DescentBB

My husband and I were discussing about how my father, who's in his seventies, can't type worth a damn and refuses to learn, which handicaps him using a computer. He's always bored and I can't get him into surfing the internet for that reason. That segued into when my husband learned to type. We both grew up in the sixties and I remember that only girls took typing class in school, no boys at all. I took the class in junior high as I recall.

Back then, typing was commonly taught, but not exclusively to, females, usually in preparation for becoming a secretary, ICK, one of the few professional jobs available to women outside of the home back then. My father, an attorney, who grew up in the 40's and 50's, never learned the skill, even refused to, because back then, it was considered a wussy skill only for women. Besides, that was what women secretaries were around for. Ah, the good old 1950's.

Fast forward to now, in the age of computers, and the necessary requisite skill of using a keyboard. At what point in the last forty or so years did typing become something males had to learn? Was it because of the invention of the computer that now typing skills are ok for males to learn? My husband claims that he had to learn it on his own when he had to start dealing with computer keyboards in his everyday work. He said that it would have been a lot easier for him if it wasn't for the QWERTY keyboard layout, a design constraint holdover from old mechanical typewriters.

My question to all the guys here is, do you remember when it became a normal skill for males to know how to type and if it eventually became something taught to both sexes in public school or something you learned on your own?

I learned typing in the early 1990s on an Apple IIe computer at school, as part of a required 6th grade class.

By those days, my dad had replaced our TRS-80 model 1 with a Sanyo MBC-550 and then with a blazing fast 386 DX-20. I was so proud I could type, and then my brother downloaded DOOM and the computer was no longer used for typing ;)

For me, I took a typing class in school. There were only two of us, and the other student was a guy, so I can't really speak to the gender issue.

Anyway, when I really learned to type was similar to Lothar - it was when my brother and I pooled our Christmas money and bought a 486DX-40MHz (mostly because we wanted something that would play Descent better than our 386). We got Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing from a friend, and I used that to teach myself.

LOL. The first typing I did was on a manual typewriter. When I was in sixth grade it was about 1968 . I never did very well with typing until we started working with PC's at work in the early '80's.

I graduated High in 1979, and then if a guy took typing he would be the laughingstock of the school. I wish I had learned typing earlier, I can't type without looking at the keyboard. Even though I know where all the keys are and I rarely look at the keys, if I look at the monitor I forget where the keys are. lol! Often I'll be typing faster than my eyes can move from key to key. I have tried typing tutor programs... Mavis Beacon way back in the mid nineties... got bored. Recently got Timon and Pumba typing... hehe... eh... still got bored.

I've never been able to type with that system they teach you in school. I type with a few fingers, and looking at my typing, my left hand uses all four fingers, while my right for some reason only uses the index finger at most occasions. I can type faster than my girlfriend, and she uses the so called \"typing method\" taught to her.

I can do this all without looking at a keyboard at all. The only time I have to look is when I'm using Spanish characters like ñ, á, é, í, ó, and ú. I also just realized I hit backspace with my right ring finger exclusively.

Real men hunt-and-peck! (at incredible speeds, and even without looking). ;P

Who needs to type? That's why God invented the mouse!!!

Hey Thorne...I'm a fellow hunt & pecker, and damn fast too. I am faster as a hunt & pecker than I ever was in typing class, which I took in the 80's in HS on real typewriters.

Funny thing is, I know where all the keys are and can type with the lights off and without looking even though I use the hunt & peck strategy. Perhaps that should be taught instead as it frees your hands up to quickly shift to the numpad or the mouse, or your beer.

I took a typing class in the 9th grade in 1979 where we learned on IBM Selectric electric typewriters. The instructor was male, and there were other guys in the class, so I don't think it was particularly unusual. There may have been some stigma at the time, but it was lost on me.

I became a fast typist in 7th grade thanks to two on-line Star Wars games and AIM. My wpm now is over 100 when I try, but it's probably around 60-80 wpm for normal typing. One day I realized that I could touch type.

Typing class was just becoming encouraged for everyone (not just females) when I was in High School ...

Lately, it seems that a Typing Class isn't even part of school's curriculum anymore. Instead, kids learn \"keyboarding skills\" while in elementary grades.

Even for most of the time that I was effectively going through school (1990s) I don't think typing was really a big thing, because computers didn't seem to be... by the time I hit late high school (graduated '03) computers were much more commonly used by most people though, even expected. It was really only about 2000 that it seems everyone had to know it. Hmm.

Because as a kid computers weren't really one of these things people were expected to use, I did end up learning to type by myself. Actually I was never overly good at it (I can't actually remember the hunt-and-peck days any more, but I know they happened) until things like Kali and IRC hit; chatrooms tend to pressure you into getting words onto the computer faster!

Never took any actual typing instruction though; I was self-taught all the way, but I have still managed to get to ~80 WPM and touch-typing. I know people who are a little faster but I don't really need to be.

Typing was originally done by men in the late 1800's when the machine was created. In fact, the key were scrambled into the config we have today to make typing more difficult. The reason? The typists were so fast that they were consistently jamming the keys.

I learned to type ..well.. technically keyboard... about 10 years ago maybe a bit longer. My brother-in-law, when practiced, can type 120 wpm! o_0

Typing was a compulsory subject in my school for all 1st year high school students (on manual typrewriters no less) Circa 1984

I can still remember that stupid music we had to type in time to... that and the bloody home keys drill:

\"a-a-a space a-s-a space a-d-a space\" ...and so on.

Still, whe it came time that I needed those skills (when I started working as a copywriter) it was very handy to have.

My typing speed is circa 40- 60 words per minute ...but my accuracy sucks compared to most ...as does this keyboard actually! Time for a new one.

If you are feeling ambitious, you might want to try the Dvorak layout:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboard

It's available on most OSes these days.

I took computer classes in HS back in 86 and I also had a typing class usign a diasy wheel typewriter that taught both males and females.

tunnelcat wrote: We both grew up in the sixties and I remember that only girls took typing class in school, no boys at all. I took the class in junior high as I recall.

Back then, typing was commonly taught, but not exclusively to, females, usually in preparation for becoming a secretary, ICK, one of the few professional jobs available to women outside of the home back then.

My experience exactly. I graduated in 66 and at that time only girls were taking typing classes. I've since learned to do a 2 finger method of typing but only since I started using comp. for work.

My dad (62 yrs old) only uses about 2 fingers to type. I learned how to type in HS without looking but then had to re-learn since I never touched a KB till 1994 when i got my first PC. What really taught me to type was Kali. Watching the chat scroll up fast when going in for D2 games made me type real fast.

akula65 wrote:If you are feeling ambitious, you might want to try the Dvorak layout:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboard

It's available on most OSes these days.

To me that looks like an accident waiting to happen...

I can type pretty fast, but my biggest problem is getting letters flipped around. Though it has come in handy to type those last-minute papers....

When I went to school, there were typing lessons as part of a general computer class on the Apple IIe. I think Paws Teaches Typing was the program of choice.

Despite that, I apparently developed my own weird way of typing. I don't use home key position at all and no one seems to understand how it is I'm typing without it. XD

I also use some odd manner of typing that is usually somewhere around 4 to 7 fingers using some combination of my index, middle and little fingers and my thumb for the spacebar, although my little fingers sometimes end up exchanged for my ring finger at random. I touch type at around 60 WPM generally not using the home keys.

Sometimes I look at the keyboard, but most of the time I don't. It really doesn't make a difference anyway since a lot of keys on my keyboard are worn blank. The real proof I can touch type is when you look at my keyboard and notice the a, s, d, x, c, v, b, n and most of m, h, w, e, l, and ; keys are worn off and no longer visible (Also left shift, control and alt keys are pretty much gone except for half the arrow on the shift and half the C on ctrl).

I first started learning how to type on an ancient commodore 64 computer for playing video games (I still remember \"load digdug\" \"run digdug\" and other similar commands), later playing Doom and Descent on DOS after shutting down windows 95 further advanced my typing, but the final bit that put me into actually typing at reasonable speed was the internet.

It became obvious to me that I could touch type when my Dad tried to type on my keyboard and complained, \"I can't read any of your keys!\" I have the same problem as Krom. Actually, for my laptop keyboard it's a little worse since I have Chinese characters on it.

I learned touch typing in high school on manual typewriters back in 1983. To this day, it's the most useful class I ever took in high school. As an engineer, I don't even use algebra, but I type every single day!

I probably type casually around 70 wpm. When I really want to get going I can get close to 100. I took two typing classes in highschool. Before that I was a hunt-n-pecker.

True Story: When I took my second typing class I noticed they had a plaque for the fastest typers in the school for a 3 minute timed test with 3 errors or less. Who else do I see in first place on the plaque than Ryujin with ~82 wpm (we attended the same high school)

I spent most of the semester trying to bump him off the top slot and finally did on the last day of the year, with ~90 wpm

Sorry buddy

I'm only 30, so gender was never an issue. I was more or less forced to learn touch typing by my parents the months before we bought our first computer. We schooled ourselves on this device:


The speed drills rated me at 39 WPM, I believe. I'm sure I'm faster now, though I don't really care because as a software engineer I don't do a whole lot of long typing in English (I probably do more here).

And yes, the QWERTY layout was designed to slow typists down, and poor Dvorak's invention, which probably had the most momentum in the '30s and '40s with experimental use in the Navy, continues to be usurped by QWERTY's damnable prevalent standardization.

What especially irks me is how even with our knowledge of ergonomics, we still keep the slanted columns and shove the keys close together, forcing unnatural reaches to the left and right. I miss the MS Natural keyboard whose several keys recently died on me, since it split the keys down the middle and turned them out so your wrists didn't have to. But even that kept the stupid slanted columns! What need have we for this now? How can it be any easier to design and manufacture?

I propose some alternatives:

Typematrix -- uses straight columns and puts enter, tab, space, and backspace keys closer to your strongest fingers. Also available in Dvorak.

PLUM -- also straight columns, and though it's a new layout, it looks easy to remember. Plus, 74% of your typed keys now come from the home row.

Down with slanted QWERTY!

Hmmmmm. A lot of interesting history here. It looks like the invention of the computer was the main deciding factor in changing attiudes toward males learning to type. My husband remembers back in college in the 1970's, most men that had to type up papers and reports for class either had their girl friends do it or else paid to have the typing done for them. The places that charged for typing had a pool of female typists to do the work, no males at all. It was common to see on bulletin boards around campus, especially at Kinko's, little advert notices stuck there, from girls that wanted to make some extra money by typing papers for hire.

Since my husband worked for Hewlett Packard in the 1980's as an electrical engineer, he was closely involved in the developement of microprocessors there, which allowed the rise of word processors, computers and printers now in everyday use. He remembers that most of the engineers at HP didn't like waiting for some secretary to type up their papers and correspondence. There was always a backog or overworked cranky secretary to deal with, so most of them just started learning how to type and did it themselves. They already had to use a keyboard to interface with a computer anyway. It just saved a lot of time and effort. Computers and males equal macho after all.

The secretarial position was one of the first jobs that feminists really went after to break the gender segregation in the workplace. It was a lowly, repetitive and boring job and a lot of women thought that the time had come in the late 1970's to break the stereotype and open up better opportunities for women in the workplace. I can remember in junior high as I was taking the 'required' typing class for females that there was NO WAY that I was going to become a secretary! Visions of the giant rooms full of women mindlessly typing just creeped me out. My father on the other hand is still stuck in the 1950's. He still considers learning typing to be beneath him, ergo no use of the computer that involves the keyboard. Old stereotypes die hard.

Anybody remember when the K-12 public schools started teaching typing to both sexes in a mixed class? In the late 1970's thru 1980's or so? All I know is that it was still stereotyped to females in the late 1960's. Does anybody remember if there was some residual male resistance when this transistion occured or when the wuss factor vanished?

I took typing in 7th grade. 1986 or thereabouts. On electric typewriters. It was also my first programming class (Apple IIe, then IBM 8088), I've been typing ever since. If I type a stream of consciousness, it's somewhere around 70wpm, but I do 99% of my typing in code. I have a off-the-beaten-path typing style, I don't align with home row, and I'll hit the Y with the left hand one time, the right hand the next, depending on where my hands are at the time. Sometimes with a different finger. Probably a result of coding as well.

I don't remember anything about gender issues, everyone took the classes. If anyone was bothered about it, I don't notice (or care). We took sewing (that was really boring) and cooking that grade too. I do remember there were no girls in woodshop or metalshop though.


That Typematrix would drive me insane, as a programmer. I vastly prefer the current layout. Also, my wrists aren't bent inwards when I type...they stay as if I was using a MS Natural kb...dunno why everyone else has problems. What's worse for you then slanted keys is having the keyboard feet raised. THAT's a killer on your wrists.

Testi, all I can say is that in the early 1970's, only females took typing class. Must have changed after then. But I took Auto Shop for three years in high school, 1972 thru 1974. They DID let females take the class, it's just that no girls would do it, just as no males would take typing or Home Ec class at the time. I was the only female in the three years I was in it, a pioneer I guess. A little intimidating so say the least with all that wild testosterone around, but I really wanted to know how to keep my old 1963 Ford Comet running that I drove to school daily. It was piece of junk that was always breaking down! By the time I revisited my old high school in the 1990's, there were several females in all the shop classes and some males in Home Ec. Times change.

For what it's worth, I have never seen a typing class in my city. Probably because, since I was born when computers started getting used often, you didn't really need a class to learn to type.

I remember typing tutorial programs during the early 90s. From then onward, they seem to have just disappeared because kids learn to type from a young age anyway.

I took typing in HS in 1975. There were 8 or 9 guys in the class but that number woulda been far less if a certain buxom cheerleader weren't enrolled.

My son took a keyboarding class when he was in the 9th grade and almost failed because he didn't wanna use the correct home keys. It didn't matter that he could type faster and more accurate than his instructor.....

Remember learning to type back in Junior High School about the 7th or 8th grade. That was around 1970 or so. Missed a couple of weeks during the early part of that class because my family took a vacation early on that year. My typing speed suffered from that but it was a very good skill to learn even back then.
- The class was a pretty balanced in the number of girls and boys in the class.

Remember the old Keypunch Days on IBM-026 and IBM-029 with punchcards. I took the time to type slow to relearn the positions of the keys... that paid off with a lot faster typing in the long run.

Got very interesting at College doing larger Cobol Programs with card decks that often surpassed 2000 cards that each had to be hand entered.

Have been Programming Computers for over 31 years now. Hope that my typing skills have improved a lot.

Play Computer Games almost every day which helps too.

I was a Computer Nerd before the word existed!

Wheeeeeee!

Took Mechanical Drafting in the small High School that I attended in 1972-1975 (3 school years), there were no girls in that class.

Darktalyn1 wrote:I probably type casually around 70 wpm. When I really want to get going I can get close to 100. I took two typing classes in highschool. Before that I was a hunt-n-pecker.

True Story: When I took my second typing class I noticed they had a plaque for the fastest typers in the school for a 3 minute timed test with 3 errors or less. Who else do I see in first place on the plaque than Ryujin with ~82 wpm (we attended the same high school)

I spent most of the semester trying to bump him off the top slot and finally did on the last day of the year, with ~90 wpm

Sorry buddy

Ha! Too bad I got the girl.