Talk:Touch typing

Touch Typing With Two Fingers
It should also be mentioned in the article that some people can touch type with two fingers only. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.79.5.124 (talk) 03:51, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
 * As a person who has been touch typing with two fingers for 10~ years, I agree with this comment. --95.144.114.113 (talk) 03:08, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

yeah this article is horribly, unforgivably offensive to me as someone who doesn't use the home row nonsense; it acts like all touch typists do. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.7.241.1 (talk) 03:26, 30 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I had never heard of "touch typing" until recently. I type blindly and very fast and I know exactly where each key is. I think only very old people need such methods to learn to type blindly and fast. I've been using a computer for most of my life and learnt to type blindly and fast natively/intuitively without any effort. If you type a lot, you learn where each key is and you don't need to see the keyboard, this comes completely naturally with practice. The article makes it look like you need the dinosaur's methods to learn to type blindly. Liasnewman (talk) 19:23, 16 June 2011 (UTC)


 * I am a certified touch typist with the finished training that I have received over two years as part of my school education. I have scored 140 wpm on the final exam and it was a usual score in our class. You surely do not need any methods to type 80 wpm, just some experience. I have never worked as a touch typist afterwards but these skills give me big advantage in todays world where so many text must be typed. I would say, ending with typewriters and switching to computers make such skills more, no less relevant and nobody would be sorry in investing here. Audriusa (talk) 11:00, 7 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Some of the fastest typists in the world can barely type at 140 wpm for sustained periods. Most 200+ wpm records are only for very shorts bursts. So first of all, I would like to call BS on your claim. Second, many (most?) activities that involve typing (e.g. creative writing, programming etc.) are much more about thinking than lightning-speed typing. Basically, the only activities that still require lightning-speed, sustained typing, without any pause for thought, are data input and transcription work. Manual transcription will eventually be replaced by voice recognition technology (Youtube and Google Voicemail already do it fairly reliably even now) and data input work is fast being replaced by virtue of data being digitial at it's point of origin more and more (e.g. entered via web forms etc.). I hunt-and-peck blindly at about 75 wpm and it's more than fast enough for programming. Basically, if you type more than you think, you will almost certainly be replaced by a computer in the near future. Unlucky. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.141.142.230 (talk) 03:32, 9 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree with the original poster. I grew up in a time when Internet was just becoming common. We didn't have a computer at home, but I often used one when I was at my parents' university. No one ever taught me touch typing. I had a keyboard and just typed without any rules. It became faster with time, today I don't even think about it. It would be time-wasting relearning typing. In my country, touch typing is now taught at school. I don't think it's necessary to learn it and I don't think you would type faster. It's just a guide. Everyone could figure out their own systems as well. There are also people inventing keyboards with keys arranged differently, saying that it's more ergonomic (common letters in home position). Studies have shown it doesn't matter how the keys are arranged, so I assume it doesn't matter which finger presses which key. You just get used to some sort of system. I doubt that anyone still types with both their index fingers after several years. --2.245.173.139 (talk) 04:25, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

Alternative finger positioning
- http://typingsoft.com/typing.htm - layout picture: http://typingsoft.com/img/sdfv_large.gif Michal Cizmazia (talk) 11:38, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Games teaching touch typing?!
Before I was a gamer I hunted and pecked. I didn't really care if it took longer to enter stuff into google at the time so I never bothered taking any classes. Then I started playing Garry's Mod and Counter Strike: Source. Since I don't use voice chat, I had to use the text chat, and in CSS if you're standing around hunting-and-pecking you get mutilated in short order. That need for speed, combined with having to have my fingers on WSAD anyway, taught me to tough type. I do have a nonstandard 'home row' though, my right hand sits on the mouse and my left hovers over WSAD. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.240.230.124 (talk) 10:44, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Touch Typing invented by Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. according to the biography "Cheaper by the Dozen"
I remember reading in the biography Cheaper by the Dozen that time-and-motion pioneer and efficiency expert Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. invented touch typing. The book was written by two of his 12 children, Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey. The book goes into great deal how Gilbreth sr. divided up the keyboard as to the fingers of each hand, came up with the 'home keys' for each hand, and made a giant chart of the keyboard divided into color-coded zones that showed which keys were to be operated by which fingers. According to the book, he also invented blank caps for the keys so that typing students couldn't read which keys where which, forcing them to learn to type by touch. He tested his system using his many children, and even rubbed colored chalk on their fingertips to correspond to the color-coding on the large chart hanging in the front of the room. (I note that the book was made into a movie in 1950 featuring Clifton Webb as Gilbreth sr. and Myrna Loy as his wife, Lillian Moller Gilbreth. Though touch typing isn't featured in the movie, his work in time-and-motion studies is portrayed prominently.  (The later films, Cheaper by the Dozen and Cheaper by the Dozen 2 starring Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt have nothing to do with the Gilbreth family or a father who was involved in time-and-motion studies (although the mother's maiden name is, for no apparent reason, Gilbreth).Toddabearsf (talk) 16:33, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Home row and learning style etc.
At least the lead of this article should give a less technical (and perhaps more correct) definition of touch typing as simply typing without looking at the keyboard in order to locate key), and not involving anything to do with home rows or finger usage. In general usage it certainly seems that this is what people mean when they say someone can touch type (I would also think that speed and lack of mistakes are implied as well since anyone could touch type if they just pressed every key and deleted all the letters they didn't want..). While it certainly might be easier to touch type if one uses the home row in the described manner it isn't a necessary condition on being able to touch type that one does so. I'm going to be bold and do some of this now but people should feel free to clean up what I've done. 110.20.5.241 (talk) 09:12, 23 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Hmm, I would always think of touch typing as particularly the standardized technique where you learn to type based on having your fingers in a fixed position always touching/resting on certain keys (although where exactly they start and which finger is used for each key would be details that could vary by language or keyboard or training course). Any self learned technique which many people use (including myself) where you have just memorized the layout of the keyboard and press the correct key (most of the time) with your fingers just staying where they are until they need to move, or just generically hovering over the keyboard until needed has nothing "touch" typing about it as you aren't doing anything by touch, purely from memory of which key you fingers went to last (even if not normally consciously thinking of it, but it obviously works this way from the way mistakes propagate - if I accidentally hit "p" instead of the intended "o" and then need "i" next I will hit "o" because I am shifting one key left of the current location, until I notice the mistakes on screen). I guess I might call it blind typing at a push, but certainly not touch typing (which I briefly did a course on at college but didn't get on with as it felt too rigid for the moderate amount of typing I usually do). --87.242.189.106 (talk) 11:10, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

The Microsoft keyboards are all wrong with the number 6 on the left hand, whereas the number 6 needs to be on the right hand. The image reinforces this error. Please update image with a correct keyboard. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.182.68.245 (talk) 13:34, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Blank Keys and Keyboard Shields
When I was in high school many years ago all of the typewriters in the typing classrooms had blank keycaps. There was a large chart of the keyboard in the front of the room showing what the keyboard looked like. I've seen some web sites offering a 'keyboard shield,' a box-like contraption that is poised over the keyboard, with room for the hands to type inside the box. The idea of both of these is that you learn to touch type by forcing yourself to not look at your fingers at any time, and if you do you are provided with The Box to 'keep you honest.' Are such ideas still used in teaching typing? My only 'official' instruction was in fourth grade. My teacher had a typewriter we could use at lunchtime. I was told what the home row was and that my fingers should end up there. Other than that, I was left on my own. My Theory (and I'm sticking to it) is that covering up the keycaps and blocking the view of the keyboard are not necessary. Look all you want! Just remember to return your fingers to the home row. Your muscles will eventually remember where the keys are, and you'll gradually stop looking. Your speed will increase as you train your fingers about the location of the keys. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Paulmmn (talk • contribs) 14:41, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Polydactyly
83.9.123.11 (talk) 16:56, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
 * What observation has been made of people typing with more than ten fingers? Anthony Appleyard (talk) 13:02, 10 August 2016 (UTC)
 * and blind people, and cats, and ...

Forum-type evidence in favour of z-x-c using ring-middle-index fingers
There are some forum-type sources such as http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=513870 archived and http://www.onehandkeyboard.org/standard-qwerty-finger-placement/ archived - as well as my own typing experience from a typing textbook that I no longer have - in favour of the lefthand ring, middle, and index fingers typing the Z, X, and C, respectively. This would be usable in the "Other methods" section, but it would be better to have something better qualifying as a WP:RS... Any sources? Boud (talk) 14:57, 21 August 2016 (UTC) In fact, the "Other methods" section is not sourced at all right now... Boud (talk) 14:58, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

Repetitive Strain Injury
To the extent that typing techniques and keyboard layouts have been compared, only typing speed seems to have been considered. Has there been any significant research into their correlation to rates of repetitive strain injury? — Preceding unsigned comment added by GlenPeterson (talk • contribs) 15:53, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

Inaccurate History
According to https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/fact-of-fiction-the-legend-of-the-qwerty-keyboard-49863249/ archive and its source article https://repository.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2433/139379/1/42_161.pdf archive, the origin history of the QWERTY layout as an anti-jamming measure are not correct. I would edit the article myself but I think it would benefit from a more thorough reading of the aforementioned sources, which I don't have time to do now. Bracco23 (talk) 09:29, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Removed unsubstantiated claim that the school depicted in the first photo is "Swiss"
There is no sign that the pictured commercial school is in Switzerland or "Swiss" in any other sense. In fact, the sign on the photo suggests that the school was in Mülheim (an der Ruhr).

Several external sources suggest that a certain Schwenzer did indeed operate a commercial school in Mülheim:
 * https://www.bk-lehnerstrasse.de/index.php/schulleben ("[...] Beide Schulformen wurden von der Privaten Handelslehranstalt Max Schwenzer angeboten. Seit 70 Jahren gibt es diese Privatschule, die weit über Mülheim wegen der guten fachlichen Ausbildung bekannt ist. Max Schwenzer, der Schulleiter, hat sie von seinem Vater übernommen. [...]")
 * https://www.geschichtsverein-muelheim.ruhr/historisches-calendarium/ ("An der privaten Handelsschule Schwenzer lernen Generationen von Mülheimern den Umgang mit der Schreibmaschine. [...]")

The change should be reverted if there is evidence that the pictured school is indeed Swiss. (It could, for instance, be a Swiss branch of Schwenzer's school, but the data available so far doesn't support this theory.) 109.43.50.99 (talk) 11:53, 14 October 2023 (UTC)