Hunt and Peck or.......

[RobS]

I'm wondering how many out there hunt and peck as they work out their thoughts here on the forum. There will be those who have actually learned the key strokes of a keyboard and then those who have not, well I simply wonder if there is any correlation to the number of posts. I figure those who are more stubborn by nature and hunt and peck could have high post counts because they have that "refuse to loose" attitude………… Let's see how much work some of you forum members actually put out with your post count as you apply your abilities to the technological world.


The poll is out. :popcorn:


I know.........I misspelled variant but be darned if I can change the poll. :mad:

[WILCO]

I can bang out a post fairly quickly. No need to hunt and peck here.

[popper]

Learned to type in 3rd grade in the '50s. Now I need a spell checker in my fingers.

[tryNto]

In the '60s we learned in 7th grade

[Dave C.]

I type slowly because some of my friends can't read fast!

[Dale in Louisiana]

From my blog: (http://mostlycajun.com/wordpress/?p=329)


I actually took typing in high school. Hey, I was sixteen, one BIG hormone, a face reminiscent of a pepperoni pizza, and that class was FULL of girls. So I found myself in a room full of Underwood Five manual typewriters, and some sadist had blanked out all the keys. I tried. I honestly tried to learn, but it just wasn’t in me. After the first six weeks, the typing teacher pulled me off to the side and confided her opinion that I was hopeless as a typist, that I’d never get any faster than twenty words a minute, and I’d NEVER pass her class. So I dropped. I think I ended up with a period of study hall, which I spent instead doing odd tasks in the industrial arts shop.

So fast forward three or four years. I was in Korea, a young tank commander with a reputation of being able to handle a multitude of tasks. I was a whiz on communications gear and fire controls and often handled those tasks in view of the shortage of trained specialists. And the company needed a training NCO, a guy to prepare training plans, schedules and lesson plans, and to keep the company training records. My name came up, and the first sergeant called me in to talk about it. Sounded good to me. And then he asks the killer question.

“Can you type?”

“Sure. Took it in high school.” Hey, he never asked if I passed. And the teacher was wrong, anyway. I can do forty words a minute in spurts…

dale in Louisiana

[Wayne Smith]

I too learned in High School - 35 wpm and 3 mistakes was the best I did. Went through college and graduate school with a manual portable and about the same speed. Yes, I will date myself. I wrote my dissertation on a Apple IIe with a CPM card, dual disk drives, and Wordstar 1.1. By the time I had finished typing it for the third time (rewrites) I was up to 90wpm!

[runfiverun]

my typing speed has vastly improved since joining here,as have my computer skills i can now post a link t somewhere else and even a u-tube video.
i went from hunting and pecking to typing and almost use 3 fingers on each hand now.

[reg293]

Hunt and peck, but I am getting better.

[starbits]

I took typing in high school. Passed because there were written tests. 100% on the written tests and F's and D's in the timed typing. Wrote a poem about my love of typing and turned it in anonymously. First part went:

I hate typing
Always end up griping
Down goes the finger, Down goes the key
How it's the wrong one is quite beyond me.


30 years of using computers has made me marginally better at typing.

Starbits

[Trey45]

I type with 6 fingers and get pretty fast once I get going.

My lovely daughter who is an admissions supervisor types with all 10 fingers and can FLY with that keyboard! I've never seen her look at the keyboard while she types, she looks at the monitor or at the paper she's working from. She amazes me frequently, but her typing skills are truly amazing.

[Dale in Louisiana]

Of course, then, there's the administrator of a business college who was interviewed about the typing skills of his female students.

"Half," he said, "are touch typists. The rest are huntin' peckers."

dale in Louisiana

[canyon-ghost]

Had typing in high school, one year. I'm just not one given to debate every little thing.

[Dark Helmet]

In H.S., 19 wpm with erasures.

[Bill*]

I can hunt n peck (one handed) about 20+ wpm when I get on a roll.

[10 ga]

Spring of 66 had a semester of typing as sophmore in HS. Passed with a C as I could do 60wpm and <2erasures. The business kids got the "electric" typewriters with that whirling ball thingy on it. Mine was a straight manual. Used a manual portable all through HS and college at VT. Then didn't see another keyboard until 89 when we got PCs at work. Eventually went all the way to all electronic stuff by the time I retired. The stuff we could on the computers by the time I retired in 09 was like "Dick Tracey" stuff from when I was a kid in the 50s! Speed wise I take it easy as I really try to think about what I'm doing and saying. The backspace and delete really make it a whole lot easier then them old ink erasers. And hey, what about GPS and satellite maps instead of the old quad maps, amazing stuff. Best to all, 10 ga

x

[bob208]

i am faster if spelling does not count.

[Kraschenbirn]

Freshman in HS (1959). My eighth-grade English teacher told my folks I should learn to type 'cause my (cursive) handwriting was so bad. :roll:

Bill

[MtGun44]

I took typing in HS in 1968, worked up to 40 wpm back then. I also write a lot of
reports, so touch typing is something I do every day at work. My Mom told me that
learning to type would be a useful skill and she was right, even though she was
thinking of typewriters, computers were rare as heck and most people never got
near one back then.

Bill

[429421Cowboy]

Had to take typing in 8th grade, lost it for awhile but college has brought that all back in a hurry! I write on average, 3 reports a week plus research papers for school so i have gotten it through my own thick skull where most of the keys are by now! I enjoy writing and actually got a 94% in College Writ last semester, only because my teacher doesn't see how bad my writing is here! But on this forum there is more knowledge than i can process, so i read way more than i type.

[Blacksmith]

My pecking fingers are getting quicker but I have to look at the keys.

When I went to school the only people who took typing were the Business Ed students, Girls who were going in to secretarial work. When I finished college, school papers you either paid for someone to type or I dated and married a Business Education teacher (49 years ago), people went to work and there were secretarial pools and managers and above had secretairies. I used computers for CAD/CAM and slowly had to do more typing. I actually have tried to learn touch typing a couple of times but just doesn't seem to stick with this old dog.

The funny thing is when I retired I tried teacing for a year and actually had to teach a class which was partly a typing class but that was all software based I just kept the students from destroying all the equipment and kept them off the inter net.

This post just took me 18 minutes to type! I timed it.

[waksupi]

You can ask anyone who hangs out in chat, I can easily type up to 40 mistakes per minute. I could correct them, but by leaving them in place, it baffles the onlookers long enough to allow me to keep up with the conversation.

[edler7]

I learned to type in the 7th grade (1967).

One of the most useful classes in later life that I ever took, next to shop and auto mechanics.

[SciFiJim]

I didn't want to take typing in high school, but my mom made me in the ninth grade in '77. It is probably the most useful knowledge that remains. Learned on an IBM Selectric (the one with the little ball). I am a touch typist, but probably only do about 40 words a minute because I spell out words in my head instead of relying on the spell check (still need it occasionally though).

[OBIII]

Like Dale in LA, I also took typing in the 11th grade, Biz Ed with a class full of girls. I got my typing skills up to 40wpm with 5 errors, but man could I fly on programming the punch cards for the equipment. I was taking computers at the same time, and was learning fortran and cobol. The girls would all be typing out each individual card, and would have a stack of cards about 1" thick at the end of the class. I knew how to program the cards for the repetitive parts, so I had a stack about 6" in the same amount of time. Oh, this was 11th grade in 1968, and at the tender age of 16 I passed the test and was certified by the goobermint as GS-1, clerk typist trainee. Almost took a job with the AEC in 1969, but they wanted me to file, not type, so I went into the Marines instead. (What I was gonna do anyway). Some parts of HS were fun.

OB
Semper Fi!

[Fishman]

We all had to take typing as sophomores in high school. I reasoned that since I had to be there anyway, I might as well learn to type. This was an approach not shared by most of the other students. It turned out to be one of the most useful classes I took in high school. I literally use it every day.

Now for this forum, I'm usually using my smartphone, which slows me down considerably. I am much faster than I was two years ago, though. Never stop learning new skills and maintaining old ones. You never know when you might need them.

[Charlie Two Tracks]

I learned to type in high school. I took two years of it. There were an awful lot of girls in those classes. Knowing how to type got me a gravy job in the Army for six months. A bunch of us were waiting for security clearances to get into the ASA and those other guys were on guard duty or KP and I was in the 1st Sgt. office tying away. I never typed again for over 20 years until the personal computers became popular but I found out that it is a skill that is not forgotten.

[winelover]

Took one year of typing my senior high school because it was the easy way to meet the fairer sex. Learned even though I was at a disadvantage of missing the pinkie finger on my right hand. Who needs the semi-colon anyways!

Turns out it was one of the best decisions I made. Got me off the assembly line at General Motors and into a hourly clerks position until I got into their Apprentice Program, a couple of years later. Put 30 years in turning wrenches (Pipefitter), until my body started revolting. Applied for and received a job as a Planner in their Planned Maintenance Program due to my past clerical experience. Allowed me to finish out my career in relative comfort!

Winelover

[quack1]

I hunt and peck, have gotten a little faster with time, but it still takes me a long time to type a post, so I don't post very often.
I did take a typing class in high school, 1968. I was last in the class- lowest wpm count with the most mistakes. Just couldn't get the hang of it. Told the teacher somebody always has to be first and somebody always had to be last and I had last place covered. Just glad the class was only a semester and not worth any credits.

[popper]

I type slowly because some of my friends can't read fast! Gotta remember that one. We didn't have a progressive school in the 50's, just progressive PARENTS. Someone got the local Underwood or Royal sales guy to bring in 20-30 for a few weeks. We also had an air club that bought a plane in 5th grade. By 7th grade, dad would pull me out of class to ride right seat on his business trips. When I took typing for a grade, I was very competitive with the top gal in the class, really ticked her off that a guy could keep up with her. Yes they would cover the keyboard or blindfold you.

[daniel lawecki]

Never took typing so its hunt and peck for me

[Hamish]

Boot camp the Co. Cdr. bellers out "Present yourself in my doorway if you can type!"

I had telephone and commissary privileges 2 weeks before any one else in my company. @(;^]#>:::

[Light attack]

Both of my parents taught school and summer school. So.... my sisters and I always went to summer school in grade school. I learned to type in the summers of 6th and 7th grade. Also like a previous post the back space and delete key are used alot. As is spell check.

[Rick N Bama]

I took a year of Typing in the 10th grade, but with years of not using it, I forgot a lot. Still I can sorta get by without looking using 3 fingers on each hand.

Rick

[snuffy]

2 finger hunt & peck here.

Took a semester of typing my senor year, just for something to do. Didn't need the ½ credit, so I learned what I wanted and did not pass the class. I was a fifth year student, had to take 9th grade twice. so I only needed 2 credits to graduate. I COULD do touch typing if I wanted to, but it would slow me to a crawl. I suppose if I were to stick with it for a while, I could be faster that using the tow fingers.

Spent most study halls in the auto shop, or metals shop. Learned more there than all those other classes. Learned enough welding to get my first job, the lathe stuff helped later in my life.

[longhorn]

My father and his childhood buddy the counselor conspired and put me into typing class in 8th grade. Those manuals were plenty hard to type on with cold fingers after an 85 minute bus ride during Panhandle winters! Grade in typing kept me off the honor roll half the year. Plenty glad now, as pharmacy was the first of the health professions to go whole hog for computers. 85 or so wpm when I've been working on word processing a lot.....

[fixit]

i know how to type, but because of 30 plus years of physical labor of one sort or another, home row hurts. because of this, i search and peck!

[Bad Water Bill]

You mean some folks can use more than the index finger of your right hand.

Took typing my last semester cause they would not let me out before noon and I already had more than enough credits to graduate. (1954)

Never touched a keyboard for the next 50+ years.

[kappy]

I don't have a lot of posts here, but I easily have 40,000 plus posts on boards around the net. I don't "nose pick" as my 7th grade teacher called it. That might be related.

[44man]

This is what I get if I don't hunt. bow aayi e[yow----OH FORGET IT!
I read about why the layout of the keys was so important for speed---WHAT NUT DID THAT?

[palmettosunshine]

Like many I needed the credit (or just the class time) to fill out my 11th grade schedule. At the time only business school and remedial classes were required to take typing. None of the AP (Advanced Placement, read College Prep) students were required to take typing. I made a $ or 2 typing up term papers for the other AP students. :D

Not only was I surrounded by all girls, I learned a skill that helps me to this day. I'm now the internet manager for a car dealership and probably answer or send somewhere around 50 emails a day and touch type around 60-80wpm depending on my mood and the moment.

I don't often post here as I often have nothing intelligent to add to the conversation but I gladly soak up the combined knowledge. And no, wisdom isn't related to typing speed!

[2muchstuf]

I had a year of typing in 11th grade ( I think )
Most of us didn't want to but they made us anyway.
I'm glad they did now.

That was in '74 , didn't touch a keyboard again till about 10 yrs. ago.
Could never get into the 30wpm though cept on a good day.
Still can't,,,,,,,,,,,, cept on a good day.

I defiantly do better on the pc than I do on this laptop.
2

[facetious]

Can't type, can't spell and my wife gives me her old lap top with the letters wore off. Then I log on here and the spell check just tells you that the word is spelled wrong and makes you keep trying till you get it right or give up. It's like having my dad help me with my home work. "Get it right and you'll grow up smart, get wrong and you'll grow up dumb" I still have to work for a living so I guess I didn't get it right.[smilie=b:

[alamogunr]

I learned to type in high school in the '50's. My mother was a teacher and forced me to learn to spell. Has been helpful in many ways. Lately, I have had problems with transposing letters. May be age related.

I have a hard time overlooking spelling errors. I overlook them here because few, if any, of us earn a living by the written word. I can't overlook errors in newspapers, public signs("Limited Site Intersection"), etc. Those folks are supposed to know how to write and spell.

[Freightman]

Started taking typing in 10th grade lasted two days and someone stomped my right hand with aluminum cleats in football took weeks to heal, ended the typing.

[Silvercreek Farmer]

I spend most of my time thinking about what I am going to type. Once I know, they typing doesn't take very long. I type all day at work and I can get by with out looking at my hands, but far few mistakes if I do, but thanks to modern technology I can go back and fix them. A real typewriter would have killed me, I actually had to use one in middle school, talk about a nightmare! Now the Ipad, that is a different story, two index fingers is all I can fit. Works okay for short posts, but there are some I have delayed responses until I can get to a proper keyboard. About 2 min on this post...

[Silvercreek Farmer]

Just took this test and did 44 WPM -2 errors, high average. Had to backspace a few times...

http://www.typingtest.com/test.jsp

[rr2241tx]

Miss Betty Friend, 7th Grade typing. She was the hottest thing ever to get a teaching certificate and we were seated alphabetically so I sat in the front row, right in front of her desk. IBM manual typewriters and those funny sideways books that had pages like 8x10 paper. Remember when paper was 8x10? If you do, then you my friend are OLD. In college I worked as a medical transcriptionist with a Dictaphone that would play as fast as you could type and on a keyed IBM Selectric I could go 125 wpm for hours on end. Now, the old bugger hooks aren't as quick as they once were but I still type faster than my son texts with his thumbs.

[sljacob]

hunt and peck here. that is the one of the reasons I seldom post on here, it just takes too long to type out anything meaning full.

[Recluse]

I took typing in HS in 1968, worked up to 40 wpm back then. I also write a lot of reports, so touch typing is something I do every day at work. My Mom told me that learning to type would be a useful skill and she was right, even though she was thinking of typewriters, computers were rare as heck and most people never got near one back then.

Bill

'68, eh? Bill, you're old! :)

Ten years after Bill, I took a typing class in high school and to this day, it was the best and absolutely most useful class I had in all of high school.

Every job I've had has entailed writing (typing) some sort of reports and in the advertising world, I wrote a lot of headlines, body copy, radio commercials, etc etc.

And of course, if you're going to write a book, it helps to know how to type.

:coffee:

[theperfessor]

My son taught himself to touch type using a succession of home computers while in grade school. He was a freshman in high school and took a keyboarding class. The teacher was all over his case because he is a big kid with big hands and didn't use his fingers the way they like to teach you to use them. He would come home angry and frustrated. Finally I told him to ask his teacher what it would take to get off his back. She told him that passing was something like fifty five or sixty words a minute with three or less errors.

She gave him a page from a book he'd never seen before and told him to type it up. By the time she got back to her desk he was sending the file to the printer. He didn't miss anything and typed at close to 95 wpm. From that point on he was assigned the job of hauling broken computers out of the labs and doing some minor service work, never had to type in class again.

Later in the year he entered a typing contest they hold annually and won his grade level. He was embarrassed to tell me he won, but he couldn't tell me how fast he typed 'cause their software maxed out at 135 wpm and he pegged the meter.

He got all the talent. I can type, took a class, lucky to hit 25 wpm on a good day. I use the speech to text converter on my iPhone where possible, and I just downloaded Dragon on my PC.

[dragonrider]

Learned how to type about 47-48 years ago in school, been doin it ever since. It is a very handy skill to have.

[jcwit]

I used to be able to type 180 to 200 words per minute. But after ripping 2 fingers out of my hand and cutting 1/2 inch from a finger on my other hand its more 3 fingers on one hand and one fionger on the other.

[reloader28]

I hunt and peck.
It takes me along time to type something, although I am slowly pecking faster. A 30 sentence post takes me a 1/2 hour by the time I go back and fix everything. I timed this and it took me about 4 minutes to type.

Maybe I should just stick with casting and shooting. Now I'm at 5 minutes.

[10x]

I took typing in high school. It was the class I hated the most.
The dumbest girls were the best typists too. A couple had to touch type because they could not see the key board.

Now typing is one of the skills I am most great full to have learned. Thank you Mrs. Curtis for your patience and determination...

[PS Paul]

ledarnt to tipe in skoooll, but my spellingh still needss wekr... errr.. hunts and pekkks I mean hunrt and poeck

ummmm, 89 wppms if speeling aint a considderashun!

There, perfect!:kidding:

[gnoahhh]

Hunt and peck, with one finger on each hand. I've gotten pretty fast at it. This took about 15 seconds to type.

[mold maker]

Typed for one semester in "57, but didn't become to proficient. Didn't touch a keyboard again till the late "80s. I still have to look once in a while at the keys, but it's faster than I can think, so I'll get by.
I don't plan to write my memoirs, so typing here is about it. Thank God for spell check.

[montana_charlie]

I took a typing class in fifth grade in 1957. Didn't really use a keyboard again until the early eighties when I got into the 'home computer' thing.
I never really attempted to regain the touch typing skill, but it comes to me (sometimes) if I stop thinking about being careful ... and just start using the keyboard to 'converse'.

Then, I get fairly fast, but not up to 'school standards'.

What I spend more time on is 'editing'. That includes spelling and grammar, but mostly means rearranging comments for clarity and impact.

CM

[alamogunr]

What I spend more time on is 'editing'. That includes spelling and grammar, but mostly means rearranging comments for clarity and impact.

CM

That describes my typing except "impact" never enters into it. I don't think I could accomplish "impact" no matter how much I tried. Clarity would have to be left up to the reader. after I am satisfied.

[montana_charlie]

That describes my typing except "impact" never enters into it. I don't think I could accomplish "impact" no matter how much I tried. Clarity would have to be left up to the reader. after I am satisfied.
Impact is generated by placement of your main point.

Let's say that what you want to convey is going to take four sentences.

Do you place your main point in the first sentence, or the last?
Do you give it emphasis with keyboard tricks like italics or bolding?

Do you type the main point, then double space down to place the supporting lines ... or is the main point double-spaced below the support to make it stand out and be the last idea entering the reader's mind?

Both billboards and fine art paintings lead the observer's eye in a predictable path as he takes in the entire 'picture'. That sequence of information going in affects what the observer thinks about what he sees.

Text can be used in a similar way ...

(Please excuse me for going so far off-topic.)

CM

[mac60]

I learned how to type in radio school. Had to type 40 wpm to pass. I don't post much - I learn alot more keeping my mouth shut and ears open.

[StratsMan]

Like so many others here, I learned in High School in the sixties on a manual typewriter...

I've been a computer support geek of one flavor or another for 15 years, so I'm good buds with a QWERTY layout... for laughs, I swap keyboard buttons around on hunt-n-peck typers...:bigsmyl2:

[Dale in Louisiana]

Like so many others here, I learned in High School in the sixties on a manual typewriter...

I've been a computer support geek of one flavor or another for 15 years, so I'm good buds with a QWERTY layout... for laughs, I swap keyboard buttons around on hunt-n-peck typers...:bigsmyl2:

Same here. I swapped the direction of a guy's mouse once. Hilarious.

dale in Louisiana

[higgins]

I'm in the dominant demographics of board members, so I'm in the crowd that learned to type back when few people other than secretararies or clerks bothered to. In HS, I took one semester of "Personal Typing", as opposed to business typing. We had one row of typewriters in the classroom that had no characters on the keys. It certainly didn't seem like it at the time, but that was the best thing that could have happened to me in typing class. I had to learn to touch type by looking at the chart in the front of the classroom-couldn't fudge if I wanted to!

The only reason I took it was because I was planning on going to college, and had been told that better report and composition grades came to those who typed. I don't know if that was true, but I did type everything after HS, so when word processors came along I was ahead of most of my peers at work; very nice on the long reports we sometimes did. I think some of them even took a typing crash course the company offered after PCs became widespread in the office.