Help me type with my inside voice

January 3, 2016 4:19 PM

A billion years ago, when I had a rotary phone and a pet dinosaur, I learned to type on a manual typewriter. I, thus, type incredibly loudly. It bothers other people. I am looking for tips to retrain myself to type more quietly.

Like a scene in a Sean Connery movie where he instructs his protege to "Punch the keys" -- yup, that's me.

Help me figure out how to stop this. Or do it less.

Thanks!

posted by Michele in California to Grab Bag (9 answers total)

Are your nails trimmed? Can you get a different keyboard made for just this issue?
posted by desjardins at 4:25 PM on January 3, 2016

Well, it helps a lot to buy a very soft keyboard. Go to a tech store and try them out; there are some that I can't make noise with unless I start throwing them across the room.
posted by SMPA at 4:25 PM on January 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Practice (make it a game, if you need to) keeping your fingers as close to the keys as possible - drawing a nearly straight line between keys rather than arcing your fingers way up and back down onto the keys (like we had to do back in the days of mechanical keys). This is how I keep my own keystrokes quieter; I had to originally retrain to do this because the sheer impact of slamming the keys down like that was doing damage to my hands.

Also, pretend you're a spy and trying not to be overheard hacking the mainframe or Pentagon or target of choice.

I'm assuming you're typing somewhere that you don't have the choice of a quieter keyboard.
posted by Lyn Never at 4:26 PM on January 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Please assume keyboard choice is irrelevant and I am cromagnon woman. It is me, it is not the equipment.

Thanks!
posted by Michele in California at 4:30 PM on January 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

I do this. I type like Bugs Bunny. I also live alone. The things that help me when I am doing this around other people who are annoyed by it are

1. move to a standing desk where I can not press DOWN so much when I type
2. move further away from the keyboard, same effect

Also in the "unasked for" advice category, typing on an ipad both slows me down and is a lot more silent.
posted by jessamyn at 4:34 PM on January 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I've never tried this before so have no idea if it would work or not.

I also learned to type on a manual typewriting and hit the keys fairly hard. I have been lucky to not work in environments where that bugs people.

I did notice once while typing with ear muffs on (to block an annoying workplace sound) that I lacked the feedback of the loud typing and it felt a bit off and I think I ended up typing more quietly as a result. I'm wondering if you typed with ear muffs or ear plugs you could cure yourself of needing the noisy feedback more efficiently.
posted by sciencegeek at 4:41 PM on January 3, 2016

You could train yourself in an alternate keyboard layout like Dvorak -- since typing won't be an automatic "muscle memory" thing during the learning phase, you can take the opportunity to focus on quieter keystrokes too. Also, your fingers don't have to travel so much to type most words (since the most commonly used characters in English are on the home row) -- that might help too.

(Source: I work in tech, on a computer coding 8-12 hours a day, use Dvorak layout nearly exclusively unless I'm e.g. gaming.)
posted by snap, crackle and pop at 5:21 PM on January 3, 2016

Response by poster: Also in the "unasked for" advice category, typing on an ipad both slows me down and is a lot more silent.

Ironically, I was gifted an old iPad last month. But I cannot log in to one of the most important sites I need on Safari and I have never had an Apple product before. So far, every single time I try to download a browser or app, it fails and I get a message indicating that I need iOS 7 for this. I have tried searching for "iPad browser iOS 5" and I apparently do not know how to operate the secret decoder ring or something.

If someone could help me figure out how to find alternate browsers that will actually download to an iPad iOS 5.1.1, using an iPad is, in fact, potentially an option that solves my biggest, most immediate problem. Some of the other remarks should help me start toning down the noisy typing, but I don't actually even like being on the laptop. I would be thrilled if I could make the iPad work for me.
posted by Michele in California at 11:15 AM on January 4, 2016

Response by poster: This has been somewhat helpful. I am better at remembering that the iPad is an option, though it is of limited use due to its age, and I am less obnoxiously loud in the situations where it made me self conscious because it was a problem.

Still working on it, but some of the suggestions here were surprisingly helpful from the get go.

Thanks!
posted by Michele in California at 12:31 PM on February 3, 2016