Is Typing a Necessary Skill? 1065
cloudwilliam asks: "The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting article on how many schools have stopped teaching touch-typing as a necessary office skill and are now often saying that basic computer skills are more important. I'd agree with the latter, but what about typing? I learned to type on an IBM Selectric II (and still own one, as a matter of fact) in the mid-1980s, and the last time I was tested, touch-typed at around 60 wpm. Is this an obsolete skill? With handwriting and voice recognition technologies, is using a QWERTY keyboard with nine out of ten fingers something worth knowing anymore?"
Typing IS a necessary computer skill (Score:5, Interesting)
typing is absolutely necessary (Score:3, Interesting)
how could you post to slashdot without knowing how to type?
incidentally, how many of you out there are traditional touch-typists?
i took a typing class waay back, but can't force myself to touch-type. but i still get around 80wpm using whichever finger happens to be around the key that i need to hit
I should have taken it in high school. (Score:5, Interesting)
I think taking tpyeing wuold have helpeed me now, since I'm rather poor at it today. No wonder the backspage key on my keyboars is worn out.
Soko
It depends on what you mean... (Score:2, Interesting)
Dvorak keyboards, voice recognition, and future input methods are all another story, however...
10 years on the net (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:YES. End of story. (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, but if people use computers enough then they sometimes develop their own methods of typing. I guess that could be called some kind of advanced hunt and peck, but it's something. Even if it's just two fingers hunting and pecking at a blistering pace, eventually their muscles will catch up to their brains. Who says touch typing is the ultimate data entry experience?
Re:It depends on what you mean... (Score:5, Interesting)
Wow... (Score:2, Interesting)
This is written in true disbelief: when did touch typing not become a basic computer skill?
I grew up taking typing courses. I can't imagine using a computer without knowing how to touch type.
Re:Typing IS a necessary computer skill (Score:5, Interesting)
As a programmer, and halfway decent touch typing class could make my life much much better.
Jeff
Re:No (Score:4, Interesting)
I have got to say that is the exact oppposite with me. In high school we had a keyboarding class that I greatly accelled in, and within a few weeks attained a score higher than my teacher had set for us for the end of the semester (giving me an A for the course for the most part). It has only been in recent years as I am IRCing and programming more that my typing skills have gone down. I often make errors that I must go back and correct, where as before I would type them correctly the first time.
Maybe I'm in the minority, but the more I learn about computers the slower and less accurate my typing has been. Oddly enough, I rarely make mistakes with hot/shortcut-keys, except I do tend to hit Ctrl+D (shortcut to add a bookmark) rather than Alt+D (transfer focus to a highighted address bar) in Firefox.
Re:typing is absolutely necessary (Score:2, Interesting)
You think? I find that capitalisation makes text easier to read: capitals provide a clear visual distinction between the end of one sentence and the beginning of the next. You can get your meaning across without them, certainly - as you generally can without punctuation - but why wilfully make it difficult?
Typing tests for IT jobs (Score:4, Interesting)
His reasoning was anyone that has spent a decent amount of time in front of a computer will be a good typist - it was a good way to see who was just talking the talk without the know how.
Pretty clever I thought
Call centres (Score:3, Interesting)
It makes me grateful to think that because my first home computer had a full qwerty keyboard, I learned touch-typing automatically. I could never understand what the big deal when so many IT teachers/ trainers made a big fuss over the fact that I could touch type (this was the first new skill that most new staff had to learn; followed by ergonomics; how to adjust the brightness of the monitor and the height of the chair).
I Beg to Differ (Score:4, Interesting)
I had avoided fluffy classes in high school such as driver's ed, basket weaving and, yes, typing.
Then, as I started university I discovered that typing away on a terminal would really be more efficient if I had some QWERTY skills.
So I specifically enrolled in a typing class just long enough to get up to about 35 wpm before stopping (and technically failing the course).
But I got what I wanted. I needed to learn how to do keyboarding so that computer programming and creating documents on the computer was tolerable. I've hardly ever touched the IBM Selectric since the class.
Fortunately, I've never had quite the frequent need arise to learn how to 10-key, but I've been impressed by the people who do know this skill.
At some point I might try to become proficient with the Handi-Key chorded input; it seems like a great way for one-handed input, especially for small devices, in meetings, riding in cars, etc.
The perfect tool for teaching it... (Score:5, Interesting)
The Typing of the Dead [ign.com]!
As stupid as it sounds - this game is SO cool. And it showed my how badly I really can't type.
Re:Typing IS a necessary computer skill (Score:5, Interesting)
"Prolly" is UK slang (meaning probably), and long pre-dates IM'ing. In the UK, "brolly" is substituted for "umbrella," and "telly" for television.
Language evolves that way. EQ'ers frequently say "pally" instead of paladin, and "shammy" instead of shaman, so this cutesification of language is quite common.
I've even heard people say that shaman sounds stuck-up, so go figure.
Other implications (Score:5, Interesting)
That's a problem. It brings accents into the typing realm. British people AOLspeak very differently from Americans. Australians tend to just type relatively well, which is odd, but they do have their own short forms.
The various slangs are based on whatever shorter way there is to spell the way the typist pronounces a word. Unlike the original online abbreviations such as LOL and ROFL, these new ones are not based on the typographic version of the word.
Accents online is something we don't need. The beauty of someone typing properly is that anyone can read that text and understand it, short of something like "lift" vs. "elevator". I couldn't walk into Manchester's poorer districts and converse reliably. I now find the same is true of typing with Manchester residents.
With Brit AOLSpeak, the first phrase you have to learn is "soz wot" which I think means "sorry, I don't follow." The second phrase is "i fink u spk 2 mingin posh u bastard" meaning "I am angry that you don't type the way I do." I'm not making that up, though I profess no great mastery of the form.
Even within the single local group, the AOL speak tends to vary based on what kind of half-assed typing is being used. People who use three fingers on each hand choose different short forms than those who use only the indexes.
Just as we need other web standards, we need a standard way of writing. It's not unprecedented... consider italic and cursive.
Re:Some online typing tests (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:10 years on the net (Score:5, Interesting)
At 130 wpm you could write a short novel (40k words) in 5 or 6 hours... that's not how it works. I suppose it might be different if you were writing very systematic technical documentation, but generally the bottleneck is almost always thinking time. It doesn't make much difference if you're typing at 30 or 130 wpm.
Which is not to say touch-typing is not useful -- it's much more comfortable and means you don't have to look at the keyboard, as you say.
Touch-typing is probably the most useful skill I taught myself before going to university. (I wasn't allowed to take "keyboard skills" at school previously - that was apparently for kids who couldn't cope with any other classes. I wonder if they think differently now).
Dvorak (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Some online typing tests (Score:4, Interesting)
Although it will be a great boon to be able to talk to your computer and have it type out whatever it is you are saying - I can still type faster than I can talk.
I have also shown people, in the past just how quickly I can type. I have them say a sentence and I type it in verbatim, just as they said it. Usually, I finish at the same time they finish speaking (like a second or so afterwards to be truthful). However, as I said above, age is beginning to show and I am not now as fast as I used to be.
However, it has always frustrated me that computers, which are supposed to be so much faster than a preson at doing anything - can't accept input faster than it presently can. I have heard that this is done on purpose. Seems a shame that keyboard manufacturers feel that they have the right to slow everyone down.
I just can't do it. (Score:2, Interesting)
A remarkable Cuftom of Fyntax. (Score:3, Interesting)
Thif remarkable Curiofity moft regrettably went out of Fafhion at the End of the Eighteenth Century. It does lend a certain dramatic Flair to any written Text, as does the lamentably difufed Cuftom of ufing an overfized Letter 'S' in the Middle or at the Beginning of Words, with the Effect that it refembles the Letter 'F'.
Re:No (Score:3, Interesting)
You know that F6 will also select the text in the address bar ready for typing?
Although using it will introduce a new error, you will accidently hit F5 rather than F6
NeoThermic
Learned 'naturally' (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, I use backspace a lot, so my accuracy probably isn't at 99% or anything, but I'm pretty quick with the backspace too. :)
Open source Typing Tutor??? (Score:1, Interesting)
Dragon NaturallySpeaking, Baby! (Score:2, Interesting)
An unexpected side effect of the software is that you stop saying things such as "like" and "um" because when the software transcribes it, you look like an idiot. Because you end up pronouncing things much more clearly, after a while you also start sounding like a radio announcer. That might not be what you want, but it works for me.
Re:Typing IS a necessary computer skill (Score:1, Interesting)
Essential? Maybe not, but certainly an advantage! (Score:3, Interesting)
Thankfully my mother "forced" me to suffer a summer of typing classes between the 8th and 9th grades - all on manual Royal typewriters. It's always made using computers so much easier. It also helped my finger strength when I started piano lessons in my 30s. I believe (w/o evidence) that good typing skills can immunize you from carpal-tunnel.
There's enormous advantage to being able to type. For me programming languages and shell commands and their standard themes pretty much "chunk" like words. This makes Unix-based OSes incredibly efficient compared to mousing everything (like Windows Sys Admin - blech!). Using Unix/Shell well goes hand-in-hand with typing.
Being able to touch type (like I am now) is even better (BTW "touch typing" means typing without looking at the keys - and some go further and define it as not looking at your typed output either but only looking at some original source you may be copying/expositioning from - all the while hitting >30-40 wpm with high accuracy). The delay between thought and action becomes nearly non-existent as typing becomes muscle memory.
And then there's being able to compose programs in a minute or so (e.g. in perl or C) by touch type using just 'cat > myprogram.pl' and having them compile/run the first time. You're truly getting hardcore when you get to that point! :-) That's generally the point when I feel I've truly mastered a language. I'm working on OCaml now.
JG
Tpying will follow (Score:2, Interesting)
I wouldn't say typing is no longer a useful skill to have, but use a computer enough and you will develop your own typing style that is good enough for most jobs. (A good friend of mine uses the 'hunt and peck' method with his two index fingers, but after playing a text based MUD for about 5 years he can now hit over 50 WPM using only those two fingers)
I'm crap (Score:1, Interesting)
Best Class I Ever Took (Score:2, Interesting)
Steve
Re:Learn something before you jump on that bandwag (Score:3, Interesting)
The qwerty keyboard was designed not to slow down typists, but to space common letter combinations apart vertically so that the mechanical mechanism that drove the keys wouldn't clash. This spead up typists so much, in fact it won many typing competions held at the time, it became the default typewriter layout.
Later, Dvorak created his keyboard when the mechanical need for qwerty was no longer needed and conducted numberous studies to show how superior it was. Howerver, those studies, of course, weren't independant since they were funded by dvorak himself, who had considerable money to gain. As well, they compared different groups of people as to their learning abilities ie, gifted students from a U of Chicago Lab school, under the supervision of dvorak himself vrs statistics from students from the general public highschool population.
However, when the US government analyzed his layout in 1954 (Strong Study), they found no benifit in retraining exprienced typists to the Dvorak layout. In that test, expirenced qwerty typists were retrained to Dvorak to the point they could recreate their old scores. This took on average 100 hours of training.
Then a new group of qwerty typists was gathered and both groups now got equal amounts of new training. It was found that the team of qwerty typists actually outpaced the dvorak retrained typists and ended up typing faster.
Thus, the government was advised that instead of retraining typists and refitting typewriters, they should just give their typists more qwerty training.
Re:Learn something before you jump on that bandwag (Score:3, Interesting)
The study you refer to was considered suspicious by other researchers. When attempts were made to look at the raw data it turned out it had been destroyed (details [dvorak-keyboard.com]). A single study with no access to the raw data isn't very convincing.
The usual study [utdallas.edu] people mention as proof of qwerty's superiority was written by economists. Also not terribly convincing. Here's [dvorak-keyboard.com] a refutation.
Either way, it's clear that the main design decision with qwerty was to in response to an engineering problem.
The best way to find out is to try it. I used to quote the same studies and had the same opinions until I tried it myself. It took about a weekend to get started and three weeks to exceed my previous level of proficiency.
UNIX made me a touch typist (Score:2, Interesting)
Then I got into UNIX and one day realised that I had typed some ridiculously long "find pipe to this pipe to awk pipe to ed" command without looking at the keyboard.
I have not looked at a keyboard since. (Even worse, I have it set to US ASCII on every machine, even though I'm a Brit.)
Death to the non typists; when did you last pen-write anything?
Parent is full of it (Score:1, Interesting)
Typing vs. Handwriting and Voice Recognition (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe I just have atrophied/undeveloped writing skills, but when writing out a lot of thoughts, my brain has to wait for my hand to catch up sometimes before it can move on to more ideas.
Some have commented that 60+ wpm typing speeds are not beneficial to a typist over the long run because one does not type constantly. Possibly the interuptions needed for thinking and other activities mitigate productivity gains due to fast typing. For me though, being able to "flush my output buffer" sooner rather than later lets me think more fluidly and effectively. Naturally I assume that other people's mental pattern differences result in different typing benefits.
In terms of interface design, comparison of stylus input to keyboard input bears little fruit because they are generally used in different situations. For voice recogniton, assuming a high quality natural language interpreter, I would still rather type than speak my commands. For me it is faster, and I wouldn't have to sound like an idiot. Speaking "delete last word" is a lot slower than hitting ctrl-shift, <- , backspace. If instead there was a verbal shorthand, that could be fast, but that would be another skill to learn and could sound moronic. Imagine a computer lab full of people uttering strange sequences of syllables to their computers.
Ultimately, for those who use computers often enough and have the right brain for it, almost all input can be done with the keyboard. If you can memorize all the hotkeys, they are much more efficient than button hunting with the mouse. Most people, I gather, dot not make good hotkey sponges. The keyboards potential, though, guarantees that it will never go extinct. At least, not until a long time from now when the world's computing environment evolves beyond recognition.
For people who don't need the computer that much, perhaps it's true that the time would be better spent learning concepts rather than typing skills. On the other hand, the easier it is to use the computer, the more you will use it. The more you use it, the more you pick up and internalize the concepts employed in its design. So I would say that time should be devoted to both typing and understanding. To really determine the best balance to the mixture though, you'd need to do a lot of trials and see how average students do.