Keyboard skills/ Typing

Pennywise

No need to "learn". The more you type, the better you will become at doing it automatically without looking. I can type without looking at the keys - never had a lesson in my life and never done any of the online routines. It's just the sheer amount of typing that I've done, first on manual typewriters and then onto computer keyboards. I don't use the "right" fingers on the "right" keys (I once looked up how it should be done). The more you type, you "learn" the patterns that you have to type on the keyboard and you find yourself using different fingers on different keys from one word to another (which goes against touch typing where each key has a designated finger - that's actually slower at first until you build up speed with practice).

As for the layout of the traditional typewriter, it's not as simple as slowing down the typist - it was planned a lot more in depth than that - it's all about which letters are used the most, which letters are used more often before/after eachother, and also the letters are planned so that the most common keystrokes that go together were well separated in the machine so that they didn't collide. Basically, a well thought out pattern that made typing as fast as possible but at the same time, slow enough so that the mechanism didn't jam.

I really wouldn't like an A-Z keyboard. That's fine for occasional typers who don't know where the keys are, but it will be a lot slower for medium to heavy users. For speed, you need the most commonly used keys to be relatively central.

To the OP, I really wouldn't advise learning to type "properly" - it seems a long drawn out process to go through all the routines and drills and could take a long time to get up any decent speed. It would slow you down at first. I'd say you'd be far better just doing more and more typing, writing anything, so that you learn where all the keys are. The more you type, you'll become naturally quicker, even if it's not the "touch typing" method. I've seen very fast typists using just their 2 index fingers.

SandC

I agree with Idiophreak, people seem to manage to type just fine even if they do look at the keyboard.

I learnt to touchtype at school and it is useful, but learning to do it is boring and repetitive and it's all about practice.

So far as the keyboard layout is concerned, the qwerty keyboard was designed for ease of use, not really jamming of old fashioned keys You should start with your index fingers on the 'f' and 'j' key. Your keyboard may have a little ridge on those keys and that's so you know without looking that you are on the right starting point. When you learn to touch type you are taught which fingers to use for which keys - all designed for ease of use and lesser used letters such as 'q' and 'z' and all the punction marks and numbers are situated further away from the fingers than the more used keys.

For example, you use your left index finger to type f, t, r, b and v. You use your right index finger to type j, y,u, n and m. The space bar is typed using the thumbs.

But it doesn't really matter to be honest.

malcumms7898

I remember years ago there was an arcade game you used to get in bowling alleys and so on called House of the Dead, or something like that. Someone made a mod of it called "Typing of the Dead" which was a pretty fun way of trying to increase your typing speed. Rather than shooting at the zombies, each zombie had a word attached to it which you had to type in to kill them. I am not sure if you can still get this game or what, I have not played it for years - but if you can get hold of it it might be a more fun way of learning.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Typing_of_the_Dead

KevInChester

I was just going to suggest that very same game

LittleVoice

An original design for the keyboard was much more alphabetical - remnants remain with the qwerty layout.

It is a myth that it evolved to slow down the typewriter - as has been said above, it was to help avoid bars clashing as much as possible.

It is also not true that the home keys are the most commonly used letters - the letter E is the most frequently used letter in English and is not a home key.