OT: Online Touch Typing Lessons

[MarkNightingale]

Does anyone have any links to any touch typing lessons?

I have a bit of spare time on my hands and would like to be able to learn to type as I am reading.

My typing is quite good at the moment but only if I am looking down at the keyboard.

Thanks

Mark

 

[Lancie1]

There are plenty of free versions:

http://www.sense-lang.org/typing/tutor/keyboarding.php

http://www.laredolibrary.org/typing/index.html

 

[MarkNightingale]

Cheers Lancie1,

The results I got when I googled it were the 1st 5 lessons free and then pay.

Now I have something to do tomorrow

Mark

 

[Brijm]

Does anyone have any links to any touch typing lessons?

I have a bit of spare time on my hands and would like to be able to learn to type as I am reading.

My typing is quite good at the moment but only if I am looking down at the keyboard.

Thanks

Mark

LOL.... I had never heard it called that before.... I was pictureing that you where looking to practice your typing on a touch screen.

 

[RussB]

Or put them on a USB drive:
TIPP10 Portable - touch typing tutor
TypeFaster Portable - touch typing tutor

 

[bornwild]

I was surprised about myself that i never see the keyboard while typing

 

[allscott]

When my father purchased our Commodore Vic 20 he commanded that for every period of time I spent playing games I spent the equivallent amount of time learning how to type. Touch typing tutor I believe was the program.

I cursed him at the time but when I hit the 10th grade and had to take a typing class I could type faster than the teacher, a very handy skill to have.

 

[Lancie1]

LOL.... I had never heard it called that before....

Then you must have been born after 1980. "Touch-typing" was THE valid method to use on a real typewriter if you did not want to spend all day hunting-and-pecking, as many do now on their computer keyboards.

Electronic typewriters, then later computers, reduced the need for speed and accuracy, so touch-typing fell off the radar. Many would be surprised to learn that their keyboard layout (the Qwerty design) is based on the Remington manual typewriter that was first sold in 1878.

In my youth I could reach touch-typing speeds of 120 words per minute, and easily could do 80 wpm for casual use. My fingers still know where the keys are, but arthritis has reduced my speed to a crawl.

 

[Steve Bailey]

Many would be surprised to learn that their keyboard layout (the Qwerty design) is based on the Remington manual typewriter that was first sold in 1878.

And the layout was because of the underlying mechanism of the typewriter keys. The diagonal arrangement of the keys in the rows and the assignment of letters to keys was because of the mechanical linkage between the keyboard and the typeface. Commonly used letter pairs are more widely separated to prevent jamming of the mechanism. Anyone who has ever used a manual typewriter has experienced the mechanism jamming when you press two or more adjacent keys at the same time.

Also, many common words can be spelled using only the left hand, making it possible for the right hand to be more available for other tasks such as turning the pages of the original from which the typist is transcribing. Nineteenth century multitasking?

 

[leitmotif]

Somewhere (I do not remember where of course) I read the keyboard layout was borrowed from the lino type machines.

Dan Bentler

 

[Brijm]

Then you must have been born after 1980. "Touch-typing" was THE valid method to use on a real typewriter if you did not want to spend all day hunting-and-pecking, as many do now on their computer keyboards.

Pretty good, I was born in '79. Old enough that I didn't recieve typing classes until High School; but young enough that I guess I never heard it called touch typing. I knew that the keyboard layout was devised, that so commonly used pairs, where not adjacent to each other, but didn't know that it was to prevent machanical jamming.

Learn something here everyday.

-brian

 

[ndzied1]

Also, many common words can be spelled using only the left hand, making it possible for the right hand to be more available for other tasks such as turning the pages of the original from which the typist is transcribing. Nineteenth century multitasking?

And don't forget the need to do a carriage return which was accomplished with the left hand by physically moving a metal handle from the left to the right which actually moved "the carriage" back to the right side of the spot where the keys hit while also doing the "line feed" by using a little bit of that left to right motion to turn the drum the paper was wrapped around the length of one line.

 

[OkiePC]

I was the only dude in my 9th grade typing class, so I only got up to about 60wpm...

 

[leitmotif]

I was the only dude in my 9th grade typing class, so I only got up to about 60wpm...

OK understand you were the only dude in class.

We need to clarify a bit
1. Were you the only student?
2. Were you the only male student in class greater than two?
3. IF #2 Did you get distracted by the opposite ***?
4. Wont say anymore - not sure if I need to.

Dan Bentler

 

[Patrick]

showing age

I started to type when I went to the boys club. This was in the late fifties. I think my love for mechanics came about his time I would find myself staying over and helping the instructor to repair the typewriters. I thought I was privilege to be one of the first to use the first electric typewriters that we got. No I’m no speed demon and yes I still look at the keyboard.
Pat