Reading this blog post on touch typing could change your life

• Alex Jacobsen's blog

This post is designed to be a quick guide to get you excited to start touch typing!

Benefits

Time spent learning to touch type quickly pays off as time saved typing faster and not correcting mistakes:

• You'll think clearly as you type without even noticing, which changes the way you interface with the machine.
• Your grammar and spelling will improve. As it seems effortless to type, you can focus on the things that matter, like professionalism.
• You'll work faster so you'll be worth more money.
• Your hands/fingers will go for longer as the position they move in is more sustainable.

What is touch typing?

You're already typing all day anyway, touch typing is simply a different method of typing. Basically it's just a set of rules saying what finger to use for each particular key. When you follow these rules, you hands naturally site over a particular set of keys, for the left hand that's A, S, D, F and for the right hand it's J, K, L, ; (these sets of keys are referred to as the 'home row').

 
This image shows which keys each finger maps to.

 

I've just noticed, I don't actually follow the advised layout. After examination I've found it's because I just don't use right shift (only left shift), so I have because accustomed to using my ring finger instead of my pinky for 'q' and 'z'. I still use my pinky for a lower case 'a'. I also use my middle finger for 'x' and my index finger for 'c'. Shout out to Tim because I told him you should type 'x' with your middle finger as that's how I've always done it but I'm wrong :(

 

 
This image shows which keys I use for each finger. The only difference is in the left hand.

 

That's all there is to know about touch typing. The pain of learning comes from changing your habits so that you strictly use a particular finger for each key. Once you do this, it is much easier to type without looking at the keyboard, in fact, if you just learn this first, you will notice after some months that you become able to type without looking at your fingers - don't even worry about it. In no time at all, you'll be typing without thinking and just loving it!

If you're someone (a programmer maybe) who uses special symbols like $ or & often, you'll have fun learning those symbols as well but you might find it easier to save those until after you've learnt the general keys.

Where to Learn?

There are numerous resources on this subject. There are also different ways to learn. I've listed some below:

• Touch Typing: http://www.keybr.com/
• Standard Test: People seem to use 10 fingers as a standard for testing, it uses simple english words with no special characters. http://10fastfingers.com/typing-test/english
• Racing: Learn to type by racing against others. This is very fun. http://play.typeracer.com/
• Community: The typing subreddit over at http://www.reddit.com/r/learntyping/ has a nice variety of resources.
• Everywhere: There are thousands of resources, the main thing is that you learn. It does take a bit of patience.

Protip

When learning to type, try to use the exact same keyboard whenever you type, it makes it easier to memorize. If you're switching from a full keyboard to a laptop, the keys can be positioned very differently and it will make the process harder.

Typing in the future

Will typing become obsolete as voice input technology replaces the need to type? I hope so, then I can preserve my fingers to play my guitar instead of typing. Voice input combined with a keyboard could have some amazing potential for inputting things at speed. We just need a programming language that translates a language we can think in, in to code, so we can simply speak what we're thinking to programme!

-lees