by Rachel Smith
15 June 2016
I’m always been a shocking two-fingered typist and am often teased for it. Maybe it is weird for a journalist of a decade to not know how to touch-type, but a) is it too late to learn and b) do I really need to? I think I’m quite fast actually, even if I’m not doing it ‘properly’. What do you think? (Sorry for the boring question.) MK
Not boring at all! In fact, your question took me back. Back to a little room in Mona Vale on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, where I learned to type along with my sister and her boyfriend at one of those community night courses. On an electric typewriter no less.
Sorry, where were we? Ah yes. Two finger typists! You know what – you can tell anyone who teases you about your typing style (also known as the ‘hunt and peck’ system) to bugger off, because there’s now an official study about how self-taught typists like yourself aren’t actually any slower or less accurate than those who’ve learned to touch type. Finland’s Aalto University used motion capture on a group of typists aged 20-55 to determine the somewhat surprising results.
There was, however, one caveat: the touch-typists looked at the screen more whereas the self-taught typists looked at their fingers more – which made the researchers speculate that trained typists may find it easier to concentrate better on certain tasks (simply because they’re not worried about whether their fingers are on the right keys or not).
And I guess you’ve got to wonder, as a writer, how much looking down at your fingers as you type affects your flow and focus.
And if that alone bothers you – the fact that you have to look at your fingers more than the screen – or you find it has knock-on effects like neck strain, then yes, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to teach yourself to touch type. But if you’re not bothered, don’t have any health issues and it hasn’t affected your career to date (and it sounds like it hasn’t), I’d stick with whatever you’re comfortable with.
Are you a two-finger typist? Have you devised your own typing style? Or did you learn to touch type? We’d love to hear what you think in the comments!
I’ve asked myself the same question, and more so lately because the two typing fingers I tend to use are starting to feel overworked … Might be time to learn to share the load with the other fingers.
Maybe! I think it would probably be slow-going at first (not the kind of thing to learn when you have heaps of deadlines or transcribing to do :)). But, once you learn, you’ll love it. This online touch typing course might be a good place to start: https://www.typingclub.com Good luck Joanna!