One of my colleagues told me that she was hanging up her keyboard for Christmas yesterday.
There was nothing unusual, it seems, about Christmas break having started yesterday. All over the place, tools are being downed for a fortnight, which does slightly surprise me. Instead, what I mused was the fact that the keyboard was now the symbol of her working life.
I am old enough to have trained in accountancy when there was not a single PC in sight, and computers were very largely peripheral to working life.
When I started on my own in 1985 and decided that every person in the firm I was creating would always have their own computer, I am sure that the decision was decidedly unusual.
Now, it is what everyone has.
But, a thought occurred to me. Who is actually teaching people to type?
I recall my parents' horror when at the age of 8 or 9 my twin and I both asked for typewriters - because we wanted to write newsletters for each other. Blogging began young, in my case. The idea that a boy might type was, however, completely alien to them. No-one ever taught me to type. As a result, I am still not a great typist.
Now, typing is normal. But does anyone actually teach anyone to type properly now? It certainly does not happen in any school that I have heard of.
Why not, I wonder? Given how much productivity could be increased by if only people knew how to do it properly, wouldn't that be worthwhile?
And what else should be taught in this way?
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My handwriting is so awful that my parents bought me a second hand typewriter at an early age. As someone a few years older than Richard, I should warn him that soon his brain and fingers will ario communicating correctly.
Ario?
Is that stop, one space out?
Still on the ball Richard! The neurons should be good for another few years.
During the war the US Navy used a different keyboard -the Dvorak layout-where the most used letters were central. The QWERTY lay out was designed, I read, to slow down the typing and the keys sticking. Dvorak might be improved but it seems strange when most people can’t touch type, we stick with a system dating to the 19th century.
Before typing, could we please train people how to think?
My incompetence on the keyboard helps me to write better – it slows me down to be honest and can improve my input. In my view a lot of the inanity on lines is because thumbs and fingers are flying around at high speed on keyboards.
Sadly, the school curriculum is loaded so heavily there is little room for truly useful skills. To typing I would add…
First aid, cycling proficiency, cooking/nutrition, basic sewing, basic personal finance.
No doubt there are more.
Yes.
Word processing. Most young people seem to be clueless about it.
When I first started to learn programming, the course included a week of an hour a day learning to touch type on a paper keyboard. I can still remember some of the mnemonics – Quiet Aunt Zelda, Willie Sits Exams…
I never learned to properly touch type, but I did learn to use all my fingers, which certainly made me a more productive coder. So yes, definitely teach a bit of typing. And it could easily be fitted into a course like the one I did, so people are motivated to do it, because they want to excel at the ‘real’ part of the course.
Thanks
I have in the past given talks in schools in Austria. On one occasion the head teacher came in towards the end of the session and asked what was their next lesson? – it was typing – asked if they wanting me to carry on with my talk, they 100% did not want typing! (I had just got to the bit in Africa where my cousin’s boyfriend was eaten by a crocodile). These youngsters also had lessons on various trades (Plumbing and so on) and so did come out of school with practical skills where they could go straight into employment. I am not sure if my Father typed, but he did do shorthand. My first knowledge of computers was when working in Paris and a computer company was a client, but still being developed – then, back in UK I ‘met’ my first actual working computer – it was the size of a room and you went through double dustproof doors for access. We did not have calculators (I was taught by my Father, to use a slide rule) but each audit team had a comptometer with an operator – the operator on my team could touch ‘type’ without even looking. The biggest problem with the comptometer was that, if the weather was cold, the oil in it froze so it could not be used. None of the accountants (or trainees) used typewriters or adding machines, and none of us were taught to do so and they were skills reserved for secretaries or the specialist comptometer operator – and all of them could touch type or etc – and fast.
The comptometer operator
That’s a job that has disappeared
I remmber them at Peat Marwick
I learned to type at school over 60 years ago. I was once told “if you want to advance your career don’t tell anybody you can type”. It’s one of the most useful skills I have and it hasn’t held me back – in fact quite the reverse.
I recall that advice
I am glad I ignored it
I used to work at a primary school and on Friday mornings, a whole selection of subsidiary topics were taught. For one whole year, I used the BBC website Dance Mat Typing to teach 7 – 11 Yr olds the basics of touch typing. Some of them got very good at it.
This takes me back. We were taught typing at school when we were 12 by an elderly male teacher here in Scotland.
We learned to type to music. It doesn’t take long to use all 9 fingers. The left thumb was not required, the right thumb being used for the space bar. Typewriters were manual in those days and hefty things, the keys difficult to press. For anyone who wants to learn to type properly there’s online resources.
I have noticed over the years, that some colleagues could type very fast, sometimes using only their index fingers – their pointers as Americans would say.
I got given a small portable typewriter (Imperial Aristocrat) on going to uni early 70’s, and learned touchtyping from a teach-yourself book. (Had to hold the typewriter in front of an electric bar fire to loosen the oil, my digs were on the chilly side).
While learning I used to type out what people said to me on my thighs to practice the qwerty stuff – even reading & typing the adverts while riding on the bus! I got to 60wpm (with mistakes as long as there weren’t numbers or brackets/special characters). I also remember cutting stencils for producing newsletters. And Tippex for correcting originals, & the pink stuff for correcting stencils. And carbon & flimsies…
When computer keyboards arrived, I was v happy. But I’ve never got the hang of laptops, keep brushing the touchpad. And as for phones, I don’t know how these youngsters do it, with thumbs whizzing around, maybe it’s my arthritis. Memories..
I travelled with a prtable in the 70s…a Corona, I think. And I recall all those things, bit would happily not go back to them.
And I cannot use phone keyboards either – or type with my thumbs, at all. I use an iPad for that. I rarely move without an iPad, phone and MacBook thwse days. Sad, but true.
Typing on smart phones – there’s a thing called a stylus pen. Comes with a soft rubber or silicon tip that’s around/or bit less than a centimetre across. I use it all the time on my phone, as sometimes need to “type” in long messages to the kids on WhatsApp. Apparently they’re good for other touch screens too, but I’ve only ever used them on my phone.
I tried
For me, they were much slower. But I am not saying they have no value as a result.
My first personal typewriter was an IBM Selectric. I had it until Hurricane Ian relocated it to Cuba.
I would love to purchase a new one but there are no “new ones”. I am leery of buying a rebuild because there is no place locally to get service. Also, the prices on the rebuilds are twice what was paid for my original new IBM Selectric in the early 1980’s.
I would never go back to a typewriter now, unless I had to.
But, on that proverbial desert island it might well be my luxury.
There are some very good computer programmes that teach touch typing. I think I first did one at university in the 1990 so this is well before AI was a thing.
A bit like learning a musical instrument or learning to cycle or drive or dance, it needs frequent practice to develop the muscle memory so the action becomes automatic without having to look at your hands (or feet).
We’ve had keyboards with a similar layout for around 150 years but I’m slightly surprised that voice control and voice recognition is not more advanced. Very few people are dictating their text messages or emails. Until there is an alternative, typing is a useful skill to have. But it may soon go the way of log tables and the slide rule if something better (or at least easier to use) comes along.
I use dictation, quite a lot
But, it always needs editing and does not save much time, overall
It just means I can develop ideas when I am walking.
Handy tool for dictating messages, creating transcripts, summaries, etc.; https://otter.ai/. I used it to transcribe recorded interviews, and I think its voice recognition capabilities are pretty good.
On an iPhone just use Notes
Although I prefer IA Writer – costs about £3
Just turn on the mirophone from the keyboard and off you go. It really is very, very easy.
I think that Andrew has the nub of it here with his mention of kinaesthetic (muscle) memory.
“it needs frequent practice to develop the muscle memory so the action becomes automatic without having to look at your hands (or feet).”
But before we start looking at learning to touch type we have to go back to the initial stages of learning to write and spell. I spent the last few years of my working life working with secondary age pupils who had poor, or non existent, reading and spelling skills and I was heavily influenced by the research into the acquisition of those skills.
Leaving reading to one side and just looking at spelling it is, firstly, clear that an ability to spell correctly is the basis for clear and immediately understood written communication (no puzzling over ‘meaning’ or reinterpreting mis spelled words to slow down comprehension).
Secondly, learning to spell involves learning how to represent the sounds in words by the letters that represent the sounds. Learning a series of ‘letter strings’ for every single one of one’s verbal and written vocabulary is beyond the capabilities of the human brain.
Thirdly, the accurate reproduction of word spellings is greatly dependent on kinaesthetic memory and is a gradually acquired skill which has to be taught incrementally.
Fourthly, the physical act of writing by hand aids retention of this skill. Research even indicates that students who take handwritten notes of lectures retain more than do students who take notes on a laptop.
Having said that, learning to touch type at the same time would impose an extra cognitive load, in recalling words as letter strings and finding the correct keys for those letters, which will inevitably handicap some children.
So, although I appreciate that touch typing will also develop kinaesthetic memory for accurate word reproduction we have to acknowledge that handwriting is vital to initial learning and not be too eager to teach it to children while they are still learning how to write their native language.
Voice to text capabilities are useful for those who are already proficient in writing their language but, as reading Richard’s blog posts some times demonstrates, it is not always capable of accurate reproduction of that language. No criticism implied here, Richard, the shortcomings are a fault of the programme, not of you.
If we produce people who are unable to write by hand what happens when technology fails or is unavailable? They are voiceless.
Others might disagree strongly with me…
Maggie,
I agree with you that the research shows that people who make handwritten notes to tend to recall what they have been told a lot better than those who maketype written notes. I also suspect that those who are now using AI learning methods will recall very little of what they Are supposedly learning. I do not believe it possible to take effort out of the learning process.
This being said, no one ever managed to teach me to handwrite well. My parents were, in fact, told by the time that I was about nine but it was unlikely that I would ever pass many exams and my future prospects were limited because I did not Handwriter as such but did knitting across a page. I still have some of my handwriting from my teenagers years And it is incredibly difficult to read, and I have to thank all those who struggled to read it nonetheless, and gave me marks for what I achieved despite that impediment. I do not think that this explains why I was so keen on typing – I was just always fascinated by typing, print, publishing and anything to do with it. But, for me moving on as quickly as I could from handwriting was fundamental to mastering the art of written communication.
I am married to a retired GP. You can imagine what her handwriting is like.
Imagine, too, the inheritance our children got. Despite my best efforts, knowing my own problems with handwriting, both of them have terrible handwriting and one was diagnosed as needing to use a computer from the age of nine, and has basically done so ever since. He seems to have done right despite that fact .
So, whilst I agree with you that handwriting is an important skill, as with every thing in education, being open-minded is essential. For some people alternatives are really important if they are available because handwriting is something they are never going to be very good at.
Best
Richard
PS. This was dictated on my iPad and I have not corrected it, just to show what happens if you try using that option.
Richard
Your mention of handwriting and your GP wife reminds me of my mother who was convinced that the reason she could never read a prescription was because ‘educated’ people’s handwriting was always bad. For her it was a mark of intelligence.
[…] mentioned my first typewriter this […]
I was born in 1995, and I learned to (touch)type playing Typing of the Dead haha.
On a serious note there is a fascinating aspect of generational tech – those who grew up with clunkier tech learned how to figure out how the tech worked themselves. As computer UIs have been streamlined (smartphones, apps, tablets etc) it’s rendered the generation for whom those are the default (and not desktop computer) less able (or less inclined) to tinker with their devices and use the “clunkier” tech.
So the “digital native” story isn’t as straightforward as it seems.
Agreed
I used to be able to build PCs – and did in thew 90s. I admit I would not have a clue now.
Yes, I built my own PC using a large tower case and buying all the parts online. There used to be a MACMIN manual, updated yearly, to help you theough configuring BIOS & adjusting jumpers.
Nowadays, I get a similar buzz buying 2nd hand laptops from “fone” shops, and putting Linux Mint xfce64 on them, dual booted with Windows, but I don’t use Windows nowadays.
We should probably remember that the standard QWERTY keyboard layout was designed so that typists would not type too fast causing mechanical keys to get stuck together.
No wondering typing is not so easy.
I remember working with a group of young women who had all done business courses at 16, they could type fast and accurately while based on my typing I should have been a policemen.
Clearly though there are not only positive issues but negative ones, if you can type properly you are less likley to develop RSI etc
Also of course there are all the skills of laying out documents that old fashioned typists were taught and dont get me started about ‘Corporate Style’ and the business style book
Corporate grammar irritates me….
I was taught touch-typing in summer school in high school in 1961 or 62, I think. We all needed it for our university courses in the mid-sixties; hand-written papers were frowned upon in California. But there was industrial support for it then. When I applied for a professional job at IBM headquarters in San Jose, they only asked one question: can you touch-type at 60 wpm or better? Well, I could touch-type, but not that fast. So they were not interested in me. Besides, I was a girl…
Wow…..
It’s hard to recall how unfair the world was then
yes (and reply to Susan Graham) – I was turned down for ‘Articles’ (training contract) by 2 firms because I was a girl – then in Paris, some clients refused to have a woman on the premises – but they were so desperate for qualified** ACAs (les événements) that they EVEN took a woman! **I mistyped ‘qualified’ and spell check reset it as ‘quailed’!
🙂
At age 21 in 1979, as a Cambridge graduate, I was teaching English as a Foreign Language to foreign students, at a secretarial college that had TEFL as a side business. As payment in kind, I took their touch-typing course thinking it would allow me to travel and get a job anywhere, as secretaries were in demand everywhere. How fortuitous that choice was, though for completely different reasons! A year later I started work as a research assistant in a computer science department, and touch-typing has turned out to be useful ever since during my computer science career, and now that computers are in use everywhere. Yes, it should be offered in all schools.
Great story.
Referring back to my earlier post and your reply, what it boils down to is that writing words by hand is integral to learning the skill of spelling and that spelling is an integral part of clear communication. Once that skill has been learned handwriting becomes less significant (apart from those students taking lecture notes) so I’m perfectly happy with keyboarding. I just suggest that handwriting shouldn’t be replaced by keyboarding at that early stage of education. Which might well happen given the human propensity to throw the baby out with the bathwater 🙂
We can agree on that.
Perhaps it had something to do with my very ugly handwriting … My parents gave me a typewriter when I was 16. I messed around with it for a couple of days and then found my mother’s typing book – touch typing, instructions and exercises. She had been training as a secretary but The War came along and she was drafted into engineering. I persisted with the exercises, realised the typewriter always won if anger prevailed and became a touch typist. I’m so pleased she wasn’t worried about the holding back thing. Her war frustrations transferred to the assistance of the next generation.
I had a daughter – coming to school age when computers were turning up in classrooms. She needed to learn to type – to touch type. Coloured spots were stuck to the keys of her simple computer keyboard at home and corresponding coloured spots to her finger nails. Great fun!
She types very efficiently and occasionally mentions how useful that is.
I have really enjoyed this thread
I’m left handed so have bad handwriting, though people I’ve dealt with assure me they’ve seen much worse.
Neither am I a great typist, and the QWERTY keyboard is absurd. Surely there are more logical ways to lay out the letters and characters?
My main point however is why do we use a 19C technology to input data into ever more powerful computer devices? I am replacing my antiquated laptop (had to put Linux on it as Win10 brought it to a halt) with an up to date laptop with a modern processor (something like an Intel Core i7), decent memory and a SSD with vast amounts storage space.
As Win11 has a voice recognition feature built in I intend to use that in place of my execrable typing. Surely more logical than typing?
But, you will need to do a lot of checking – and use the keyboard for it.
So you’re saying that the voice recognition s/w is not very accurate Richard? That’s odd, because I can speak into my Android phone using the listen facility and it normally reproduces my words perfectly.
I’ll give it a go though. Probably get a decent microphone so my words are clear , and do some research to see if there are any particularly well regarded voice recognition apps for the PC.
It’s amazing.
Better than my typing.
But it still makes mistakes.