How do people typing these days?

January 10, 2011 7:30 PM

How do most people type here ? (And on the internet in general?) Are most people touch-typers? Do people get trained at school these days? I use about three fingers on each hand but am pretty fast nevertheless. I have seen a lot of "bashers" and "peckers" in my time. I am just wondering what the "norm" is these days.
posted by zaebiz to Computers & Internet (96 answers total)

I learned in the late 80s on super cool new typing software making it a game. I type using the usual "home keys".
posted by Leezie at 7:34 PM on January 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'm a touch-typer and pretty much type exactly the way that you're supposed to as per all those typing tutorials. This is because my far-sighted parents let me loose on a copy of Mavis Beacon when I was about 6. I type significantly faster than even most of my similar aged (mid-twenties) friends because of this early training.
posted by peacheater at 7:35 PM on January 10, 2011 [4 favorites]

I touch type in the "proper" way, possibly because I had (probably the same as peacheater) Mavis Beacon software as a kid. My boyfriend does a two-fingers-on-each-hand-thing, and I tease him for looking like a t-rex. We're both early-mid 20s. Most of the people my age that I know touch type like I do.
posted by phunniemee at 7:37 PM on January 10, 2011

Basically the home keys (I think I was "taught" to type in like 4th grade but then it was another like 5 years before I ever actually needed to type) but moved over slightly so that my right hand has some of the keys I'm supposed to get with my left hand. It is what works for me.
posted by magnetsphere at 7:38 PM on January 10, 2011

I type with all my fingers on my left hand, and usually only my pointer and the middle on my right, and I do it as touch typing. It's weird.
posted by deezil at 7:40 PM on January 10, 2011

Touch-typer here. I took some secretarial training years ago and learned using Mavis Beacon. I type nearly as fast as I think, unless I'm typing copy - then I'm about 60 wpm.

My hubs is a programmer who types with two fingers. He learned to type pretty young by using the internet and playing on mudds, never had a keyboarding class that I know of. By the time he graduated from college his two-finger typing was close to being as fast as most touch typists.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 7:42 PM on January 10, 2011

Touch typer. Learned at school on a typewriter. The teacher made us tape a sheet of paper on top of our hands so we couldn't see what we were doing.

I guess I'm maybe the last generation to learn on typewriters (this was 1994).
posted by lollusc at 7:42 PM on January 10, 2011 [2 favorites]

I type around 90wpm, formal touch-typing style, thanks to Mavis Beacon (I used most of the versions between the first one and whatever was current in 2007; I'm a perfectionist, and got up to 25 wpm on Dvorak just to say I did it.) My sister is six years younger; she's a two/three fingers per hand typist. It seems like most young typists feel whatever gets them near 30 to 45 wpm is good enough, especially given how much they rely on texting without the benefit of QWERTY. Most of the other people I know who are really fast, proper typists learned in high school, on electric typewriters.
posted by SMPA at 7:43 PM on January 10, 2011

You probably know this, but you're going to get heavily biased answers here. Most people on MeFi are high volume internet users; we're the kind of people who spend 12 hours a day at our keyboards, and are probably much better typists than average.

Looking at total internet users would probably skew your results a lot more towards the 2 finger hunt and peck.
posted by auto-correct at 7:43 PM on January 10, 2011 [5 favorites]

Dunno what the norm is, here's my data:

Touch type, asdf-jkl; home keys, ~90 wpm.

and a bit proud of it. Thanks for starting me early mom & dad!
posted by Salvor Hardin at 7:44 PM on January 10, 2011

I touch-type with my left hand, two-finger with my right. I blame video games.
posted by restless_nomad at 7:45 PM on January 10, 2011

I'm 31 and I learned typing on an old-fashioned typewriter...basically I did a few hours of self-guided "exercises" when I was around 12-15. I'm a fast typer. Most of my peers are not, though. Drives me mad when IMing with people my age and esp. slightly older. Slooooow.

Younger people, I imagine, are much less likely to be sloooow, as they start chatting/IMing so early, and much older people often still learned to touch-type when it was taught in school and are decent typers because they have the proper technique. So maybe it's just my generation (born around 1980) that has this problem - no technique, not much practice from early on.
posted by The Toad at 7:45 PM on January 10, 2011

touch-typer, mostly. typing class in high school but really finally got comfortably fast when i began programming in earnest.
posted by zeek321 at 7:46 PM on January 10, 2011

I touch type relatively fast (it's been a while since I've done a test), but I don't use any of the right fingers. Wait, I use the right fingers as well as the left fingers, but I don't use the *correct* fingers with respect to what I was taught in school.
posted by sharding at 7:46 PM on January 10, 2011

I've been using a computer (and thus, a keyboard) since I was about six, back in the late 80s. I didn't take a hardcore typing class until I was in seventh grade or so (public school, Boston suburbs) but they really drilled it into us. I've typed "properly" ever since, and I could touch type by the time I was in high school.
posted by Narrative Priorities at 7:47 PM on January 10, 2011

I took a typing class in high school and failed it (too many friends in the class). My touch typing skills were developed in BBS teleconferences and IRC. Home row, mostly proper although I tend to neglect my ring fingers when I type. And I type about 100WPM.
posted by elsietheeel at 7:52 PM on January 10, 2011

Touch-typer here. (touch-typist?) We learned how in elementary school in the 90s -- "proper" typing, home keys, etc. I usually do about 100 wpm.
posted by J. Wilson at 7:53 PM on January 10, 2011

I touch type as well - took a "keyboarding" class in high school. I guess I use the home keys concept although I didn't know/remember that.
posted by lvanshima at 7:58 PM on January 10, 2011

Born in 1982, I was a member of the last cohort who learned to type in my high-school's purpose-built typing lab, equipped with about 50 typewriters, each of which had the letters painted over so you had to memorize the keyboard layout. It was 9th grade. We had daily drills - "f f f space, j j j space", with the half-charming half-overbearing teacher at the front, in her last year before retirement, who had taught my mother and my aunts and uncles how to type in that same room on those same machines, rhythmically calling the letters out loud and conducting the class like an orchestra. We handed in our sheets after the drills, and since these typewriters had no correction fluid, all of our mistakes were permanent, and duly circled in red and returned to us with marks taken off.

Going into that class, I'd developed an ad-hoc style using only my index fingers that was quite fast, pushing 30 wpm. Four months later when the course was over I was a touch typist and could cruise at 70 to 90 easily. I don't know what they teach the kids now, but the typewriters are long gone.
posted by PercussivePaul at 7:58 PM on January 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

I learned how to touch-type as a sophomore in high school (1989) on a typewriter.

My one quirk is that I do not use the right SHIFT key. If I need to type a capital letter A, Z or Q or !, I use my left pinky for the shift key and type the letter with my left ring finger.

At my best (when I used to get tested when I'd temp) I was upwards of 100 words a minute.
posted by Lucinda at 8:02 PM on January 10, 2011

I touch type, around 80wpm, if I'm copying, 100wpm. Learned with All-the-right-type when I had lag time in a programming class in the mid-90's. Anybody remember All-the-right-type?
posted by Sallysings at 8:03 PM on January 10, 2011

Touch typist, learned via some kind of typing game software when I was in middle or high school. I probably average around 60 wpm, but can get up higher than that if I'm really trying. My mom is a secretarial school graduate and I was always inspired by her typing speed!
posted by mskyle at 8:06 PM on January 10, 2011

I was taught in high school to touch type. Then I broke two fingers on my right hand and it all devolved from there. Now I type using (have to stop and check) four fingers on my left and three on my right (my left hand just gave up, I guess).
posted by marimeko at 8:09 PM on January 10, 2011

I took a summer keyboarding class, and got to the point were I was a slow touch-typist. I maybe also looked at Mavis Beacon but never got past the first few lessons.

I really learned how to type through months of daily ICQ use.
posted by that girl at 8:09 PM on January 10, 2011

I touch type. I learned in 1990 in junior high on old Olivettis :)
posted by Calzephyr at 8:14 PM on January 10, 2011

Touch typist here, who learned on an actual typewriter, with no letters on the keys, so no cheating, in high school in the late 80s. I probably type about 60 wpm. I also taught myself proper ten-key while working at the HEB (grocery store). Both of these skills probably made me more money than my college degree.
posted by Gilbert at 8:16 PM on January 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

I learned to type back in the late 1950s, on my mother's old Royal Deluxe, about age 9. Even though that thing had "variable touch," my young hands would cramp after a few minutes of pushing keys on that old QWERTY monster; finally, I learned to strike keys, just so that the inertia of the key/hammer combination worked in my favor, and my speed went up a satisfying amount, to around 60WPM, as my hands quit cramping. Learning to strike properly also greatly evened out the density of my type appearance, but it didn't really transfer well to my short lived piano career. Later, I did take a typing class in high school, too, for the same reason I tried to take Home Ec (but wasn't allowed): because all the cute girls were in there.

These days, I kill membrane and most laptop keyboards pretty quick, if I try to go fast, because of excess key strike force. Working now on my next-to-last Model M, which I hope, along with its now-shelved eventual successor, will get me into my dotage, and an era when yet more powerful machines will finally make natural language voice control the predominant human-computer interface...
posted by paulsc at 8:19 PM on January 10, 2011

All I really learned from Brøderbund's Type! app (System 7.1, to date it appropriately) as a kid was the Eleanor Roosevelt quote "no one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

I touchtype with my right index and middle fingers (plus ring finger for enter), and left thumb, index, middle and ring fingers (plus pinky for shift). ~120wpm.

If I had a home row, it would be [shift]AWF__JIP' .
posted by thejoshu at 8:22 PM on January 10, 2011

I touch type, learned thanks to IRC. Uhm... I just noticed that I use my entire left hand and only one finger on my right one.
posted by Memo at 8:25 PM on January 10, 2011

Touch type, mid 80s HS typing class on IBM Selectric. Only boy in the class, placed like 4th in the state FBLA competition.
posted by zengargoyle at 8:26 PM on January 10, 2011

I took a typing/computer class in middle school, with Mavis Beacon software. But what really taught me to type was getting on AIM and later IRC. I'm 24.

The way one types is, to my mind, an indicator of your age and/or computer literacy. If I see a hunt-and-pecking 20-30 year old, it stands out as very odd. In the 50+ set, more common.

I remember this distinction being particularly pointed out during a college lecture class where the professor mentioned how he didn't like laptops in class because, "after all, if you're serious about taking notes you can't possibly type as quickly as you can write." The students guffawed. The professor was a hunt-and-pecker. The students were not.
posted by fontophilic at 8:29 PM on January 10, 2011

I hunt and peck with 2 or 3 fingers per hand. I can do about 35-40 wpm.
posted by TheCoug at 8:35 PM on January 10, 2011

Touch typer, took a semester long typing course in 1991 or so in junior high. Learned to type on some sort of a fancy typewriter, and practiced on my dad's not so fancy old school typewriter that would actually jam if I typed too fast and happened to hit asdf or the like in very short order. Type around 90 wpm though slower if the text contains numerous special characters or numbers.
posted by slide at 8:43 PM on January 10, 2011

I'm in my mid-30s and never learned to type properly. I didn't have room in my high school schedule for typing class (called "keyboarding" in the late 80s/early 90s), so BBSs and other computer stuff were my only education. I type ~70 wpm with most fingers, just not traditional touch typing.

Just needed to put another data point out there since the thread seems heavily skewed towards touch typists. Of my friends in high school I can't think of more than one or two who actually took the typing class, although obviously they could have learned with software too.
posted by cabingirl at 8:46 PM on January 10, 2011

Touch type with mostly correct form, a few variations. I had had some of the computer based learn to type programs (Mavis Beacon et al) but really learned to type fast in the early 1990s on BBSes and IRC-type systems - never used many abbreviations, just learned to type at conversational speed. It was like going from high school Spanish to being in Spain and having to use the skill to actually interact; really favored speed over perfect accuracy. Great way to learn.
posted by LobsterMitten at 8:50 PM on January 10, 2011

Another Mavis Beacon graduate, did it as a challenge with my husband in 1998. I type 70 words per minute now, but was a pretty good hunter-pecker before that too. (I turn 40 next month.)
posted by Dragonness at 8:52 PM on January 10, 2011

I still touch type the way I learned back in the mid 1940's. Those that use two fingers or so just look so weird. I cannot type any other way.
posted by JayRwv at 8:54 PM on January 10, 2011

At this point, the letters flow out of my mind and directly onto the screen.

It's a kind of touch typing, but my hands do not stay on the home rows.

My left hand's pointer finger does stay on the F key with the little bump, which I think gives me enough of an idea of where the rest of the keyboard is that I don't have to look at it.

My fingers are roughly in these positions when I am at rest:
[shift-A-E-F-Spacebar] [Spacebar-O-P-backspace-enter]

Of course, like quantum states or workers in a productivity study, these positions may change because I am observing them.

I did take a typing class in high school. Touch typing on the home rows and lots of typing meaningless combinations of letters over and over and over again. My typing habits have probably shifted a bit since then. I also took piano off and on throughout my grade school years, which can't have hurt my typing ability.
posted by JDHarper at 8:56 PM on January 10, 2011

I just took a few quick online typing tests and got 65 - 70 wpm touch typing (I did better when I didn't go back and correct my errors). I learned on an electric typewriter in high school in the late 80s. I could type pretty fast before then, but the class, "Personal Keyboarding," which was rumored to be very helpful in college, was indeed helpful.

I do suffer from stupid typos, though. I'm terrible at proofing my own writing.
posted by bluedaisy at 9:07 PM on January 10, 2011

I bash at the keyboard with no system whatsoever, while staring at the keys. I'm faster than you'd expect using this method, but not what you'd call fast. I didn't take any typing classes. I probably should have. I'm like lightning when using a wacom tablet, though.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 9:09 PM on January 10, 2011

I'm early/mid-20s and never learned to type 'correctly'; I type almost exclusively with my two index fingers. I'm pretty sure I am at least as fast as average.
posted by threeants at 9:09 PM on January 10, 2011

Learned to touch type on a Selectric in high school in the late seventys. Wasn't allowed to look at the keys or the paper in the machine, only at the copy in the stand.
posted by octothorpe at 9:15 PM on January 10, 2011

I touch type in the sense that I'm not looking at the keys when I type, but I don't do the whole home-row thing at all, my hands just float around the keyboard and I only use a few different fingers to accomplish it. I think I fit into a funny little wedge - 35, predated official computer typing classes, postdated typewriter lessons, had a keyboard from a very early age. I think I was 6 when I started typing on an Atari 800. Last time I tested I was somewhere in the 60 WPM range, but I spend more time arranging my thoughts than I do typing them up, it usually doesn't amount to much.

That said I'm not very fast, but the noise of my model M clone usually surprises people when I'm on conference calls and group IMs at the same time, and people think I type a lot faster than I actually do.
posted by Kyol at 9:18 PM on January 10, 2011

Although that said, I used to be a killer 10-key operator when I was doing data entry in high school. Unfortunately the 10-key system we used was phone style and not keyboard style, so I'm sort of rubbish on a PC numpad.
posted by Kyol at 9:20 PM on January 10, 2011

I learned to touch-type on a manual (non-electric) typewriter in 1975. My mother insisted that I take not one but two years of typing in high school, so that I could get a good job as a secretary when I graduated.

(To this day, she still thinks it was a smart thing to do. She still thinks being a secretary is a good, well paying career. I've always found her attitude to be rather surprising, considering that both of my grandmothers [who were born around 1900 and 1920] were life-long career women, at a time when very few women worked outside the home at all, even for a short time.)

On the other hand(s), my brother, daughter, boyfriend, and mother are all hunt and peckers.
posted by MexicanYenta at 9:20 PM on January 10, 2011

Touch-typist; I learned to type in school on actual manual typewriters way back in the paleolithic. When I made my living as a typist, I tested out at 95wpm...nowadays I type at 70-75 wpm...lots more typos now, though :)
posted by faineant at 9:22 PM on January 10, 2011

- "f f f space, j j j space", with the half-charming half-overbearing teacher at the front, in her last year before retirement, who had taught my mother and my aunts and uncles how to type in that same room on those same machines, rhythmically calling the letters out loud and conducting the class like an orchestra.

I remember that now! "f. f. f. space, j. j. j. space. Watch. the. book. space. Not. your. hands. space. d. d. d. space, sit. up. straight. space. m. m. m. space, James. shut. up. space."
posted by lollusc at 9:25 PM on January 10, 2011 [5 favorites]

I had Mavis Beacon but don't think I used it too much, I liked this other game with a frog character better. In middle school I had a semester of "aaa space, bbb space" training, but that's it.

I have no idea how I type, except that I do seem to use most of my fingers and don't need to be able to see the keyboard. Like someone else mentioned I neglect the righthand SHIFT key entirely. I have the sense that if I were to start paying any more attention to it than that I would suddenly become completely unable to type at all.
posted by heyforfour at 9:29 PM on January 10, 2011

As I'm typing this I use the index finger of my left hand and the index finger of my right hand, with occasional thumbs for spaces and pinkies for shift keys. I'm 90 % touch with an occasional glance to remind my brain where my hands are.

I type about 55 words per minute with very few typos that aren't just brain farts. The kind of work I do does not require anything better. What is kind of interesting is that my left hand doesn't stray too much; my right hand covers much more ground. I am extremely "monodextrous", though, my left hand is useless as anything other than a helper.

What kills me is trying to do any sort of copying from, say, a book on my desk. I'm very slow at that.
posted by maxwelton at 9:32 PM on January 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

I took typing in middle school (early 1980s.) We would type to music and one day a week we would be allowed to bring our own records which was awesome (because only the guys who listened to hard rock would remember to bring their albums.)

I am typing this comment with two fingers on my iPod though!
posted by vespabelle at 9:36 PM on January 10, 2011

Like Peacheater, I learned to touch type from typing games when I was really young (first grade?). By the time I was 11 my parents were asking me to type things out for them and now I net 100+ wpm if I'm copying something. As far as form goes my left hand sits in an orthodox way over the [A-S-D-F] keys and stays more or less on the home row, but my right hand tends to be more spread out over the right half of the keyboard sort of like JDHarper described.
posted by en forme de poire at 9:36 PM on January 10, 2011

Maxwelton: I was just noticing the same thing about my typing, actually. I wonder if it isn't an English language + QWERTY thing... E, T, and A are all left-hand keys that are quite close to the home row, and they're the most common in the language. Meanwhile righty has all the punctuation, Backspace, and Enter -- which are around the edges. No idea if this is the reason or not; just a thought.
posted by en forme de poire at 9:41 PM on January 10, 2011

I took type in middle school as well (1996-1997), and I maxed out at about 70wpm on the in class exercises while touch typing. Add a few years of playing MUDs, and I can get up to about 90 if I'm going off the top of my head, or 80 if I'm copying something.

I miss those middle school typewriters in some ways - the keys had a delightful weight to them. Makes me want one of those old keyboards that have the clicks as you press down.
posted by SNWidget at 9:51 PM on January 10, 2011

I guess I'm maybe the last generation to learn on typewriters (this was 1994).

Nope, we were still using them in 2001. And we had computers there. In the room.

I got a C in that class. My first C ever. I made a lot of typos because I already knew how to type from hanging out on AIM all the time and writing fanfiction and so I backspaced a lot. I'm still bitter.

But I type using the standard home row thing that I think most people do. My only weird habit is that I never use my right pinkie except to hit the "return" key, I move my whole hand over and use my ring finger instead. No idea why.
posted by NoraReed at 9:52 PM on January 10, 2011

I learned to touch type in grade school.

One summer in college I was bored and heard Dvorak would fix my wrist pain, help me type faster, and turn me into a ninja in general. So I switched and haven't looked back. I got fast right away, but it took months for me to get rid of errors.

Not sure what I'm going to do for the GRE though...
posted by squasher at 10:11 PM on January 10, 2011

I touch type properly. Even though I've been using the computer since I was about 7 (am 28 now), I took a computer typing class from which I learned to type properly. That was when I was a freshman in high school, at about age 14 or 15.

I've only ever used typewriters as a sort of novelty item. My parents didn't have them, my schools have not had them... come to think of it, I'm not sure where I would have used one. Maybe messing around at mom's work? At any rate, absolutely no one at my high school learned to type on a typewriter from 1997 onwards!
posted by asciident at 10:12 PM on January 10, 2011

Home keys. My ex used to freak out that I could turn my head around and have a conversation with him, while typing emails. I still wish I was a faster typist though.
posted by medeine at 10:17 PM on January 10, 2011

Another touch typist here, who learned on IBM Selectrics in the 1970's in high school. I barely passed the class, being really slow and not particularly accurate, and since I broke my right pinkie playing volleyball in sophomore year, it is not that good for typing, so I tend not to use it quite properly.

When I first started in the work world in the early 1980's right after college, I dragged my husband off to an evening typing class. He learned touch typing on a Selectric (which he still considers a very useful skill), and I took the same class to to increase my speed at touch typing (which it did, a bit, but I never got above the fairly pathetic 35-40 words per minute.)

One of my first post college jobs was a temp job as a messenger for a law firm. I once had to deliver some papers to a federal judge, and they had to be delivered at the end of the work day. When I got to the judge's office, most of the people in the office had left for the day, and I handed the papers off to the lone older woman who was still there. She told me to wait, popped the papers into the typewriter to do her part, whipped them out, signed them, and returned them to me to take them back to the firm. She was, of course, the judge. She smiled at me when she saw I had figured out who she was, and told me that she still considered the typing class she had in high school the most useful class she had there (she was a really fast touch typist, too).

We still have a few IBM Selectrics in my office, which get used occasionally for envelopes or labels or this and that (it's a museum; we have old stuff; I use a dip pen and India ink in a bottle for numbering artifacts). We had our grad school interns use a typewriter for something or other last fall, and they considered learning to use it novel enough to blog about to their peers.
posted by gudrun at 10:20 PM on January 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

In high school in the 60s, I refused to learn to type so I wouldn't end up being a secretary or receptionist. I'm now a three fingers on each hand hunt and pecker. I tried learning with Mavis Beacon in the 90s but I was too set in my peckin' ways. I can peck about 25-30 wpm.
posted by a humble nudibranch at 11:07 PM on January 10, 2011

On my right hand I use my index and middle fingers, along with thumb for space bar and pinky for backspace; left hand I use almost exclusively my index finger, along with my middle for the shift key. Type between 70 - 90 wpm.

I'm surprised at the number of people here who took formal typing classes. I grew up in the 90's, always with access to PC's, and just learned through hours upon hours spent messing around online. My typing style is definitely unorthodox, and probably "inefficient" in some sense, but I sorta figured this was how everyone my age or younger learned to type - just figured out their own style and what worked best for them.
posted by decoherence at 11:16 PM on January 10, 2011

Touch typist. About 65wpm 98% accuracy. Took about 6 months at less than an hour a day with a typing tutorial program.
posted by rmmcclay at 11:22 PM on January 10, 2011

I refused to learn to type so I wouldn't end up being a secretary or receptionist

ha! that was me too! except I told myself that *I* would have *someone else* to do my typing. Of course, now my career is completely digital. If I met my teenage self now, I'm sure I'd be appalled at what a twit I was.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 11:41 PM on January 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

I learned touch typing on my Mom's portable electric when I was about 12 years old (I was complaining about being bored during summer vacation, and she put adhesive tape on all the keys, gave me her old typing textbook and said "Here, learn something useful." I took a one semester typing class in ninth grade in which we all had manual typewriters. I typed about 75 wpm when I got out of there, but more importantly I learned the proper format for business letters, term papers, bibliogrpahies, etc. (Oy, those days of manually having to estimate enough space for a footnote....) Used IBM Selectrics pretty much exclusively after that and when I got my first computer it took forever for me to stop hitting "enter" at the end of each line of text in the word processor. My speed now is about 95-100 wpm, but I do still have a habit of "pounding" the keys like a typewriter.
posted by Oriole Adams at 12:07 AM on January 11, 2011

I flunked typing in high school! I was probably one of the last years they offered typing instead of keyboarding. In the late 90s I got the Mavis Beacon software and that really helped me get some decent admin assistant jobs. Later on I worked from home doing transcription. I can communicate on the net much faster than my two-finger typist husband.
posted by Melsky at 12:39 AM on January 11, 2011

I learned to properly type in elementary school with some sort of Mario program for Macs. Now I sort of look at the key board and hunt and peck.
posted by shinyshiny at 12:40 AM on January 11, 2011

Non touch typist (at least not the proper way). I can type without looking at the keyboard at around 60wpm unless I need to do shift+any of the number keys in which case I'm reduced to shoddy hunt and peck. Which is a bit embarrassing given that I code for a living and & and $ come up pretty often. You'd think I'd have those down if not any of the others, but no.
posted by juv3nal at 1:30 AM on January 11, 2011

Touch type. Mavis Beacon + competitive middle school classes with type writers and some PS2 (born in 1982).
posted by sandmanwv at 1:38 AM on January 11, 2011

First two fingers of my left hand, and the first three fingers of my right hand. I went to an all-boys school so there was no such thing as typing classes (and there was one Apple II computer for the whole school so not much of a chance with that!). This was in the early 80s.

I've never much thought about learning to type "the correct way". If I did do that I would have to unlearn all my old (bad) habits. I am a sysadmin by trade so not much typing really - just scripts and heaps and heaps of emails and some doco. I find that I type much faster when it's my own thoughts - like this answer - but if I have to copy stuff I am much slower. I guess I average around 30 to 40 wpm.

I find the "hunt and peck" cutoff is around the mid 40s. Most people younger than that have no problem, but most people older than that (unless they specifically learned to type in school) seem to have trouble.
posted by humpy at 2:05 AM on January 11, 2011

4 fingers on each hand, pinkies generally only for shift key. Never had official schooling, just hacking on c64, amiga as a teenager..
posted by lundman at 2:43 AM on January 11, 2011

I type mostly correctly. I had half a year of keyboarding during middle school (around 1998), supplemented with the Mario typing game (on Windows 3.1.1 for Workgroups), but I didn't really type until I started using chat rooms, ICQ (haha), AIM, and playing snobby MUDs where everyone used correct capitalization and full words and such. At the height of my MUDing career, I could hit about 120 wpm, these days I'm down to ~90. I can get all of the non-alphanumeric characters without thinking, but I still have to guess and correct for numbers, so I'm not sure how that works. And life would be just fine without the right shift, alt, and ctrl keys, my right pinky hurts plenty without using them. Oh, and yes, I do bang away at the keyboard, I've had other students complain that I type too damn loudly.
posted by anaelith at 3:31 AM on January 11, 2011

I "touch type", but I'm pretty sure it's not the proper way using the home keys. I never learnt, so I just sort of dance around the keyboard. I still use all of my fingers, though my right pinky doesn't get involved very often, and according to [random internet test] I get about 90wpm.
posted by lucidium at 4:49 AM on January 11, 2011

I touch type, but not properly, and I also never, ever use the right shift key. I'm 22; most people I know around my age have a similar style, and most can type rather quickly (I type about 90 wpm but thats a little faster than most of my friends). However, I don't know too many who use the proper "home keys" and I know several who have absolutely maniacal two-finger typing styles that sound like an demented canary typing a break-up letter with its beak.

They still type quickly, though.
posted by good day merlock at 5:24 AM on January 11, 2011

I'm a basher - one or two fingers at a time, thumbs on the spacebar, but if the next key, especially the "control keys," punctuation, and shift keys, falls under one of my other fingers, I'll use that. It works pretty damn quick... I've tried to learn proper touch typing, but it frustrates me too much to stick with it. I can generally blaze along fast enough, especially with a decent keyboard. (New-school compact scissor-action, or old school mechanical switch.)
posted by Slap*Happy at 5:33 AM on January 11, 2011

I touch type, very properly (fingers on asdf jkl;) at approximately 125 wpm when I'm just thinking and about 100wpm when I'm copying a letter. Goes down to about 75 wpm with something difficult. No mistakes, generally ever. (Although for some reason this keyboard likes to insert a ` when I type "really.")

The only problem is that I purposefully learned so that my right pinky was the one always hitting the shift key. I think that's what's keeping me from hitting 130+ wpm.
posted by saveyoursanity at 5:38 AM on January 11, 2011

I touch-type, occasionally sneaking a glance out of habit, I guess.

I played a ton of Mavis Beacon, but I swear that my learning to type properly is mostly a product of IMing and forcing myself to use proper punctuation while doing it. Keeping up in a conversation with someone who is using improper grammar and leaving letters out can be a challenge.
posted by InsanePenguin at 5:44 AM on January 11, 2011

I touch type. I took a short night course at my local technical school towards the end of high school, when it became clear that computers just weren't going to go away.

These days, my friends' kids seem to be learning touch typing as part of their primary school computer classes.
posted by Ahab at 5:49 AM on January 11, 2011

I took typing in high school, 40 years ago. I mostly touch type, but I look at the keyboard a lot. I think the best I ever did in class was 35 WPM, but I'm a lot slower than that now.
posted by Bruce H. at 5:59 AM on January 11, 2011

Three-and-a=half finger semi-instinctive thrasher here. I learned to "type" as a junior programmer, back in 1980, and as a result I developed this dreadful style before it occurred to me that learning to touch type might be smart. I made one effort to do that, in about 1986, and it was going okay until I got hit with a horrendous workload that necessitated me going back to my desperate ham-fisted thrash. Sadly, that period went on sufficiently long that i never bothered to go back to perfecting touch typing. I wish I had.
posted by Decani at 6:13 AM on January 11, 2011

I use two fingers – the index fingers. And I'm a journ school graduate. As long as the words come out of my head, I can fly. Copying from source material is another matter entirely. But it's surprising how rare that is.
posted by lpsguy at 6:24 AM on January 11, 2011

I absolutely forced myself to learn to touch-type on a 1984 original Macintosh, which I lugged home from the computer store where I worked on weekends. Previously I had very rapidly hunted and pecked on a manual typewriter and other computers.

Later, when researching split keyboards, I would learn that I type B with my left hand even though typing books tell you to use your right. Or I have that backwards.
posted by joeclark at 6:25 AM on January 11, 2011

I learned touch typing in high school, and have had plenty of call to use it both in my writing and my admin-based day jobs. Last time I was tested, I clocked in at 100 wpm.

I think I also had an advantage back in high school -- I studied piano from age 10 to age 18, and so I was already used to "all your fingers acting independantly without you having to look at them" kinds of actions.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:43 AM on January 11, 2011

I can't believe I've read all 80+ answers with interest. I came back to say that although I touch-type fine on the keyboard, I am hopeless with an actual manual typewriter. My fingers seem far too weak, and I can't even picture how anyone could develop the pinkie strength necessary to hit those remote keys. I marvel at the secretaries in the Sixties who managed to maintain those long pointy nails while employing their fingers in hours of heavy bashing every day.
posted by Dragonness at 7:20 AM on January 11, 2011

Born 1983, 54 wpm, touch type, normal home keys, though I think I could be faster but I haven't been typing much recently. I learned on chat and other computer work from a young age. My parents gave me Mavis Beacon, but I'm pretty sure I just stared at it and didn't use it much. I did take a required keyboarding course freshmen year of high school. It used computers. I think we were all bored out of our minds. I know chat has made me faster and more accurate at typing.
posted by emkelley at 7:54 AM on January 11, 2011

I mostly learnt to touchtype with Mavis Beacon as a kid (hadn't thought about that in years!) but it was hours of daily MSN use as a teenager that really improved my typing.

I dabbled with learning Dvorak but it seemed like too much effort for not enough payoff.
posted by badmoonrising at 8:18 AM on January 11, 2011

I touch-type; no idea how fast I am now, but pretty fast. I, too, learned on a Selectric in high school in the late 1980s.

Like an earlier poster, I am terribly hard on keyboards because I strike the keys so hard - even more than 20 years later, I can't seem to break the typewriter habits.
posted by Lulu's Pink Converse at 9:11 AM on January 11, 2011

Home key proper typist here and proud of it. Age 24, about 90 wpm if I'm not concentrating on perfection. Learned in middle school in a keyboarding class, but perfected it with Mavis Beacon. I'm so happy to see how many people here also learned to type with Mavis. I was totally addicted to that program and my mother and I still talk about Mavis as is she were an actual beloved teacher (There weren't many in my school career.)
posted by Polyhymnia at 9:24 AM on January 11, 2011

I tend to start at the home keys, but I'm by no means a proper touch typist... like Narrative Priorities I grew up in the Boston suburbs and there was a mandatory 'keyboarding' class in 7th grade... but you could take a test to pass out of it, which I did by looking at the keys and referring back to the text occasionally, because no way did I want to waste my only free elective doing that for a semester. It was AIM (and, as Insane Penguin notes, holding myself to real English with caps and punctuation and everything) that really sped me up. As it is, I don't do well on typing speed tests because I still look at the keys, but given that 90+% of what I type comes from my own head it's rarely a problem.

I do notice, though, that as a left-hander, my left thumb mans the space bar while my right thumb just sort of waves around in the air...
posted by rhymeswithaj at 10:23 AM on January 11, 2011

Touch-typer. I learned from my older brother (who had taken typing in school) around 1971 on our old manual Olympia typewriter that looked just like this.

It was quite a workout for a tiny little girl with long skinny fingers to press those heavy keys, reach all the way up to the number keys, and then slam that carriage return at the end of every line!

A couple of years later, I took typing in summer school (after 7th grade) and learned to type more properly. Plus, we got to use Selectric typewriters which was soooo much easier than our old Olympia. When I was in school and afterwards when I did some temp work requiring typing skills (and before PCs), I typed >100wpm but am down to about 70-80 now.

Useless trivia: Did you ever realize that the word "typewriter" uses only the top row of alpha keys on a QWERTY keyboard?
posted by ourroute at 11:19 AM on January 11, 2011

I learned touch typing in elementary school, via a typing game for the Apple ][e. Late 80's. I have no idea how universal this is among people of my generation, but I don't think I could live my life the way I do now if I didn't have this skill.

I remember that typing classes were offered as electives at my high school and in some local day camps/summer programs I went to in middle school, but I never took them.
posted by Sara C. at 11:34 AM on January 11, 2011

I took a mandatory Keyboarding class in 8th grade (mid 90s), but didn't actually learn much since the teacher was never actually in the computer lab and we all played Solitaire and Minesweeper before typing our assignments however the hell we wanted in the last few minutes of class, throwing in some errors here and there to make it look like we weren't cheating. My dad tried to get me to use Mavis Beacon in highschool, which was installed on the very first computer he got, but I ignored it in favor of Blake Stone and Myst. So I never really learned to type properly.

I type with my hands resting over the keyboard but not on the home row, and I use all my fingers except my pinkies, but probably not in the proper or most efficient manner. I used to type by sight, and could type about 55wpm this way as of the year I graduated highschool, but about a year later (after I started using a computer regularly) I found that I was touch-typing without realizing it and my typing got a lot faster.

I typed 85wpm as of my last typing test when I was applying for temp jobs a couple years ago.
posted by rhiannonstone at 11:52 AM on January 11, 2011

I learned to type in grade school (13 years old, I think?) using the regular home-keys method. I'm pretty sure my regular typing habits have stayed pretty close to what I was taught, but since I didn't have to practice regularly for work etc. I might have a few idiosyncracies when it comes to my left hand in particular. Last time I checked it, I was typing at roughly 80 words per minute.

My girlfriend types faster than I do (and much more loudly) but she doesn't use her thumbs. It's funny to watch.
posted by hootenatty at 3:22 PM on January 11, 2011

I touch type. Years of internetting made me somehow memorize the keys. I use only my middle finger on my right hand and all the fingers on my left hand. I always thought this was amazingly unique, but it looks like there's at least 5 people upthread who do the same.
posted by january at 6:59 PM on January 11, 2011

I'm a touch typist. I learned in the early 1980s in high school on non-electric typewriters. I typed at 90wpm last time I was tested.
posted by deborah at 7:23 PM on January 11, 2011

Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing! (and wow, to judge by this thread, did she ever...)

My answer is a pretty perfect pastiche of previous answers: home keys touch typing about 60-70wpm, I learned how to type with Mavis Beacon, I had a keyboarding class in middle school in the mid 90s, and AIM/chat really perfected my skills.
posted by librarylis at 7:41 PM on January 11, 2011

I'm 33 and worked in tech support for years and that's how I learned to touch-type. I took "keyboarding" in high school and only got up to about 33 WPM. I'm a strong 90-95 WPM now. Home keys.
posted by getawaysticks at 1:16 PM on January 12, 2011

I'm 25, I learned to type in school when I was 6 on an Apple II, playing a cute typing game that involved a cat, with paper taped over my fingers so I couldn't see them. I type using the "home row" at about 110 wpm.
posted by Cygnet at 7:15 AM on January 13, 2011