How Did You Learn to Type?
I had my first formal typing class in high school, long after I learned to type. There weren’t enough computers for everyone, so some of us were sent to a dusty room with clean typewriters. While the other children practiced their keyboard skills, we continued to click, putting two spaces after the period and learning arcane procedures for setting tab stops correctly.
Even earlier, I remember training on fjfjfjfjfj with the notoriously fictional Mavis Beacon . But these days, many kids don’t get typing instructions. My nine-year-old son, who is now in elementary school, has smoothly transitioned from typical typing to something more fluent, although he still has to look at his hands. He was never offered typing lessons. When I asked his kindergarten teacher about home exercises, she couldn’t think of anything. (Although we have several here .)
Do formal typing instructions follow the path of the typewriter? Just a few decades ago, women refused to learn to type (or pretend they couldn’t ) lest they fall into the trap of secretarial work. Now typing is arguably so common that lessons and exercises are unnecessary – although I’m wondering if my kids will ever type as fast as I do. (I had just scored 98 words per minute on TypingTest.com .) Or perhaps test your typing speed in itself is long since out of date.
So now I’m curious. How did you learn to type? Formal or informal? Do you consider yourself a “good” typist, or has this concept lost its meaning?