Ask Lemmy

I can touch type most keys, though probably not with proper form. I have to look at some of the less common keys to find them with my fingers.

My schools did have formal typing classes but I wasn't exactly a star student. I think my typing speed at it's fastest was around 60 wpm, though I more commonly float around 40 wpm

I do touch type, but I don't use the standard finger placement. I had typing class in school, which I'm grateful for, but what really got my typing speed up were ICQ and AOL Instant Messenger.

I can to a basic level, but I type much faster without it.

I learned with a game.

I use touch typing when I'm in the dark and the keyboard has no backlight, then I can type at 10wpm.

Yes. QWERTY, I learned from both Type Attack and Mavis beacon. Tried Dvorak for the heck of it but that one didn't stick. I (could) think essays straight onto the screen so long as not too many numbers were involved.

Yeah, I took a class in highschool where they just had us play a typing game until we got good enough at it. It really helps to learn the correct form and be using the right fingers for the right keys, once you get it in your muscle memory you don't have to really think about the individual letters anymore and the words just appear when you intend them to.

I took typing in school several times using QWERTY. I learned the IBM typewriters were really nice to type on, and what the "correct" way to type was. It didn't make any difference though at the time because typing speed was never the limit, it was thinking speed. Then in college I got into IRC and most things didn't need deep thinking and so typing speed was the limit so I learned to apply the "correct" way because it was faster which I needed. (I never did meet a worthwhile girl on IRC so it didn't do anything for me even though I now type faster)

Yes with one quirk. I don't use the right shift, just the left. Not sure why I've ended up this way, or if it's a common variation.

EDIT: looked it up. It's very common

Yep. One of the best investments I ever made tbh. It has paid so many dividends over time.

I thought myself to touch type a few years ago. It was also never part of my formal education even though it would have helped a lot ! I was using a mix of AZERTY, QWERTZ ans QWERTY and now I exclusively use International QWERTY, it's a standard layout with accents and special characters with ALT modifier.

I learned how to touch type qwerty by playing Mario teaches typing 2, which taught proper form. It was one of the video games I was allowed to play when I was a kid. However, I did learn a few things wrong.

I never learned how to use my right pinky for shift and use left pinky for every shift. I also don't know how to touch type numbers or symbols. I could probably learn that, but I don't have to use them very often, so it's hard to remember.

I can't :3. I know how, but I basically never naturally do lol. I feel like part of the issue with touch typing for me, is keyboard spacing as I always find my right hand feels uncomfortably angled and cramped when I place them both on the home row :3. Something like a split keyboard would make it feel more natural I think

I recommend learning proper touch typing with the 'correct' finger position. Its benefit is that there's proper movement for every finger for every key, which is mostly symmetric and very regular, and it gets ingrained in muscle memory. Hence typing anything is quick even if it's not fast overall. The fingers 'know' what they must do for any letter, and it's often faster to let them do their thing than to e.g. reach for the mouse. You can actually feel when you press a wrong key.

In case of a mistake, it's faster to delete a few words and retype them than to move the cursor back and forth. And if you get an app like Alfred (for Mac) or Keypirinha (for Windows), you can invoke it with a shortcut and type a few letters faster than you open an app or click on some widget with the mouse — it's often quicker to switch apps via Alfred than via cmd-tab. Likewise, when you use a keyboard-heavy app like Emacs, calling its commands becomes a breeze.

I'd like to use Dvorak or at least Colemak, but I'm concerned that all shortcuts would be messed up. Especially since I'm a user of Vim-style movements and commands.

Also, TIPP10 app is pretty nice for learning. No fluff, no extra stuff. Initially took me about a month to learn with half an hour or so a day, and about a year to fully get used to it and develop the speed.

A little, I guess.

Canary (Angle Mod) layout. Form is quite proper with alternating shift however still learning so only hitting 60 WPM with punctuation on.

I can touch type QWERTY, but I struggle on laptop keyboards because it's easy to lose your position.

I have a Glove80 keyboard on my desktop, it's very easy to stay put since the keyboard is made exactly so your hands are on the home row.

My parents made me take typing lessons when I was in primary school. I had to learn on an extremely heavy electric typewriter with the keycaps taped off.
It was a lot of work but I’m still enjoying the benefits of it.
Fun little difference was that we used QWERTY, but the ‘;’ was replaced with a ‘ij’

Mostly, sometimes I have issues with thezxcvbnm row.

We had keyboard classes in school but AIM was where I cut my teeth. Very proficient in typing. Are you over 60, or under 30 if you don’t mind my asking?

Yes, since before I was 10 (qwerty).. Learned it on an electric typewriter. Once a colleague switched two keys on my keyboard around as a joke. I hadn't noticed untill he told me about it three months later.

I never took a formal class and it's real weird to train now. But every now an then I try this typing game. There are a few different ones out there.

Typing Land

Yes, I use Colemak DH, but can also touch type on QUERTY when needed (when working on my laptop).

I noticed that, while gaming helped me a little, it also taught me to put my fingers on the wrong keys (WSAD is not correct for typing), also QUERTY is really bad, I never tried to put fingers on the home row, because you barely use home row keys in QUERTY.

It took me two months of regular training to switch to Colemak but it was worth it. I type much faster and I feel like a skilled pianist when my fingers fly smoothly over the keys, and somehow I am even better with QUERTY now than I was before!

I am old enough to have had a class in high school. On a normal keyboard, I can still hit 100 wpm with no errors. On a phone (which I don't use often), though, it's poke-poke-poke.

Yes, I had typing lessons for that when I was a kid. Learned on QWERTY and still use it to this day.
My form might not be completely proper (sometimes I use the "wrong" finger for a certain key), but it's pretty close to proper.

Yes, no, QWERTY; I use the F and J nubs to center my hands but I dont't keep them in the "correct position" as was taught in my elementary typing class. Regular computer use lends itself to getting good at typing quickly. I only have to look for some special characters that I don't often use.

I've taken classes on QWERTY and have the right form, but I still need to look at the keys every once in a while.

Practice in online chat rooms has made it so I can type about as fast as I can think, which is good enough for me.

Yeah, managed to pick it up in a couple weeks, became more efficient over the course of a year or so. One thing that helped initially was learning on a keyboard with completely blank keycaps, therefore preventing me from cheating and just using my eyes.

I'm now still using the same keyboard, and can touch type flawlessly. However I still have trouble with number 6 :(. QWERTY.

I can touch type in both qwerty and Dvorak. For me I think it was a combo of starting piano when I was in elementary school, AIM chat rooms, and computer lab time at school.

Back when I was still playing I could type 140wpm with qwerty, but since I've stopped it's dropped to the 100 range.

I never managed proper training with the correct hands positioning so my hands are a bit all over the place. But years of Twitter, Reddit and online gaming (yeah, I was that type for some time) helped a lot so now I can type fairly quickly in both QWERTY and ЙЦУКЕН.

Uh yes. If you can't touch type, prioritize it. The speedup alone is worth it.

Yes, QWERTY. But I'm just old enough to actually have typing class as an elective in high school, not sure if that's still a thing in 2026. It was useful and being into tech I knew it was something I'd need to learn.

I'll add that the keyboard you're using is important for touch typing. Some keyboards don't have good bumps/notches on the keys which makes it harder to do any real touch typing without looking down at the keyboard.

I learned how to touch type in grade school, but quickly forgot after that. It’s just not that ergonomic to keep your hands in that position. However, it did give me the necessary memory of where all the keys are. My hands can magnetically reach each key without a lot of difficulty. I could type pretty quickly if I wanted to but I’m usually limited by my speed of thought and usually make quite a few typing mistakes.

Yes I can touch type after learning from keybr and then practice on monkeytype

Yes. Parents made me learn touch-typing with QWERTY when I was growing up

I actually made the effort to switch to Colemak-DH less than a year ago. Because getting a properly labelled Colemak-DH keyboard is so difficult (my laptop keys are still QWERTY layout), I... basically forced myself to learn how to touch type in like 2-3 months. Still can't do the multilingual symbols very well (I always forget where the ^/circumflex is...), but I think I have a >98% accuracy on everything else

Unfortunately I forgot how to touch type with QWERTY after learning the new setup...