Poll: How do you type?

[thylasos]

I type in a relatively standard way, though I've never been taught. I can't touch type, not quite, but I'm pretty damn close, in terms of speed.

I'm rather slower with my keyboard turned to cyrillic, especially if my text requires the hard sign, which takes me about a minute to find evey time. Regular words, though I'm about half the speed of my Latin keyboard typing.

 

[thylasos]

Oddly, if I was asked to, I wouldn't be able to say the position of all the keys on the keyboard. I don't consiously know where they are. But while typing I just do, if that makes any sense.

Muscle memory, chap. It's almost definitely more common than an intellectual understanding of the spatial relationships of the keys.

 

[Ursus Buckler]

Home Row, but I wasn't taught it at school... I don't even know if they do that in England. I had to take a course for it, but I can now type without even looking at the keys. It's pretty useful.

 

[YesYesYesandYes]

I chicken poke.. I guess. I can type a little without looking at the keyboard... I know where all the keys are a bit but still look even though I'm not watching my fingers...

Oh, and with my index, middle and my thumb. Mainly my thumb just hits the space.

Don't think I type slow though.. I think I took a typing test where I had to read and type and got like 48 words a min with 98% accuracy.

I think playing WoW had helped my typing A LOT.

Even when I'm resting my hand.. My fingers tend to fall on W > Middle / A > Ring Finger / D > Index / With my thumb on the space... WoW players know why.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

I use the "home row" method that was seared into my brain during a typing class I had to take. Comfortable now.

 

[Dags90]

With my penis, obviously.

OT: I don't do the home row stuff, but I don't strictly need to look down at the keyboard in order to type and I use a fair amount of fingers. Mostly learned from playing PC games. I did the chicken poke until I started PC gaming, a couple years of Diablo and Counter Strike changed that pretty quickly.

 

[RanD00M]

I type in whatever way that I want and while I make some errors I notice them straight away so I can fix them straight away.

 

[TheOneandOnly]

Any finger will do.

No wait let me rephrase that!

Erm, well this may bit a longwinded since I'm trying to work out how I type while writing this response, but I tend to use every digit more or less equally, and any finger I'm not currently using to press a key is hovering over some other part of the keyboard. I pretty much just type with which ever finger happens to be closest to the key I need at the time. I find that typing like this I can pretty much go without looking at the keyboard most of the time, without having learned any particular touch-typing technique.

That's all assuming I can tear my fingers away from WASD, of course.

 

[DarthFennec]

I use the home row, although I hit the keys with probably the wrong fingers (I hit O and P with my middle finger, quotes with my ring finger, etc, which is weird I guess).

 

[FalloutJack]

I never took a type class in school. I guess I was at that perfect nexus where computers were not essential enough to have it offered in school but they were still a major device I used growing up. Because of that I never really learned the proper way to type on a QWERTY keyboard (fingers lined up in the middle, wrists resting at the bottom), which some people I know have commented on. I pretty much type using only my index fingers and thumb (for spacebar), but I'm actually pretty fast at it because of all the practice I get.

So how do you type? Are you like me, pecking away with only two fingers? Did you learn how to properly type in school? Do you have a custom keyboard layout because the QWERTY system is absolutely stupid? Or is there another way I haven't thought of?

You are under a false assumption here about the 'proper' way to type, I'm afraid. You see, I had a computer teacher in high school who kept bugging me about it, and then one of the other school staff walked in for some reason. My teacher asked her about my typing with index fingers and she said "That's how I type.". Different methodologies are not wrong.

 

[maddness666]

My left hand's fingers sit on A, W and D. My right hand sort of sits along MKOP, with my thumbs hovering below the space bar and my left pinky eagerly awaiting the chance to press shift.

 

[freaper]

I'm basically testing it out right now: I use my left hand's index, middle and ring finger whenever possible, but only index for my right hand. Never took any typing classes in school.

When resting I assume the standard movement key position A,W,D and spacebar for my thumb. Guess that's because I starting gaming right when I started typing.

 

[Sn1P3r M98]

I learned how to type in typing class, and expanded upon that with MMOs and PC multiplayer games. So I type pretty damn fast with the standard, school taught method.

 

[RatRace123]

I use both hands, but I don't keep them in the position you learn in tying class (I keep my left hand by the shift and caps locks keys, and my right hand goes all over the place. As for typing I mainly use my middle and index fingers.), also I look down at the keyboard.

 

[teebeeohh]

my mum calls my typing "chaos theory"
i know how i am supposed to type but i am just faster looking at the keys and hitting it with whatever key is closest. if i have to type without looking at the key i can do the things taught to me in classes but i am way slower that way.

 

[LinwoodElrich]

I think the phrase you were looking for in the poll was "hunt and peck" not "index finger search and poke"

 

[Radoh]

I typically just smash my face against the keyboard. I usually get the right results from this technique, though I do occasionally make spelling errors.

 

[Tomster595]

Just the two index fingers but I do it pretty fast. The terrible thing is I'm a Compsci major >.<

 

[loc978]

All ten fingers, but without the home row technique... my hands move about the keyboard quite a bit, and no one key is designated to any one finger or even one hand.

I don't type terribly fast (20-30WPM is pretty normal for me), but I'm pretty accurate, and more importantly, I can use every key on the keyboard quickly and accurately for gaming.