I created this blog because something strange happened today. But first a little background: I am an "avid typist" - someone who enjoys the art of typing quickly and typing well. Keyboarding is a skill I think we can all benefit from in the modern workplace and social sphere where being connected is everything. I don't put too much value in the power of things such as voice recognition; whilst they can be very helpful in certain situations, for example updating your friends in 140 characters or less on your immediate thought whilst driving along or shouting into your Google Glass until it recognises the correct contact to message, I don't think there is even a remote possibility that it will replace typing. Typing in itself allows us to express our creative selves through the power of prose, the power of punctuation and of course gives us privacy in situations where the thing you want to say is personal so you type or write it instead.
So enough about that, I was having my usual semi-productive morning of 1 hour work followed by 2 hours procrastination today, when during my procrastination I suddenly realised something: I can type much faster after some "natural" typing than after "competitive" typing. What on earth is "competitive typing"?! Well as the name implies, racing your typing speeds on TypeRacer.com has become an incredibly addictive hobby of mine, so much so that I indeed try to compete against friends and unknown internet keyboardists. Now it's important to note that I am not a very fast typist by some standards - my top speeds on TypeRacer are 140-150wpm, averaging 110-120 on most days. However, my averages went up today because my hands just felt more accurate. I decided to therefore do a bit of a "meta-experiment" - I wanted to see if I could simulate "natural typing" (but of course I didn't want to do any work) so I opened notepad and started typing about typing itself.
This is now the "strange thing" which happened to me - instead of simply blasting through a load of nonsense, I instead wrote what I believe to be fairly useful, if what somewhat convoluted, advice on typing. I will paste it as an appendix to this blog post, however in future I will expand on this in a much more formal and structured way if there is any interest, to help those of you out there who are hitting 60-100wpm but want to push over that 100wpm hurdle. One thing I didn't mention is this: read more. The more you read, the faster you can read, the faster your brain has time to think about things and output them again. Typing competitively in the instance of TypeRacer is a process of input, little thought, output; don't consider typing quickly to merely be a test of the last part - all 3 are equally as important as one another.
The purpose of this blog therefore is my "train of thought" - ramblings I decide to type out which I think others might enjoy reading. It isn't much now, and my prose certainly needs a little improvement - doing a science degree has made me a little rusty.
Appendix: Typing tips
When practising typing at home, it's important not to go at a rushed pace.
When rushing your typing, you're more likely to make stupid mistakes and consequently slow yourself down.
You're also more likely to build up lactic acid in your hand muscles which will eventually cause them to cease up and become useless, thus slowing you down much further than if you had simply paced yourself.
When typing, your fingers should be rubbery, like clever wooden animatronics pulled by elastic bands, stretching and quickly retracting at each key stroke.
Key strokes should be brisk and striking - not slow and mushy. It goes without saying that, to type fast, keystrokes should be fast, but fast in such a way that you can still control what you're typing and concentrate on what is being said rather than concentrating entirely on the speed and ability to mush 8 keys at once.
More advanced typist, the sort who regularly attain speeds upwards of 200wpm, are able to effectively strike keys at a rate which almost implies they are hitting more than two keys at once, however in reality, of course, the order is still absolutely fundamental in ensuring your text reaches the screen in an appropriate manner.
If you are mushing keys, you aren't typing. You're simply trying to apply your force to the keyboard in a way which resembles typing, probably making lots of mistakes, especially when moving between keys.
Raise your fingers high from the keys, imagine a famous pianist striking each note as he goes, only ever sliding over notes when specifically trying to slur between them. There is no slurring in typing; it is simply a task of moving from letter to letter, key to key in "sticcato", without any need to ever touch the side of a key. If you're striking the sides of keys at all with your fingers or especially finger nails when moving to higher rows, it's time to start lifting your fingers higher off the keyboard!
A note on the shift key: When you want to capitalise a letter, don't adhere to the standards of the QWERTY typing standard. Remember that typing is a skill, your own skill, such as handwriting, where your own style and what's most fitting for you are just as important as the standards themselves. If you find you can type faster by using shift on the same hand as the letter being shifted, do so. Standard typing guidelines indicate that the "best practice" is to use the shift on the opposite side of the keyboard to the hand you're striking the key with. This certainly works well for most of the time, however if you find yourself, like me, contorting your hands all over the keyboard as you start to hit 140-150wpm, it is often more useful and faster to simply slide your right hand across a it when hitting the shift and letter "I" if your left hand is busy halfway across the keyboard itself typing out the word "where".
In my personal experience, I developed an awful habit. I read once that "practice makes perfect, but imperfect practice makes bad habits". Bad habits are difficult if not impossible to eradicate, I've been trying to get rid of a particular habit relating to shifting myself for a few years.
Over the past decade of typing, I decided early on that the fastest way for me to shift keys was simply to tap the caps lock key on and off incredibly quickly as I typed the capital letter between them. Obviously this increases the number of keystrokes from two to three for a capital letter, however no matter how desperately I tried I couldn't make the switch without a serious reduction in speed - having to think about typing whilst typing is a bit like having to think about how to change gears whilst driving a manual car; once you have it hard-wired into your brain, it just happens naturally. More recently, I've been able to slowly move towards holding shift instead of hitting caps lock, however I would say that possibly 90% of the time I still use it, especially for the letter "I".
In conclusion to this ill-structure and nonsensical rant, learn to type in your own way by writing lots of stuff. Use typeracer and challenge your friends, don't get upset if you can't type 100wpm straight away, keep at it.
Lift your keys from the keyboard, elegantly glide through the air striking each key with purpose. Think of "single buttock [piano] playing" ["How we can all relate to classical music" - TED Talk]
