Touch typing

[Embarrassingstories]

I’m trying to teach myself to touch type in my mid 40s after typing using poor technique for my whole working life. I started off using the typing drills, but now I’ve moved on to typing day to day stuff to incorporate punctuation and capital letters. I think I have the hang of it then make silly mistakes. I know straight away when I’ve hit the wrong key. I get so frustrated with myself. I am trying to use touch typing at work, but I am conscious that it takes longer than my old style of typing. I do a bit then revert back to my old habits because I worry I’m taking too long. Has anyone learnt touch typing successfully in their 40s and use it daily in their working lives?

Maybe it's not required in an admin role but I am a solicitor and I find it tremendously useful to touch type.

It means I can get emails out faster, type meeting notes as I go while talking to the client on teams , get through drafting while looking at different documents on different screens. It's made me far more productive as a solicitor

It also helped tremendously with my degree, I could get essays and my dissertation written up far faster than friends whose typing was more laborious

I asked at my (private) school why we didn't learn typing and the response was basically "Gels like you will have secretaries". This was in the early 1980s when the school was starting to teach computer science.
I am actually faster on the numbers part of a keyboard because when I first started working in a high street bank we had to reconcile the cheques that came down from head office with the grand total on the accompanying paperwork. At that point we were using a digital adding machine. I would turn over the cheques with my left hand and key with my right.

People could also use that argument for not bothering to teach handwriting at school because kids can get by without it.

i taught myself as a teenager, from a book,
it is different now as i tend to look at the screen when typing which was not the thing to do
when transcribing shorthand for example in my twenties i would simply be looking at the note pad!
i have lost that sort of confidence

Well, yes and it would be a reasonable argument.
There are plenty of things we don't teach any more.

A friend of mine was told at her secretarial course that she would earn more with short hand. She never, ever used it because it was presumably already on the way out when it was being taught to her so a waste of time.

" I can get emails out faster, type meeting notes as I go while talking to the client on teams"

I do this kind of thing too, you just need a reasonable speed.

I'm old enough that most of my essays were handwritten though.

I assume I touch-type, or at least I can type quickly, accurately, and without looking at the keys.

No idea whether I use the correct fingers, though. Probably not, but it seems to work!

I taught myself at around the age of 40. I thought it would be a fairly quick process, actually, it seemed to take forever. I'm plenty fast now, although still not great with the number row. Typeracer is a good website for practice.

I too learned as a teen at school (60 now). I don't know if using an old fashioned typewriter made it any easier? I do remember it was just practice and repetition though...A..S..D..F..J..K..L, over and over, and we weren't allowed to move our fingers from those "home keys" to stretch to other letters until we were perfect at each stage. I would just keep practicing OP. I remember we had to keep typing that phrase...The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog...as it contained every letter of the alphabet. Once you're confident on the key placement, type that hundreds of times, maybe with a few extra capitals and some commas/full stops thrown in.

I did this too! Then some years later I did a 12 week course at college. This thread's prompted me to try again and I'm using edcub just now. It's taken me right back so I'd love to stick with it this time.
I finally have a job where typing skills will be used ( not my usual two finger typing) so I'm feeling motivated!

Thanks for starting the thread @Embarrassingstories

Another who learnt with Mavis Beacon here. My first graduate job was working in subtitling for television, so the key skills were super-fast typing, brutal editing, being a punctuation ninja, and of course listening. On my phone or iPad I am a one-finger typist though.

@Judystilldreamsofhorses it's interesting that you became fast using mavis beacon. I stupidly let myself be talked out of completing the course by an expert typist friend who told me it was all wrong because you're not supposed to look at what you're typing either- but i think she had to copy from notes beside her.

Any tips from anyone about how not to hold your breath while typing? I accidentally made myself quite lightheaded, and had to go and make a cup of tea.

My young work colleagues always look amazed when I am talking to them and typing at the same time like it is some sort of wizardry. Really it is just muscle memory.

I'd be fine with letting them think it's wizardry.

I have found while doing this, there's a tendency for toque words from the conversation to creep into whatever I'm typing. I wouldn’t tell them this, though...

I learned at school on a very basic electric typewriter and it has stood me in very good stead. I'm still a very fast typist. I write a lot of reports in my job and it's so much easier when you can type properly.

Yes! I used to love that, like I had some sort of superpower! Need to be able to multitask.

About 25 years ago, I was offered an office job on the condition that I learned to touch type. I went through the Mavis Beacon tutorials online to try and teach myself, but to be honest, I never really got the hang of it. Even now, I’m still pretty rubbish at it and actually type faster when I’m not touch typing.

I'm looking forward to trying this over the summer. I'm also in my early 50s!

Mavis Beacon, what a blast from the past.

I learnt at school on an Imperial 90 - the drills had to do 😳 . It definitely should be taught in school now.

OP stick with it, you will definitely improve

Like a pp I learned from Mavis Beacon. Did the whole course on one slow day at work between Christmas and New Year when on a grad training scheme then just forced myself to practice.

I can type accurately at ~90 words per minute. It has saved me so much time over the past 25 years

I can really relate OP. I'm mid-40s and despite working in a professional environment for more than 20 years, cannot touch-type. I'm also now trying to teach myself - it's not going well, sadly, when I try and incorporate it at work. I think it's got to the point where my speed is holding me back - I'm not slow, but just not as fast as others.

I need to keep trying. Solidarity ✊

I too taught myself on a typewriter, over a school summer holiday (bored, and used to read a lot about writers who always took their typewriters everywhere). I used one of the old Teach Yourself books and put a tea towel over the keyboard. I was 14 then, mid 50s now. To my annoyance I had to do all my Uni essays by hand and ever since I learned to type I have always been faster on a keyboard than handwriting - and much more legible! It was so useful in my professional career.

It was also the reason I hated Blackberries. I was given one at work, tried to use the non-qwerty keyboard and gave it back in disgust about a fortnight later. Got an iPhone a year or two afterwards and was away! Much better, even with thumbs, because your brain knows where the letters are!

When I did my NVQ 2 in business admin, the classroom had all keyboard letters covered and we had to learn touch typing by memory only. It's an excellent skill to have which speeds work up.

My acrylic nails are my foe to touch typing nowadays but I generally only type out short emails.

I'd also suggest learning all the keyboard shortcuts, that has been a godsend.

Similar age and gosh do I remember ASDF ;LKJ and the quick brown fox etc.!

I took to it very quickly and made sure I retained it through my life even though I rarely needed it for work. I can fly along now, but cannot get the hang of it on a tablet or phone. That's a one or two fingered job now lol. 😊

I remember that programme, I'm that old too. However, I had learned to touch type before I arrived in the UK. On a mechanical typewriter no less.

Sorry for the irrelevant post.

We were not allowed to move on from a mechanical typewriter until we could do at least 30wpm with 95% accuracy.