Sites or Software for a Budding Typist?

less touch, more typing asks: "Over the years I have worked with a number of IT professionals and software developers. Many of them have had excellent typing skills. Others, like me, have not. While I type passably with my own roguish style of finding the right keys, I would like to teach myself to type correctly. Too many syntax errors over the years are do to my lack of this basic skill. What software or web site would you recommend to learn to type? Is there something free or inexpensive that can turn someone with a lot of bad typing habits into a typing guru?"

While you're learning how to type...

[mindaktiviti]

Make it a point to write out proper full sentences. For example, say you're IMing someone, instead of typing: "wassup" or "hi" type: "What's up?" or "Hi." so that you're always used to using proper sentence structure and then whenever you're typing away at a report or an email, your writing is a lot more pleasant to read. To stick to the question, I suggest that if it's too difficult to change your habits, you should at least put your fingers on these keys: asdf;lkj where the f and the j are your index fingers, your thumbs are on your space bar, and L-ctrl is sort of with the palm of your hand right below the pinky (for quick access).

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Nitpicking nitpicking

[Jippy T Flounder]

You have too much time on your hands.
You could be in need of a semi-taxing job.
You could be in need of social intercourse.
Do you have friends who have, perhaps, commented on your nitpicking habits? You could see somebody about this... I hear that there have been all sorts of interesting methods of therapy developed in recent years.

How about writing a book? I think a suitable title might go along the lines of: "Why the world needs grammatical nitpickers - agree or die!"

Funny - this nitpicking thing DOES seem to have therapeutic qualities. I feel better now - thanks!

text based MUDs

[spoonyfork]

For a cheap and enjoyable solution, find yourself a text based MUD [mudconnector.com] and play an hour a day. Forego programming function keys and scripts. That will get your typing and reading skills up to speed. What is a MUD? It's like EverCrack except you read, write, and use your imagination. Oh, and generally they are free. After a couple years of moderate MUDding at university I could type "recite recall" faster than any of my friends and family.

Give Midgaard my best.

Why would you want to do that?

[Cthefuture]

I have been typing for some 22 years, nearly every day since I was 10 years old. Usually 10-16 hours every day, 7 days a week (yes, even as a teenager). I use the "rogue" style. I have no idea how fast I type, but it's pretty fast.

I have never, ever, not once had any inkling of a repetitive stress injury. Now that's a crapload of typing to never have any problems. I chalk it up to using the rogue typing style which causes my hands and fingers to move around into different and sometimes bizarre positions (eg. I often don't hit the same keys with the same fingers).

and I don't think it's due to superior genes or somesuch because I also do 3D work and if I use the mouse for more than a couple hours at a time over the course of a couple of days then my tendons and hand will start to hurt like a sonuvabitch (I switch hands, don't use the mouse so much, and wait for it to heal when this happens).

Dvorak

[tdmg]

I personally use Dvorak, and my typing speed has increased a lot in a very short amount of time. A good typing tutorial for Dvorak is: http://www.gigliwood.com/abcd/abcd.html [gigliwood.com] it is very simple but effective. I have a friend who can type 165 wpm, and he just did Mavis Beacon for 3 years straight as a kid for 2 hours a day. I switched to Dvorak so that I wouldn't get some stress disorder when I got older, and if you have the time I'd recommend the switch. While it may or may not improve speed (mine improved) it does prevent injury when typing.