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Koodari
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
 
2007-08-02, 06:41

I learned the basics when I was about eight. We didn't have a computer at home but I got access to some computers for short periods of time provided I left them in working order. I found a cardboard chart that showed which key is meant for which finger. Then I just sat down with Notepad, put my fingers on the home row and started typing a copy of a random document page laying on the desk on my right side. Since I wanted to type without looking, I absolutely refused to look at the keyboard. When I had no clue where the key I wanted was, I would look at the chart on my left side, if necessary, and then attempt to find the key by touch and wait for it to show on the screen. Again and again, never lifting the fingers, never looking at the keyboard. It took a few hours each day of one weekend. I was awfully slow and made mistakes, of course, but by the third day the chart wasn't necessary.

Stubbornness ftw. If you want to learn to touch type, you will learn if you make the decision to never look at the letter keys again. It might help if you do like I did and start by typing something that has no function. Just duplicate some random page of a book or magazine you have on your desk. If you were doing actual work or posting on forums, you have secondary goals and that might cause impatience, a subsequent slip and looking at the keys.

I do the same thing as Brad - automatically deleting missed characters. I think conventional typing training would try to squelch that reflex because it interrupts the flow of typing, and would encourage a separate correction step instead. But it would make sense that reflexive correction is actually good when you're not typing a long text, but short, expressive commands, and you have to almost immediately correct them anyway before executing.

Otherwise my typing is pretty vanilla, but I reflexively switch between language layouts mid-sentence to reach native characters, then go back to US QWERTY. I use Cmd-Space for the toggle.
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