April 08, 2004

• Lets see shall I. While I've been typing this I've used both thumbs, all the fingers on my right hand, except the little finger, plus the index finger on my left hand, and thats it, I think. So six. And sometimes I use others if its some real odd combination of buttons I use. Interesting hey
• Wow, a meta-more inside. Personally, I use all of them, with my thumbs reserved for the space bar. Wait... Now I actually think about it, I don't use my right thumb at all. I have a completely obsolete digit!
• I liked the mystic (more inside) fun, too.
• i was prompted to ask by this.. "ploarizing" = "polarizing" damn two-fingered typing... posted by caution live frogs at 02:42PM UTC on April 06 i wonder if that was just a joke, though? i use only a few of these fingers, regardless of lessons in school. i have very short fingers and can't reach the whole keyboard properly without moving my hand so much that i forever lose the return spot over the correct keys....i think they passed me in that class back then out of pity as i never broke the zero word barrier....that's if anyone was watching. left to my own devices i can go fairly fast in my own style. i never had to use a keyboard during my career....i had a secretary - politically incorrect language but i forget what she's called now. we're still good friends and talk. / must ask her. so am i a lonely monkey? i always watch others at their keyboards with the greatest awe as they look at the screen and fingers fly all over and they never have to look and see where their fingers are.... *sigh* it must be 'finger memory!' and i have premature senile digital dementia!
• monkeys can be such brats! and i'm running late and have to go. so the follow up question for you smarty-pants...probably bright, red leather britches.....is do you have to look down at the keyboard? i shall return. stay out of trouble or ...or....or - well, i'll think of something!
• so the follow up question for you smarty-pants...probably bright, red leather britches.....is do you have to look down at the keyboard? Yes. Yes I do. (I wish I'd taken typing classes at some point, really. Writing out pages of code takes so bloody long)
• I learned to touch type in 8th grade. On a typewriter. Uphill. Both ways. I use all 10 fingers, and I keep the base of my wrists off of "wrist rests" and the desk.
• I don't, as I am typing god. I find it really freaks people out, if you touch-type, and talk to someone at the same time, keeping eye contact with them.
• I use all of them .
• I use them all. Depending on what letter the word I am typing ends with determines which thumb I use on the spacebar.
• I used to be a two-finger typist. But over the years I gradually started using four, then six, and now I pretty much use them all. Unless I'm typing about Tater Tots, in which case I type with my left hand only.
• I'm not a touch typist, but I don't two finger either. I guess it's something like 5-7ish... most of the time. All 10 see action at some point or other though. Except maybe my left pinky.
• dxlifer - i wasn't making a joke, honest. i've made it through elementary and high school, undergrad education, and 5 years of grad school (so far) as a two-fingered typist. ok, i do occasionally use a thumb for the spacebar, but my left & right index fingers do 98% of the work for me. sure, hunt-and-peck typing is kind of unorthodox and much slower than the speed demons like my wife who can use most of their hand at once, and sure it gets hard trying to copy something when i have to look at the keyboard while typing. but (to quote another two-fingered typist, the surprisingly prolific western writer louis l'amour) as the years go by, it's "a lot less hunt and a lot more peck". i think my reluctance came from the fact that "computers" classes i had all through primary school ALWAYS consisted of nothing more than learning to type, rather than learning how to actually use a computer. (i feel that this is likely because the instructors knew next to nothing about computers to begin with - one in particular i recall insisted that all of us refer to a 3.5" floppy as a "diskette", and would take us to task if we just said "disk" or "floppy". cripes, what made him such a tool? did his dad used to beat him if he said "car" rather than "automobile" or somethin?) plus, i'll never get carpal tunnel syndrome from hunt and peck typing. anyway, after reading an article on the dvorak keyboard layout years ago, i made up my mind that i'd learn to type when the majority of the world got rid of this godawful, hard to use, pain that is the familiar QWERTY layout and moved to the ergonomic design that dvorak spent his life trying to convince people was better (and ended in failure, for the most part). so go ahead - start using a real keyboard and force me into taking up typing.
• cap'n hook, here. actually, i USED to type with just the two index fingers, and now, after five years (insert "what am i doing with my life?!" sigh here) of web design/development i have devised some sort of mutant typing pidgin involving my right index and thumb and everything on my left hand except the thumb and pinky. it is uglier than it is fast, and it is suprisingly fast...
• yes, dirtdirt, but how do you use the hook? you can't just bring up a hook in a typing thread and not explain the various uses of the hook. and, um... wait a minute... right index and thumb... left thumb and pinky... (counting)... say, where the hell is this hook anyway? wait, maybe better you don't tell us. (shudder)
• all of them! the more fingers the better, that's what i say. that applies to nearly everything in life, i may add.
• Touch typing 80 wpm, courtesy of 3 years temping as a legal secretary. Lucky me. ;P In 1999 my right index finger got smashed in a door and my hand was in a splint for several weeks. It didn't slow things down much. I got really good at one-handed typing, and as things healed I would add more fingers. It was actually really cool to see how adaptable our hands are.
• I use boxing gloves.
• Blaise, I type while looking at people, too! All 10 fingers here, fairly speedy. Annoyingly quick on the 10-key number pad, but that tends to happen to accountants. However, all of my male bosses without exception have been very bad 2-finger typists. It is odd to watch them type - it seems so inefficient to use only 2 fingers. But the oddest part is backspacing when they make a mistake. No thought to using arrow keys or the mouse. It's with that one finger.
• I use all my fingers, except if one hand is busy. Dvorak is overrated. I used it for about a year, never got faster, never felt more comfortable. In fact, the first time I ever got wrist pain was when I was teaching myself Dvorak. Keyboard shortcuts are harder in Dvorak (especially Emacs).
• For caution live frogs - the switcahbel dvorak/qwerty keyboard. Other Dvorak stuff: Urban Legends The QWERTY keyboard cannot be said to constitute evidence of any systematic tendency for markets to err. Very simply, no competing keyboard has offered enough advantage to warrant a change. The story of Dvorak's superiority is a myth or, perhaps more properly, a hoax. And an interesting Metafilter thread about dvorak keyboards. I've never used a Dvorak keyboard, so I can't comment, really.
• All 12 of 'em.
• Actually, put me down among the people who took typing in junior high school -- we used the old IBM Selectrics AND the old manual typewriters that took serious finger strength -- and became one of those people that everyone in class hated because I could type so damned fast. Up to 95 wpm.
• what a diverse bunch of simians we are in our habits and practice....regardless of opposing thumbs, amongst other things! i am always rattled when talking to someone on the phone who is taking information from me, entering it into the computer and talking to me at the same time. i can hear the keys clacking and wonder how they can ask/listen/process to fingertips simultaneously like that! i truly am in awe. it's a one dimensional task for me. lots of time i just use one finger...no!...not that one... my right index. since i know the alphabetical layout of the keyboard so well, i can do this rapidly. or use just one hand and thus use all fingers, as i'm doing now. of course, my cordless keyboard is often in my lap. shinything, that finger will be with you a long time, methinks. i did the same to my right thumb tip, thirty years ago. the nail never grew back intact and the whole tip remains numb. i sure hope your's does better. i shall check out this other keyboard. / waves her short but elegant fingers.......bye.
• I got my typing speed up to 70 wpm bbsing and playing speed trivia back in 1995. And then I started typing and proofing dissertations for extra money so I hover around 90-100 wpm these days. I use all my fingers but only the left shift key (who knows why)and I don't look at my fingers unless I have to type numbers. Also, did you know you type the word poink with one hand? (poink! requires two though)
• Huh weird... I too use only the left shift key. I have no idea why that it, but I just realized it. As well, I only ever hit the spacebar with my right thumb...So I guess I type with 9 fingers.
• Dude! I only hit the space bar with my right thumb too! Twins!
• don't seem to use the right control key much. and i'm fast as a mo'fo with the arrow keys, i think that both are a holdover from my younger days addicted to doom... thanks for the dvorak links, y'all. the only proof i ever got that dvorak was better was the fact (listed in the article that i had read) that all world speed typing records were currently held on dvorak boards. and if you wanna try the layout without buying a new keyboard, you can buy dvorak overlays for most boards... you can also tell windows that your keyboard is dvorak layout, and it will remap each keypress accordingly. which (without the overlay) would probably be pretty darn confusing... (dirigibleman - keyboard shortcuts maybe harder in dvorka 'cause they were likely originally mapped to be easy in QWERTY? changing the keys would thus change the ease of keypress for specific letters...)
• ah hell. "dvorka". one problem with two-fingered typing is that often i will hit a key or two before my other hand will get to the prevous letter in the word, thus effectivly giving me dyslexic typing like "dvorka". or, for that matter, "ploarizing". without which we might not have this thread.
• 90-100wpm?? Daayyam! i got a D in h.s. typing class for too many errors, but then i wrote a thesis and - it all balanced out
• I took typing in ninth grade, and for typing tests, the school had a bunch of typewriters that had all the keys painted black, so that you couldn't peek and cheat. Like Kimberly, I only look at the keyboard to type numbers, otherwise I can do that maintain-eye-contact-while-typing thing too.
• Thanks to prehensile digits, I can type with ten, use three on the coffee cup, pick my nose, give someone the bird, dial the phone, and scratch my butt, all while using the channel changer. Damn, but it's great to be a Monkey!
• I took typing class in highschool on computers that were designed to work like typewriters. We had to center manually by counting spaces and it beeped at the end of each line where we had to hit enter. WMP post class? 35wpm. *snicker*
• Obviously, my typing dislexia wasn't cured either.
• WHAT! Monkey =/= smartass *mutters* razza razza takesallthefunoutofeverything, humph! Ok, so I really type with ten, use only the left pinkie on the shift key and right thumb on the spacebar. I think that came from 10th grade touch typing class On a typewriter. Uphill. Both ways. (boo, was that you I passed trudging along?) I'm not that fast anymore thanks to mousing and no practice, but I can talk to people whilst typety typety typety typing. dirtdirt: exactally how DID you come by that hook? I don't care how ya'll get the job done, but just don't expect me to have to WATCH a two-fingered ty-pest. *shudders*
• The shiny spot on my spacebar shows that I always space with my right thumb. Also I only use the right shift key. So I'd say I heavily favor my right hand. Except I type Y (and B, but I'm not sure which hand is supposed to do that) with my left hand, not my right, so the left hand doesn't get completely shafted. Which is all to say, 9 fingers. 80-90 wpm, depending on state of mind.
• Hope I'm not too late. I type with different fingers on different keyboards. On a laptop keyboard, index finger to ring finger on left hand, index finger to pinky right hand. Index finger, right, for space. On a Microsoft NAtural keyboard, all fingers and both thumbs, but due to having learnt my typing on an old fashioned clackety typewriter, I underutilise my pinkies (they weren't strong enough to depress the keys back then). Anybody else ever get bleeding cuts when learning on typwriters because their fingers slip between the keys? On a normal keyboard, index to pinky both sides, but I find that my right pinky doesn't do much at all. I can type about 35-40wpm, but am abyssmally slow when typing numbers (hunt and peck style). Funny thing is I can type blinfolded if it's just letters and punctuation. And the saddest thing is I've seen two finger typists go faster than I do.
• Count me in on the right-hand-only-spacebar-usin'-lefty-shifter-only-look-at-numbers Club.
• wow, nice to see the 'right-hand-only-spacebar-usin'-lefty-shifter-only-look-at-numbers Club' representing. My friends always thought that that system was so funny... I've been scarred for life.
• I use all my fingers in a "yeah its kinda the home row pattern" but I've been told I type oddly. I tend to bounce my fingers off the keys rather than just pressing them so when I'mm really getting into it I look like I'm directing a miniature symphony.
• I too only use the right side of my space bar. The right side of the space bar is actually broken from being used so much, but instead of switching to the left thumb, I just hit it harder with my right thumb. I use all of my fingers except for my pinkies (which I swear are retarded or someting, I also don't use them when I play guitar, unless I have to), and my left thumb. Actually I just noticed that I hit the space bar with my left thumb, only after the end of a sentence, when I double space after a period. Wierd, I never thought this out in detail.
• now...another question... since this is becoming so interesting, i have to ask more. since all of you 'habituated' typists seem to have now suddenly become more concious of your finger movements and patterns and styles.... has this made you any faster? did some new efficiency or inefficiency suddenly come to you? still just curious, george.
• I tried to fix my flaws today, and it worked horribly. Forcing myself to hit the right shift keys resulted in about a million typos. I hate /, ' and enter...My pinky has no idea where the shift key is, and I'm not about to let it learn. It's too painful to live through the mess it would create
• jsust grTat nwo i kant tpEy at ell tAhnkz to tish psto dnma Yuo! /dsiGrNutleD
• I passed Pitman's Elementary typing with a certified speed of 40wpm about 20 years ago, but it's been downhill ever since. Wait - downhill should be faster - but you know what I mean...
• While attempting to wacth what fingers I use to type, I became very fucking inefficient, actually. Also, my spelling got much much worse. Damn self awareness.
• Since I work at a company that does POS software, I've gotten to be able to touch-type on the number pad, too. Also, when I look at my fingers as I type, it screws me up. Weird.
• Ha, ha! Me, too. Nine fingers, right thumb shift only, wrists up, doesn't watch board, but has to look at numbers (except for @). I do use both pinky's for shifting, though. Fly on a good day, with lot's of caffeine.
• I was a horrible typist until I figured out that you have to think in whole words, not letters. If you overanalyze how you're typing too much it gets all screwy. So I think I'm stuck with how I type now.
• I stab away with about six fingers at around 40 wpm, but Mrs Wolof touch types at 130 or better. She really is very good.
• I've been touchtyping for as long as I've used computers, because there used to be a learn-to-type programme on my first computer and I used to teach myself to touchtype when I got bored. I never use my left thumb, and only use my right thumb for pressing the spacebar. I type all the other keys with the rest of my fingers, and don't watch the keyboard most of the time. dxlifer: I don't know about other people, but at least for me, it's better if I'm not conscious about my typing. Typing is just an intermediary step between my thought process and the computer -- so the less I think about the middle step, the faster I can get my thoughts on the screen. ... I hope that made sense to you.
• It all depends on what the keyboard I have to use is like. Two of the PCs I use have a 'natural keyboard', which throws me sometimes, though it is a lot easier to type with for long periods (6 or more hours). The portable's keys are really too small for my fingers so I may more frequently hit two letters -- or the wrong letter-- at one stroke. The fourth machine has a conventional mouse and flat keyboard -- the mouse I have never used enough to get used to, preferring trackball-types or drawing pads. I have no idea what the numerical pad --?-- anyway, the area off to the far right of the keyboard -- is for. Sometimes I look at the keys, but not if I'm writing what I'm thinking. If I'm trying to copy something, or use certain of the non-alphabet keys (~, @ etc) I do look as I use 'em so seldom I haven't got a real grasp of them.
• I did telemarketing/teleresearching for awhile. So I can type fairly fast, ("And what would you say you liked most about Chunky Chicken Butts?") but then I end up having to go back and edit for mistakes. Stupid spelling. Having a third grade teacher who won't let you play computer games till you can pass one of those damn typing games without losing really helps. I hated the little blimp guy so much in that game. He always had words like xylophone. Bastard.
• ah, tickingclock, that state of the tao of keyboarding is just what i strive for and what is so elusive. the keyboard ever remains a physical barrier as i can not make the mental/physical disconnection when i must forever be conscious of where my fingers are. from that home base position in touch typing to the most basic shift key moves my hand beyond my physical memory of the home base position. then my thoughts simply stop at the keyboard, since if i'm looking at the screen then all the errors completely distract what is in my mind.... should i scribble on a word pad first? start training myself? i'm not sure if i can handle the thought of 'thinking onto my monitor'.....that's a weird concept to me.....i'll have to dwell on that one.....i've spent my life with pen and paper and like the tactile translation of thought onto something. and, like beeswacky, i'm lost with all those odd shaped marks and the function keys are totally beyond me. i did like the compressed keyboard on the laptop i used to have. i checked out the dvorkak keyboard, but that is designed for people who don't know how to spell. the current keyboard is designed for the english language, as it was written at whatever date....hence the layout optimises common letters and their combinations to make them readily available for common word usage. now the american english leaves out and changes several vowel usages that are still honoured - pun, indeed - by other nations and common words have changed, so perhaps it could be rethought in those terms. the other board simply clusters types of letters for people who don't understand their essential rules of usage and would use spellcheck all the time now anyway. hmmm....which leads to another curious george question....can i reprogram keys on my keyboard? i think i should offer a c/g question regularly. my friends all groan when i phone and say "i have a dumb question for you"....when there's something i can't figure out or don't understand i always call the person who's thoughts i'd like to hear and ask...dumb question time. and now i've a 909 brothern to ask dumb questions of! i'm boggled by the prospect! there's so much i've never figured out. / she leaves, scratching head slowly and pondering deep questions of significance to no one....
• dxlifer - if the QWERTY layout is designed for the english language, why is the most-used key (E) not centered in the home row, yet the semicolon is? that was the whole thing with QWERTY and why dvorak wanted to change it - the keyboard was designed to slow you down, so that you wouldn't hit too many keys too quickly and get the typewriter stuck... dvorak laid out keys with ease of use in mind - most-used keys under the fingers, lesser-used keys elsewhere. (ps you can type "typewriter" by only using the top row of keys... used as a selling point, originally) and, uh, i may be a two-fingered idjit, but sure enough the right side of my spacebar is all shiny from use, not so the left. one of my friends had a compaq keyboard, the idiots manufacturing it decided to make it more "usable" by placing a backspace key in a more accessible position. that is, the entire right half of the spacebar became a giant backspace key. it was the most obnoxious useless chunk of annoying idiot idea i ever saw. hopefully whoever thought of it got fired. i know of no one who ever got used to that style of keyboard - we all just cursed it repeatedly as we watched it delete the last letter we had typed every time we tried to hit space...
• I'm pretty sure Querty was designed to slow typing, back when people could type faster than the typewriters could handle - they jammed. Anyone have a reference on that?
• From The Straight Dope. Be sure to read both responses and check the linked article too, although it's a bit long. I read it in print some time ago, and it's quite interesting. HowStuffWorks, like most other sites and books I've come across, is firmly on the side of the Dvorak keyboard. For those interested, the US Patent number for the Sholes typewriter is 79,265. (If you wanna read it in USPTO's website, you'll need a TIFF viewer program)
• well, that figures....designed by men and, through time, mostly used by women. perhaps now we'll start seeing some more innovation.
• Late, as usualI use mostly the index and middle fingers for letters and the twinkies for Ctrl, Shift, Alt & Enter. The spacebar is reserved for my thumbs. I can type without watching the keyboard for long periods but I can phase out of order and start typing the wrong keys so I must recheck the keyboard sometimes. I have realized, that instead of using one hand only for a side of the keyboard, I tend to follow a pianist pattern where all my fingers move over all the keyboard as to optimize the rate of typing. Like playing a tune.
• As a Dvorak convert, it saddens me to hear so many people complain that Dvorak's superiority is illusory. At the very least, Dvorak is no worse than QWERTY, and anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that it is much better. If nothing else Dvorak layout makes a hell of a lot more sense, so if Vulcan techno-linguists ever land on Earth and start questioning human keyboarding practices we Dvorak users will be able to withstand their withering alien logic. Of course, I use Kinesis-Ergo's brilliant contour keyboard with that crazy-ass left-hand backspace. (I estimate that that key has saved me at least an hour of my life, incidentally.) Finally, a quick question: why would you want to remap your keyboard if you felt like learning Dvorak? The whole point is that you don't want to have to look at your fingers as you type. I recommend pasting a good keyboard chart next to your monitor. Now: another topic. One of my best friends is a rather slim-fingered lady, and she complains to no end that our male-dominated keyboard engineering industry makes keyboards at least 150% too large for her hands. Have any of you fine female monkeys discovered a keyboard better sized to your needs?
• I have a Compaq alphanumeric qwerty keyboard that suits me down to the ground. I like one that has some clickiness because I love thhe productive sound of my fingers clacking away. I bought it for $5 at a MicroCenter in Santa Clara and have had it through the last five years and three computers. It's not too big, either -- I used to have a massive industrial-looking thing (still do, somewhere) that I liked the soft-key feel of, but it took up too much space. I'm watching myself type now and I use these fingers: all of my right hand (little finger for the shift key, index finger on space) and the middle three fingers on my left hand (little finger occasionally on shift). My right hand wanders all over the keyboard, though, so it's really only the middle finger of my left hand that does any work. Typing, that is. I never had formal typing/keyboarding lessons, but my speed is at about 80wpm with about 95% accuracy.
• Having very small hands myself, I find the Natural Keyboard by Microsoft much too big. Normal keyboards are a bit more preferable, but I find the laptop keyboards much more conducive for typing. I was thinking of getting one of those gimmicky keyboards which can be rolled up. Anybody bought one of those before? It's made of soft plastic and more like a mat than a keyboard.