Just curious. Where did you learn to type?

[leftyladyfrommo]

I learned by practicing for hours on an old manual. Then on a Selectric.

Where do all the kids learn to type now?

[rug]

1. I still hven't.

[cliffordu]

12. And it tells....

KIDDING!!!

I don't type worth a sh9t.

[Coyotl]

2. In typing class, of course.

Where everyone (the girls and four of us who refused to play football) did when I was in high school in the 60s. Typing was a last period class because the boys played sports that period while the girls kept going to classes. Freshman year, I was the first boy ever to refuse to participate in sports. The next year three more boys joined my exclusive club, and we decided to take typing instead of sitting in study hall (actually, we wanted to hang out with the girls).

[OriginalGeek]

3. Had typing class in high school

Jr year we had old manual machines but Sr year somebody made a big donation and we got IBM Selectrics.


I don't think I ever got much better than around 40wpm adjusted for mistakes...it's even worse now because I'm no longer trying to impress the reeeeeally cute teacher. (She was only 2~3 years older than most of us - but her daddy was the pastor of the church that ran the school)

[ZombieHorde]

4. Typing class in high school. nt

[leftyladyfrommo]

5. Do they still have typing classes in high school?

or do they just teach everyone in computer classes?

[ZombieHorde]

28. I don't know. I was in high school during the 90s. nt

[AngryOldDem]

46. My kid's in junior high, and she's taking keyboarding. It's mandatory. n/t

[nolabear]

6. I was awful in hs typing. College classes and necessity. And the internets.

Can't obsess over internet crap if you can't type, right? I probably learned more from that than I did from being a writer.

[elleng]

7. High school typing class

[Tom_Foolery]

8. I taught myself at home when I was a kid...

then I took a course in high school to fine tune my skills.

[Earth_First]

9. As a 33-year-old, computers have been a daily part of my life...

It sorta came naturally as being a younger individual in an age of technology.

[NV Whino]

10. High school typing class

The teacher said he would give me a C if I promised never to darken his classroom again, and I promised I would never become a secretary. I willingly took the C.

I did, at a later time, become an excellent typist, a talent now lost to nerve damage. I'm now relegated to typing with whichever fingers work best on any given day.

[ConcernedCanuk]

11. Grade 10, 1966-67.

.
.
.

Our typewriters had no letters on the keys, they were ALL blank.

Classroom had a pull-down schematic the teacher would let us see during lessons,

but for tests, nope! - nada.

I passed.

CC

ps: - didn't need start, alt ctrl delete etc!

[RebelOne]

13. High school on an Underwood manual.

I doubt I could type on one of those things nowadays. I would probably break or dislocate my fingers.

[Arctic Dave]

14. Junior High.

Typing class. One quarter on a manual and the next on an electric.

[LiberalEsto]

15. 8th grade typing class

Final grade: D

Told the teacher I didn't plan on typing for a living.

The ultimate irony was that I ended up a newspaper reporter for over 25 years. One of the fastest two-finger typists ever.

[Sekhmets Daughter]

16. 8th grade Jr. High School...

like you on an old manual. These days my typing skills are minimal at best.

[Bucky]

17. High School typing class. On a good day I can hit 50wpm

[MiddleFingerMom]

18. Underwood manual from the 30's or 40's at home, then typing class in high school.

.
.
I started writing poetry and short stories in college -- using first a word processor and then
a computer and got pretty good (although I was an 8-fingered typist for the most part).
.
I became a temp "Kelly Girl" for awhile and scored a moderately well-paced 55 wpm on
their typing test -- but the woman administering the test said mine was the first one she
had ever seen with absolutely zero mistakes (part of the reason I was stuck at 55 wpm
was that I edited on the fly).
.
.
I don't remember my being a boy putting me in a minority position in the highschool class --
I think everyone was required to take typing.
.
.
.

[mrmpa]

19. 1973............

in Sister Mildred's Typing I class. She also taught Typing II, along with other High School business courses. When I got to college, there were so many students who couldn't type, that I ended up ith a side business of typing their papers for them. Charge 50 cents a page. I could type a 4 page paper in about one hour. Made decent drinking money.

[Ron Obvious]

20. Self-taught, if you can call it typing

I taught myself with my first computer around 1981 or so. I use about 4 fingers, the left hand thumb only for the spacebar, but I'm adept enough to type about 55 wpm. I make tonnes of mistakes, but my 'typing' is good enough for a programmer.

[Phentex]

67. same here...

I don't quite hunt and peck anymore but I don't type properly. It was taught in high school but conflicted with another class so I never took it.

My kids, who have grown up using computers, took a technology class and have been typing like fiends ever since.

[Neoma]

21. Disney's Adventures in Typing with Timon & Pumbaa!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B000023VVH

[Major Nikon]

22. On an old Royal manual typewriter in school

...by a teacher with horned rimmed glasses who banged her ruler on your desk if you looked down at the keys while typing.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

23. In high school. I don't remember if it was a manual or electric machine...

[Quantess]

24. 9th grade

But, I felt pressured to type fast to get a decent good grade. So I cheated and looked at the keyboard. I never broke the habit of looking at the keyboard.

I felt like the pressure was too much. We were expected to be fast typers without peeking, and I couldn't keep up.
I wish the teacher could have been a bit more patient.

[femmocrat]

25. Junior high typing class.

One of the most useful things I learned in school.

[Brigid]

26. High school.

First, we used those big old Underwood manuals. Then in senior year we got IBM Selectrics. It was the seventies.

[olddots]

27. I went to a Waldorf school

typing was too modern a concept for Rudolph Steiner

[AsahinaKimi]

29. High School

I wanted to learn to type!

[ashling]

30. When I learn, I'll let you know LOL

When I was a kid in Jr. High I used my dad's old 1938 Royal to type stories. When I got to HS I took typing (1968) and pounded away on a big hunkin Royal manual.

[Buck Turgidson]

31. j-j-j j-k-j k-k-k k-j-k

n/t

[tabbycat31]

32. I learned as a young child

My mom used to work for an educational software company and I was a guinea pig for a typing software program that became very successful.

[Sequoia]

33. 8th grade on an old manual. Sure was glad when Selectric came around.

[csziggy]

34. Taught myself on an ancient manual typewriter transcribing old wills and deeds

For my Mom to help with her genealogical research. The typewriter looked like the early Olivers here but I'm not sure what make it was: http://www.typewritermuseum.org/collection/index.php3?machine=oliver3&cat=kd

The workings of the machine were cool and all out in the open. If you typed too fast, the "arms" with letters on them would catch on each other and lock up the machine:

[KG]

35. took a typing class in JrHS, but never used a typewriter/keyboard till the computer age showed up

20 years later. so now I'm an 'advanced' hunt-n-pecker.

[hunter]

36. 7th grade, manual machines.

I've never been able to type faster than I can write or talk, which isn't fast.

I wrote most of my high school and early college term papers by hand, and then do the final edit as I typed, sometimes with a lot of literal cut-and-paste, or at least liquid paper.

My mom still types fast despite her arthritis, but when I was a kid she was world-class. She'd hear me plunking away late at night and it would make her crazy.

She'd come in, say "Give me that..." sit down, and BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR, she'd be done, doing in a couple of minutes what was going to take me at least an hour.

Later I wrote on the university computers using vi, which was part of the magical May 1979 BSD Unix release, and later on my own Atari 800.

I still have all those files. Whenever I upgrade a computer hard drive capacity has increased so much the easiest thing to do is copy the entire contents of the old computer to the new one. There's no cost to hoarding. And eventually someone will write a flawless emulator for the old computers and I can use them from my Linux desktop without getting any old hardware out of the garage.

[Wounded Bear]

37. 9th Grade (IIRC) typing class.....

I got up to 40-45 mistakes per minute.

The class had enough electrics for half the class. I started on the manuals. After the switch at mid-semester, I realized I was thankful I didn't have to go the other way.

[Loryn]

38. Manual typewriter in H.S.

Only the girls with long fingernails got to use those newfangled electric typewriters.

[a kennedy]

39. Typing class on an electric typewriter.....and my first job had a selectric, thought I was in heaven

Loved my selectric typewriter.

[geardaddy]

40. Typing class in high school

[fizzgig]

41. fifth grade tying class

on an old apple II.

[Aristus]

42. High school typing course.

I'll never forget the instructor's deathless, oft-repeated line: "Keep your eyes on the copy!"

[HarveyDarkey]

43. I didn't

I thought it would be obvious.

[Jamaal510]

44. Mario typing game for Mac

in the 3rd grade, at the school library.

[AngryOldDem]

45. On a manual typewriter I got for Christmas as a preteen...

...with an old typing textbook (forget where that came from) as a guide.

Pretty much self-taught.

[Kali]

48. High School

manual machines. I was OK - around 60 wpm, but I never mastered the shift number keys, still have to look.

[tjwmason]

49. Self-taught

I went through school still completing all work manually, but then arrived at university just as e-mail was becoming universal and also met the expectation that all work be submitted typed. Since then I've developed my own typing style, which mostly uses my index and middle fingers, as well as thumbs for the space-bar and right-hand little finger for the enter-key with the occasional use of ring fingers depending on the pattern of letters.

According to an on-line test I work at 74 w.p.m. with minimal mistakes.

http://www.typeonline.co.uk/typingspeed.php

[GoneOffShore]

50. High School? Nah, middle school.

[Broken_Hero]

51. Playing 9-5 on my dads Commodore 64. nt

[narnian60]

52. My junior year in high school, 1969.

Lived on Guam. Loved the class-felt relaxing because I was good at it.

[applegrove]

53. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. I could not type very fast. Then my memory was shot for

a bit more than a year. Then I got my memory back and had jobs where I had to type. I got better faster. But mostly I typed "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" again and again.

[sakabatou]

54. In elementary school

[Iggo]

55. Chat rooms, late 90s.

[tavernier]

56. Junior High, seventh grade, 1959.

Clickity clack. I doubt that there were even electric models in any schools back then. My piano teacher was livid because she said that it ruined a student's ability to learn the piano if the two were taken up at the same time. She may have been correct; I started typing about a year earlier, took to it like a duck to water, but never could master the piano.

[politicat]

57. At home, late elementary and middle school.

My parents bought a TI 94a in 1984 (I was 8) and an 8086 a couple years later. They let me have access to both.

I basically learned to type by typing in BASIC on that damned TI. (Along the way, I learned BASIC, but that wasn't intentional. I was an RTFM sort of kid, and the TI came with a huge manual full of thousands of lines of BASIC code. The thing could apparently do interesting things if you were willing to program it and obsessively copy-edit spaghetti code. I wanted it to do interesting things.)

I also wrote a lot of really crappy stories on the 8086, in a DOS word processing program so primitive that the only way to edit was to backspace... And lose whatever you'd written after the typo.

And I had a manual, portable Smith Corona from the time I was about five. But my mother refused to buy Wite-out because a) people huffed that, and therefore, bad and b) only lazy typists used it and c) she was an incredibly good typist, so if she bought a bottle, by the time she needed it again, it was dried out.

The advent of 3.1 (and the Macintosh) made me a much worse typist.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

58. started typing at age five on mom's IBM Executive with proportional spacing.

That was state of the art during the Kennedy administration.

Mom did dad's typing. Dad was an attorney. Had a home office.

I sat on two phonebooks and hit one key at a time. Learned how to eyeball the backspace for corrections. Wrote perfect letters to grandma.

Asked mom what everything meant on the pleadings and deeds she typed and she explained them to me.

High school senior, typing class on a &^%$#godforsaken manual. Hurt my fingers to use it. I was too fast. Got to 42 wpm in one semester. Got a lot faster on a Selectric but still jammed it from going too fast. Selectrics burp and spit out a hyphen when you go too fast.

Eventually in the late 90s, computers got fast enough to keep up with me on a typing test.

Record: 115 words per minute perfectly, because I went back and corrected my mistakes. Don't know how fast I'd be if I didn't go back and correct.

being a piano player helps a LOT!!

[a la izquierda]

59. Middle school typing class

We made pictures with the typewriters.

[Scuba]

60. 1963. They typing teacher was beautiful, so I signed up for her class.

I had no idea at the time that she would save me from being an 11-Bravo.

[smirkymonkey]

61. High school. Took a typing class.

[rurallib]

62. Same way I learned to swim - I got thrown in the deep end

and had to sink or swim.
Put another way - I was selected to do a systems role at my job. So what little I can type has come from just doing it.

[LWolf]

63. First on an old manual

with a keyboard cover in jr. high.

Then on electric typewriters with keyboard covers in high school.

I inherited my mom's old selectric, 1970 or so, when I went to college.

There are keyboarding programs for 'puters, but with the explosion of non-standard sized keyboards, they mostly hunt and peck.

[pipi_k]

64. Went to

a business-oriented high school ('68 - '70).

Learned in typing class on a Selectric II.

Then in 1984 went to another business school to learn data entry and data processing. More typing classes.

I'm still amazed by what my fingers can do when my brain isn't paying attention. Like they all have their own little brains...

If I pay attention to the keyboard, I don't know where the hell the letters are.

[TrogL]

65. Business summer school between grade 5 and 6, otherwise I was gonna flunk

My handwriting has always been illegible.

[Blue_In_AK]

66. High school, one year - 1963, I believe - manual typewriter.

I never intended to be a legal secretary, but that one year of typing class did more for me financially in my life than four years of college.

[bravenak]

68. Started in 3rd grade.

There was a little character named qwerty. I think he ate letters or something. And they made us play Oregon trail all the time.