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How did you learn to type?

I took a typing class in high school.

Electric typewriters were used in my school's typing class. However, I practiced my typing on my father's manual typewriter. Typing on the manual typewriter was difficult after using an electric typewriter because I had to exert more pressure on each key to produce the desired letter/numeral, etc.

Posted - June 22, 2021

Responses


  • 6023
    I had a typing class in high school ... and when we were supposed to be doing "free" practice, I typed insulting letters to a classmate.
    He did the same to me. 
    Then we would place the letters in each others lockers.
    Which caused a bit of drama when his girlfriend opened one of my letters, thinking he was "cheating" on her.  LOL
    He dumped her for being untrustworthy.
      June 22, 2021 8:34 AM MDT
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  • 10451
    I studied chickens (I am a hunt and peck typer). Cheers!
      June 22, 2021 8:42 AM MDT
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  • 13395
    I acquired an ancient 1920's or 30's typewriter when I was a kid and practiced on that.

    The first problem I had was how to make a space between the words. This post was edited by Kittigate at June 22, 2021 1:11 PM MDT
      June 22, 2021 9:22 AM MDT
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  • 2969
    I took a typewriting class.  I am also a certified PBX operator. 



      June 22, 2021 10:06 AM MDT
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  • 19942
    I had a manual typewriter when I was in junior high school and used the hunt and peck system.  When I got to high school, I took a commercial course and learned to type properly on an electric typewriter.
      June 22, 2021 10:18 AM MDT
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  • 52905

     

      My experience was similar to yours: all of her adult life, my mother, a prolific poet and an ardent researcher, had always owned a typewriter, up until the time that word processors and subsequently home computers came out. Her original models that I remember from my toddler years were the manual typewriters. Even though she typed at least a few times a week all throughout my childhood, I never developed neither the curiosity nor the interest at home in learning to type. I guess I saw it as an adult activity, and truth be told, an activity associated to women.
      At some point in my schooling, either junior high school or high school, so I was a teen, typing was one of the classes I took, and even though I don’t remember if it was a required course, I truly believe that it must have been, because at the time, I had no inkling that I would ever use the skill at all beyond that classroom. Also, it was not a class about which I was very enthusiastic, as shown by my performance in it. I guess I thought it was a one-and-done phase of my life. (Note: this was pre-word processors.)
      My greatest failing with typing was that from day one, I violated the cardinal rule of not looking at the keyboard as I typed, and instead I look at the page.  I looked at and still to this day I look at the keys when I type. I have never overcome that bad habit, yet with the advent of computer use, on desktops and laptops I look at the keys instead of looking at the screen. Even on smaller devices such as the iPhone I’m using right now, it’s my go-to method.  Of course, I’m so accustomed to doing it that way that I have by now perfected my skills to be just as proficient with typing as people who do it correctly.
      I was well into my mid or late twenties before I ever needed to type in any work-related settings, and believe it or not, it was as a Marine. I was in radio communications, and had been doing it since I joined at age 18; typing was not even on my radar, but I was in the process of transferring to an administrative unit, and I had to be tested on my typing speed as part of the determination as to whether or not I would be accepted. Let’s just say that 24 hours after the trials, I was back out in the field with 15 pounds of radio gear strapped to my back just like I had been doing since radio school (I didn’t get the transfer). When I returned the my communications platoon after failing the tryouts, my platoon sergeant told me that when he had joined the Corps back during the Vietnam War and attended that era’s radio school, they had been tested on everything from Morse code, semaphore, naval signal flags and typing. It was a throwback to both World War II and the Korean War that such stringent curriculum was being taught. Anyone who failed radio school then was kicked out of there and sent straight to the infantry, the grunts, the mud Marines. Being smack dab in the middle of the Vietnam War gave him plenty of extra incentive to do well. I joined during peacetime, and the radio school course was strictly focused on radios and radio codes only.
    ~
    ~

      June 22, 2021 11:22 AM MDT
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  • Fantastic post! 
      June 22, 2021 5:53 PM MDT
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  • 52905

     

      Thank you, my friend!
      

      ~

      June 22, 2021 10:30 PM MDT
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  • 10449
    Self taught via hunt and peck.  I was always kicked out of typing classes for being too uncoordinated.
      June 22, 2021 12:40 PM MDT
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  • 313
    elective typing class in the computer lab

      June 22, 2021 12:42 PM MDT
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  • 581
    In 6th grade when we had to take computer lab class.
      June 22, 2021 2:09 PM MDT
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  • 2217
    Mum's touch typing records.
      June 22, 2021 2:35 PM MDT
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  • 16199
    Self taught, I was a computer nerd in the 80s.
      June 22, 2021 4:53 PM MDT
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  • 10037
    I learned some on my own with my mom's manual typewriter as a young child. I became adept in high school typing class, but I think it had just been renamed 'keyboarding'. We did get a little time on those 1980s computers, but mostly electric typewriters. 
      June 22, 2021 7:27 PM MDT
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