Keyboard questions! Can you type without looking at the keys? Do you have a preferred format or make of keyboard?
I had computer keyboards in mind when posting this, but players of the instrument are welcome to answer too :D
Yes, I love typing and do it quickly. I guess I prefer QWERTY but only because that's the one I learned on and got good at. I hate keys that are too flat, like laptops and some office keyboards trying too hard to look streamlined.
When I'm thinking of how to spell a word, in my mind's eye I see it being typed out and that's how I find the correct spelling.
Yep, I'm a touch typist. QWERTY on a compact 1800 format keyboard (an old TX-CP).
I can't even imagine not typing blind, without looking at keys.
Fun fact: My left hand is not 10-finger-syste-positioned but WASD gamer-system positioned. Works fine anyway for blind and fast typing.
QWERTZ. Cherry Keyboard, mechanical keys, full with numpad.
I did look into alternative layouts like DVORAK a long time ago, but it didn't seem worth the investment of relearning. Current works good enough. (Even as a coder where parens and braces are more cumbersome than EN layouts.)
Hilarious to me that you learned to type from gamer-position, while l learned to game from typing position.
Yes, my keyboard has no markings to indicate letters save for the standard two raised small bars on f and j so I can feel for orientation as per standard keyboard fare.
I use the QWERTY layout on a firmware flashed zsa voyager split ortholinear keyboard.
Yes. I only used QWERTZ, so QWERTZ is my preferred format.
Yes, and full sized Keychron for me. I enjoy being able to put in what ever switches and keycaps I want on a keyboard that's infinitely better than any trashheap in waiting that any Corsair or Razer keyboard is.
I use a cursed variant of dvorak so looking at the keys won't help.
I'll use any keyboard with a properly sized and shaped enter and backspace key. Fuck those laptops that halve the size of backspace or mangle the enter key.
You can replace the key caps.
I can type without looking if I'm on my keyboard, but when I made a typo I take a quick look to see where I'm wrong. I still have to look it for key combination.
Edit: but I only type with four fingers. I don't know why.
I can. Never properly learned it, but spent so much time on my computer that it became second nature I guess. Can even do it on my phone with maybe about 90% accuracy.
I like full-size mechanical keyboards with red switches. Currently using a Ducky One 3.
Yes, I touch type on a normal US keyboard (US international layout). As i lost some feeling in my finger tips due to age, I made my own dimples on the F and J keys, and some additional ones on the 3 and 8 keys for when I can't use the numeric keypad (which I can touch type too).
Yes. US Dvorak with caps lock as compose. The keyboard of the Dell work laptops I've had for the past few years (with some modifications) as well as the standard Logitech keyboards enable me to type without looking simply because I'm so used to them.
Got tendonitis, so I used Kinesis Advantage for many years. Then the Glove80 came out, which I consider even better than any of the Kinesis Advantage, and I've had all models. And yes, I type without looking.
I use Dvorak btw
But yeah I touch type, but I often need to look to use qwerty when I'm on someone else's computer
Yes and yes.
I look to get my bearings before I start but then most of the time I'm looking at what I'm typing on the screen rather than down at my hands.
Only when I keep hitting the same wrong key(s) over and over between hits of backspace, do I then, with intense frustration, look back at the keys. I think I might be expecting the key I'm trying to hit to have run off to some other part of the keyboard.
A lot of what I type is wrongly autocompleted by muscle memory ("why" for "what" in this sentence for example, and "we-" before correcting to "wr-" for wrong, both there and here), so I'd be utterly lost without backspace.
My action is very much not correct touch-typing (for example, the first letter of this sentence was typed with left hand on M and right hand on right Shift), but it works for me. ISO layout's tiny left shift key probably has quite a lot to do with that.
As for that, I still prefer ISO (UK QWERTY) as they're far more common here. I have used ANSI (US QWERTY) in the past, which means I occasionally reach for double quote and @ in the wrong places, but that's increasingly rare these days. (Even more rarely I'll reach for where characters were on the Commodore 64. That usually affects parentheses more than anything, but I do so many parentheticals in online comments that I've all but broken that habit!).
Yes, QWERTY at 110wpm with standard left hand and only using index and middle fingers on my right hand, on my Wooting 80HE.
Querty with ANSI layout, not ISO. I hate ISO layout.
Brother how do you make a typo on the top 6 letters?
Small phone, big hands, old age 😂
Our country's layout of course. What is touch type?
I edited the title for clarity. Touch typing is typing without looking at the keys. By layout, I meant the size/arrangement.
100%. On the other hand, when it comes to musical instruments, cooking, driving and anything that requires dexterity/hand-to-eye coordination I'm just awful, lol.
I use a 40% unibody split keyboard. I have a Corne, but I suspect the microcontrollers going out so I need to replace those or check my soldering job. Since I switched to columnar stagger I get a little disoriented when I try to use a more “normie” keyboard lol. Still use QWERTY tho
I use blank keycaps, so looking is more to check hand placement or if I need to count my keys to search for a symbol
I may do a bit of a show and tell when I get to my desk :3c
Mine are blank too.
I specifically wanted to learn to type without looking, so I got a blank one. I know it was from DAS but I forget the model.
I had some problem with it and put a new one on my birthday list and got it from family and been fine since then. I still have the other one, so it must've just been an annoyance and not actually broken. I honestly don't remember.
I can; but, while we had Mario Teaches Typing in school, I absolutely hated the cognitive effort and preferred to Hunt and Peck.
I love computers, though, so my brain eventually memorized the keyboard just from constant use; now I generally type without looking (with a pretty average 44 WpM) but primarily just use my index fingers to do so.
Is 44wpm average? I thought more like 60-80 was average, but maybe my impression is off because of being somewhat active in mechanical keyboard groups
Heh, it might; granted, I'd just done a cursory glance since I was at work, at the time, but, taking a further look, it seems that 40 WpM is average with 50s and 60s being above average.
Granted, that include people who aren't touch typists so that might bring the numbers down.
I also tried retaking a typing test again as, the first time, I'd done one that was only a minute (again, being at work); I did another random one and got 66 WpM and another one that was 5 minutes and got 61 WpM. So I also seemed to undersell myself in that first comment, it looks like.
Yes. 70%. Kailh Box Navys.
Yes, we had a computer lab in grade school that we would go to maybe once a week or once every two weeks. We learned qwerty and the teacher would cover your hands with paper so you couldn't look. It was infuriating at the time but once I learned it, I was set for life. I don't really think about it, it's just like speaking a language to me. For the most part I type properly but I have gotten into a strange habit of hitting delete with my middle finger instead of my pinky finger. No clue why/when that started and I have to reach over farther but now that's second nature as well. I recall if you got good enough you could play around on the games in Mavis Beacon!
120 wpm peak; comfortably 100 with high accuracy. Playing online games with no mic had me typing fast. Then I got a heavy data entry job. Not winning competitions, but I'm pretty happy considering I don't follow the formal method.
I have a specific old Dell membrane keyboard I prefer over anything I've tried. Not a fan of mechanical keyboards. Tried blues and browns.
I use only 40% and 30% keyboards, thats ones without dedicated number or f key rows, and have done so for about six years now. Majority I use are standard stagger but a few are ortho or splits. Almost all of them that I like using are split space with left half as enter and the right as space.
I can touch type, although I am not the fastest, only a bit above 80wpm. This is mostly due to me being dyslexic so spelling is challenging for me and I can get bogged down looking up words or retyping it. If I do not give a shit about spelling I can easily get well over 100wpm.
I think the main show off skill I can do is look at a person I am talking to while typing a different conversation on the computer. Obviously I cannot do either if its complicated conversations but simple stuff is fine.
Yes, I can touch-type.
I prefer colemak but abandoned it due to the prevalence of QWERTY.
I quite like 60% boards with tactile and clicky switches.
I've only used a few makes so i couldn't say if i preferred one over another.
QWERTY at about 130-140 wpm, but not 10 finger. 10 finger ortholinear about 100 wpm, and about 90 wpm on staggered. As I was trying workman, I managed to type at about 50-60 wpm.
One word: miryoku
Been a touch typist for a while now, but I prefer my IBM Model M as a daily driver. I have a new modern take on the IBM Model F coming in in a few weeks that I'm very stoked about. Buckling spring switches are the best keyboard types ever made.
Yes, I touch-type, and use a kinesis advantage keyboard that makes touch typing "almost unavoidable" (as one blogger wrote). I also use the Dvorak layout, and get nearly 100 wpm without really trying (and using low-effort brain-to-keyboard data transfer is the way to go, imho).
I can, until i realize that I'm doing it, then it just all goes to shit and i have to switch back to hunt and peck.
I can ten-key like a mother fucker though, used to work at a bank doing data entry...