a sandwich and tried typing with just my left hand. Back in high school, I took a typing class, yeah, that's right. Primarily because the teacher was fresh out of college and was a honey, and the class was all girls (ambient stimuli).

Anyway, I learned to type with both hands, using proper finger placement. But after years of abuse, my fingers don't work as well, and I hunt and peck with both hands, mostly with the index fingers. But what was unique, just knowing where on the keyboard all the keys are didn't matter. Using just the left hand was like starting over. I guess it's that familiarity with which keys are purposed for the right and left hand.
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[Uncle Cracker]

Despite many attempts at typing class as a youngster, I never could master 10-finger typing. So, I just eased into my current 2-finger style. I do fall back into a 1-finger, left hand only variant, as many years of CAD work have necessitated a combo mouse/keyboard approach. There was an interesting time in the interim, as old-style CAD utilized a digitizer with a menu overlay and 16-button puck prior to mouse conversion. During that time, I was furiously working puck and 16-buttons with right hand, and entire PC keyboard with left hand. It was interesting just how fast I could go with that setup.

[Richard in Smithville]

I find that I have developed a very good h&p method using two fingers on each hand plus thumbs for the space bar.

[LinuxRandal]

There are some typing programs you can use to increase your skill. Even some open source ones.

That said, sometimes I do use the biblical method (seek and yee shall find) but that is mostly due to smaller keyboards (netbook), or my goofed up pinky (slashed a muscle on a exhaust heat shield helping a friend change a fuel pump).

I've thought about trying Dvorak, since I am effectively a nine finger typist.

[Pappy]

Never took lessons, but use both hands to type. Wife is a touch typist and watching me drives her nuts. I have to look at the keyboard but I do fairly well.

[leehljp]

Similar to Cab, I took a typing class in HS because there were 28 girls in that class and two open spots after the first day. Teacher said I could start the second day. I did.

I think that was the most useful class I took in HS and it has paid off a thousand fold since. Never forgot what I learned. I continued to use a typewriter until my first personal computer in '86.

[LCHIEN]

i though H&P was huff and puff.
apparently it has something to do with typing using only two fingers.

[LinuxRandal]

i though H&P was huff and puff.
apparently it has something to do with typing using only two fingers.

Hunt and Peck, or hunt and pick if your a guessing speller.

[radhak]

When I just hit my teens my dad insisted i spend the summer vacations attending typing classes. It had all girls but I never noticed them : I was too busy feeling embarassed and trying to hide myself from my friends if they ever ventured in that area.

But it served its part - I've always been the fastest typist (not counting professional typists of course) at college and at work.

Nowadays I use it as my lone 'superpowers' to amaze my girls; the other day they asked me to demonstrate to their friends how I could type whatever they were saying while talking to them (with eye contact) and everybody went - whoa, that's cool! That high lasted a few long minutes ...

That has also meant that I hate using the mouse and configure my keyboards for all sorts of personalization just so I could avoid the mouse a wee bit more.

[RAFlorida]

As Cabinetman, I too took class for typing

in high school. My girlfriend at that time got me into it. Glad too. I use all ten fingers and do 40 or more per/minute. If I have to hunt and peck, I have to see where the keys are. Strange; with all fingers they KNOW where the keys are, but H & P, gotta look for 'em. But it paid off because several jobs required typing for inventory, ordering, job completion, supervision, etc.

[crokett]

I took a typing class in high school because my school required it. Along the way I somehow forgot how to type using my pinkies so I am an 8-finger typist.

[master53yoda]

My experience with typing has been kind of interesting, I to took a class in high school my freshmen year and got to about 40 words a minute. I have worked in the consulting engineering environment which meant i had to do a lot of reports rather then drawings etc. What always interested me was how many engineers H & Pd and never learned how to type.

When my MS started to get bad the nerve signals to my left hand slowed down slower then my right hand and i got a whole new batch of misspelled words. Like vlave instead of valve and fotm instead of form. I had to slow the keyboard repeat down and myself way down or every thing was wrong. I type about 15 to 20 words per minute now. this is a sample of what happens when i try to go fast.
"Bt4 central is a asgreeeatplaace to go and taalk aboiut tooolals."
That was without any corrections.

Have a good day.

[Garasaki]

If I have to hunt and peck, I have to see where the keys are. Strange; with all fingers they KNOW where the keys are, but H & P, gotta look for it

That's me too.

I can blast em out pretty quick, looking at the screen is even optional.

But if I have to H/P, for instance I do occasional foruming whilst holding a baby (which I do almost exclusively in my left hand although I am a rightie ), which will require some 1 handed H/P typing, and man is it slow and frustrating to me.

I also do CAD at work but use the keyboard to enter 99% of commands and have personalized commands to keep most of them on the left side of my keyboard so I can use the mouse with the right hand.

[scmhogg]

I also took typing in HS. But, it didn't take. I use all fingers, but I don't stay on the home keys. In 1972, I typed the California Bar exam, on a manual typewriter. Three days, with an average, 40 pages per day. Whew!

Until we got computers, I did a lot of dictating to 70+ WPM secretaries on IBM Selectrics. Now, I do most of my own typing.

My youngest, now 24, learned his alphabet at 3, on a Tandy CoCo. He is now an amazingly fast typist, albeit unorthodox. He didn't learn his ABC's, he learned it as qwerty.

Steve

[phi1l]

Being an engineer, I never typed at all though graduate school & only started when I got a computer. Started with one finger & now I am up to mostly 6 & sometimes 7 or 8 . Actually, I am now at the point where I only have to think the word, & my finger type the letters. I do spend a lot of time watching the keyboard, but I think that's just because I have nothing better to look at while typing. I have also noticed that my typing is getting a bit lisdexic as one hand sometimes gets ahead the other