Typing class in the 10th grade with Mrs. Powell in the late 70s wasn't a lot of fun but I'm glad I took it. We had two IBM electric typewriters and the rest were manuals. The girls got to swap out on the electric while the guys rarely got a turn. My best time was 35 WPM on a manual because the one time I got to test on the electric, I made too many mistakes.

I took one of those online typing tests a little while back and tested in the low to mid 50s, but my fingers are more comfortable and I'm much more accurate typing in the low to mid 40s.

I max out at around 110-120 wpm when I really get going on a good keyboard.

I did a little bit of "typing tutor" type stuff in middle school, but never took a formal typing class.

What really taught me to type fast was being a huge nerd and playing text-based online multiplayer games.

1. You have to be looking at the screen to read what's going on in the game. If you're looking at the keyboard, you might miss something that could kill your character. (This is also good practice for learning to read quickly.)

2. If you have to type commands every time you want to say anything to someone, want to swing a sword at a monster, want to run away from something big and scary, etc., there's a lot of incentive to type quickly and with few mistakes.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: maladat,

In my first legal job, my managing atty was a former high school teacher before she went into law.

She saw me doing the hunt and peck and promptly sent me to the local community college to take a typing class in the evening.

Now, I type like one of our steno pool secretaries - over 90 words a minute without looking at the keyboard.

Pretty good typist but arthritis in my right hand has slowed me down quite a bit. Learned in HS. I can also do 10 key calculator without looking if the keys are big enough and have some resistance.

I took 2 semesters of typing in high school--was the only boy in the class both times. Also was the best typist--the girls all hated me. I took the classes because I knew I'd need to type a lot of reports in college. It is a skill that has served me very well.

flashguh

My handwriting was/is trash so they put me on a computer in like 1st grade to type assignments but they didn't offer a typing class until 9th grade. I tested out of that class (both WPM and for errors) using my own method that uses probably 6 fingers. Generally don't need to look at the keyboard.

I "hunt & peck". Always have and I'm too old and lazy to learn correct way.

I worked with a guy in Radio news who really knew how to type on a manual typewriter.

Problem was.....if you said something to him, he would type the words you said into the story.

quote:

Originally posted by egregore:
Not very well. I'd say somewhere between the touch and hang-ten. I can find the letters mostly without looking but still make quite a few mistakes. I learned my relatively pitiful skills around high school age, on a manual typewriter. Words per minute? No idea.

This is me. I can type sentences without looking, I have to look at the keyboard for punctuation and numbers. Typing is the only course I ever failed in all my years of schooling. Since then, I can do a decent job. I don't know how fast I am either.

touch type - 45 wpm. 1971 7th grade typing class.

Yeah, took it in high school. I still have a Smith Corona manual in the closet.

I can't type as fast as I used to, but it's primarily because today's keyboards are so horrible! (and IMHO the Apple keyboards are the worst). I still have a few old IBM keyboards that I pull out when I have to do some serious key time.

Q: Do you know why most receptionists are such lousy typists?
A: Because they're hunt 'n peckers.

Self Taught, Touch Typing, pretty fast and accurate.

Benefits of being into computers since the mid 80s.

quote:

We had a secretary at our law firm who could type faster than the IBM correcting selectic she used. I've never seen anything like it. She made mistakes so rarely, finding one was an event..........

My engineering group was fortunate enough to have as a secretary, an ex-legal secretary, at lunch time she would take out the NYT crossword puzzle and fill it out on her Selectric. No mistakes, no mistypes, only the occasional reference to a dictionary, she scared the crap out of me and the rest of the engineers who could not spell or type.

My personal typing skills are poor, somewhere between four fingers and hang ten. I am entirely self taught with Mavis Beacon's help.

My spelling and proof reading skills also suck.

If my other hand is holding food or a beverage - or otherwise occupied - then I one-finger hunt-and-peck.

In 7th grade, AOL Imstant Messenger was all the rage, and brought up a lot of the texting abbreviations used today. I was also in a typing/keyboarding class. I decided then that if i was going to learn to type, i needed to avoid the "cool new" abbreviations and learn to type. So i did, and it paid off. I even bought the same typing program we used in class to use at home and keep up my practice. I can now average about 90 wpm. I know the key board well, so texting is easier as well. Thank goodness i had the maturity in 7th grade to take something seriously. It also helped that my mom was a good typist but my dad was and still is pretty slow. So i had encouragement from both sides to learn to type, and to learn right.

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:
I didn't take typing. I took shorthand, the only male in class. This was at the suggestion of an attorney who I had consulted about being one. I ended up working for him, while in high school as a clerk/office boy/errand runner.

I'm self taught at typing, barely adequate.

We had a secretary at our law firm who could type faster than the IBM correcting selectic she used. I've never seen anything like it. She made mistakes so rarely, finding one was an event, and when her husband got out of the Navy and moved back to Oklahoma we were heartbroken.

I took type and shorthand in high school, was one of the very few boys in the class (all the girls were cute). I do the kybd and 10-k without looking, quite useful in teaching business.

And I worked with a couple of secretaries who could type as fast as the IBM correcting selectrics. We had about six such typewriters in our office, all of the same model-color-spec. Each secretary could pick out their own typewriter blindfolded, just by the slight nuances of the touch/feel while typing.

I, too, learned in high school, the class would have been in fall 1971, my sophomore year. I've typed pretty much everything I have ever written other than note-taking since then, as it was (for me) much faster than hand-writing.

Today, I am picky about my keyboards because they do make a difference to me. Though I am not a PC gamer, I use a gaming keyboard because it had the best feel for me.

I learned to type at an early age. In high school I got kicked out of typing class since I was doing 120+ wpm. I'm probably slower now as I'm getting older but I still type pretty fast.

My mother who typed phenomenal words per minute demanded I take a summer school class before entering high school.

Manual typewriters, all girls except for me and one other guy whose Father was a Druggist. They would post bar graphs on the wall with number of words per minute and no errors. All the girls knew how to type already, I sucked at it. I got a D to start high school. Told me that I needed to stop looking at the keys or he would fail me. Very negative experience. It was almost a gender thing then, MEN do not type. I only knew one other Dad who knew how, he was a chemist.

I paid someone to do my typing in College. Then came the computer age. I learned at my own pace, and am passable at present. The fact that you could correct errors without using white out and carbon paper made it alot easier.

I still do a lot of dictation in my work, since that is faster, but the fact that I can type allows me to do lots of things now. I guess my Mom was right.

We got our first family PC in the mid-80s. Bought whatever version of Mavis Beacon from our local Egghead Software and I went to town. Didn't really get fast until I started coding in high school, but now I'm comfortably at 80+ wpm with 95% accuracy. Comes in handy when I'm writing briefs.

-Rob