Can you type without looking?

I have no experience with Dvorak, but that sounds like a nightmare. Constantly switching back and forth? Nope. Not for me.

 

Yes. It is quite fun to do. Especially if you are talking to someone, but are writing or something. Typing and not looking is great, cause you can give the person you are talking with your attention, yet still finish what you are doing.

 

I rarely look when I'm typing, I think. I type fairly fast as well, though I don't necessarily think of the words as fast as I type and sometimes gibberish tambourine cucumbers. 'Tis the result of 18+ years of using computers. I've been using QWERTZ all my life, though, and I'll be in big trouble if I need to switch to QWERTY, which I quite possibly may have to. If for whatever reason I have to type with my input language set to English, I sometimes just don't even bother to switch out the Zs with Ys and vice-versa. The results maz look a bit funnz, quite biyarre even.

 

Yes, I can type without looking. I make my fair share of typos though.

 

I've been trying really hard to learn, but it just isn't sticking. This I typed (mostly) without looking, but it's slow going. I think I just need to practice more. Doesn't help that my fingers bend and lock in ways that make staying on the home keys difficult. But maybe I'm using that as an excuse.

 

I do it unconsciously.

 

I don't look at my hands when I'm typing but strangely enough if I close my eyes, things usually come out garbled on the screen. Maybe it's peripheral vision, like walking down a familiar street while reading a book?

 

Oh, I'm going to try this, since I never look at the keyboard when I type. Here goes:

I don't look at the computer when I type because I took keyboarding in high school, and the teacher would get really angry if you looked down at your hands.

WOAH! It felt harder, but it came out correctly. I even deleted and retyped several words that I could tell I made typos in by sensing the letters. My keyboarding teacher would be so proud.

 

It might just be the starting location of your fingers. Try starting with looking and then close your eyes.

Also you may have to reset your finger position from time to time. And additionally, you may know some letter locations better than others.

I also find, if I look at the screen and see I have a letter wrong, I know to adjust my fingers in the right direction to correct the error.

 

I took typing in a summer school class in high school, and to my father's great disappointment, dropped out. So I don't put my fingers on the "home keys" like they taught me. Instead my fingers just learned the location of most of the keys from repetition.

 

I use caps lock, instead of shift.

We're such rebels.

 

I'm always hitting caps lock insteAD OF A.

 

I will try.

He sat down.

I can barely do this. Barely...

 

My grandpa got me on a learn to type program before I was 10 years old and it was basically a video game. I've been able to type without looking for a very long time. I type faster than I can think, which is probably why sometimes I post things on the internet that should be heavily edited. Maybe even this post. This took me less than 20 seconds to type.

 

I am so glad a couple of you are my age, or a little older. I really wish I still had my portable typewriter that I had in college. There are times I'm a little "old school." My new fountain pen is on order and my old one needs to be sent in for repairs. Typing class was one of the most useful classes I ever took in school and that was in the seventies. I go a step further, I like to write longhand and then type it in to the computer. I can type while reading the document. I'm not the fastest typist, especially compared to my mom. It usually takes the computer about 2-3 minutes to catch up to her when she stops.

A little trivia for those who like such things, the keyboard is set up the way it is to slow typists down. It seems that girls in the typing pool could go so fast the keys would jam. (I'm not being sexist, you used to have rooms of desks and mostly young women who did nothing, but type all day.) So they set the keys up in a way that made them have to stretch and move theirs hands more, thus slowing them down.

 

If I would have done it about 10 years ago, I would have switched my QWERTY keyboard. But now I'm too used to it even though I know a different layout would be more efficient.

 

That is probably not true. There are two better explanations.

One explanation is that QWERTY is actually easier than an alphabetic layout for listening to Morse code and typing it -- it actually speeds the typist up.

Another explanation is that QWERTY is designed to space the internal rods for common digraphs (e.g. "th") far enough apart that they do not cause jams when pressed consecutively.

 

This ^ is the explanation I've heard including a demonstration of the jamming.

But @Matthew Lee actually said the same thing.

 

Can I type without looking?

After 22 years of using computers, sure, but I still sometimes make a mistake.

 

Absolutely. Can I form recognizable words? Well............

 

He said the purpose was to slow the typist down.

I said one of the two better explanations is that the purpose was not to slow the typist down, but to put distance between internal rods that were commonly moved consecutively. That way, the typist would less frequently move adjacent internal rods consecutively (and therefore jam the machine less frequently) without decreasing speed.

 

Meh. You say to stop the rods from moving too fast, he says to stop the fingers from moving the rods too fast. You both meant the same thing, the keys would jam if the keys were in more convenient locations for typing, thus we have letters in less than ideal locations for typing. And now with no keys to jam, it's unfortunate because it means I need software to continually fix 'teh' and other repeating typos.

 

Actually, no, that is not what I said. Think of it this way. Imagine that you press the following sequence of keys on a QWERTY typewriter, and imagine that it only jams when you press two adjacent keys consecutively.

qwertyuiop

That causes 9 chances for it to jam. Now imagine that you press this sequence of keys:

qetuopiyrw

That only causes 1 chance for it to jam (when you press O and then P).

If each sequence takes the same amount of time to type, then the first sequence causes jams 9 times as often as the second sequence.

Granted, the internal machinery of a typewriter is more complex (the rods interact with each other in ways that are not just determined by which keys are adjacent), but the basic idea is the same. The whole point of changing the order in which the rods are moved is to reduce the frequency of jams without changing the rate at which they are moved.

 

@daemon, we get what the problem was that the keyboard design addressed. I don't understand why you insist on some nitpick about how that problem is described. Jammed keys are jammed keys. The distance between certain letter combinations slows the typist down.

This is a tempest in a teapot.

 

We were on the topic of "a little trivia for those who like such things". I am one of those who like such things, and I had some trivia to share. I posted to inform, not to argue. I thought you misunderstood the information I had presented. My replies to you were meant to clarify what I had said.