How many fingers do you use when typing?

[3 Colours Red]

Index on my left hand, same plus middle on my right. Thumbs are used for space bar, Ctrl, Alt, Win etc.

Can't touch type to save my life, think my fingers are just too stubby to manage it.
That said, I'm not a slow typist - would probably be nudging 50wpm if I weren't so sloppy, nudging my average down to about 40.

[Lymeswold Snork]

Many years ago, I bet my company's sales manager that I could type faster and more accurately than he could, using just my nose.
Capital letters were a challenge (nose Caps Lock, nose the letter, nose Caps Lock off again).
But I still won.

[Femme Folle]

All of them. I learned on a typewriter in the Dark Ages.

[Femme Folle]

Is Mavis Beacon still a thing?

I could beat that bitch back in the day.

[ursus arctos]

I was going to ask if anyone else had taken an actual typing class as part of their formal schooling.

Mine was in 7th or 8th grade and I was one of two males in a class of about 25

[Femme Folle]

I took a class called 'Advanced Office Machines' in 7th or 8th grade. It was more aimed at teaching typing than for typing at speed. We also learned how to operate a 10-key adding machine and the ditto machine. Loved that smell. Haha

[ursus arctos]

Was there an Introdctory Office Machines class that covered stapler and scissors?

[San Bernardhinault]

I think I had two one-hour typing lessons in total, on oldish school typewriters.

[Patrick Thistle]

All of them if using a keyboard. I did a touch typing course that taught me in an afternoon. Best course I've ever done.

[Snake Plissken]

Only male in the class. 8 fingers plus thumb, 60 wpm.

[Snake Plissken]

Hmmm. Having recently had a ton of shared pages of a team notebook in OneNote completely wiped out by a bad sync, I'd back things up if it's anything actually important.

Automatic Versioning too.

[Gerontophile]

I learned to type as part of a YOP* scheme.

*Youth Opportunity Programme. Government-funded scheme for work placements. I was basically pissing about until college, and then betting shops, as my football career had long since hit the skids, and I was betting shop-bound as soon as I hit 18.

[Sporting]

Do they still measure speed by wpm? How long is an average word? What if you are typing in German? Wouldn't characters per minute be a much more accurate way of measuring typing velocity?

[wingco]

Four fingers - three on my left, one on my right. Never learned to touch type but having been typing for over 40 years. About 60 wpm.

[Felicity, I guess so]

I have always said as a union rep that we should have demanded time and resources for training once PCs, email etc became the norm. I do intend to make this demand concrete around the imposition of online marking next year. Lots of our members work in huge shared spaces of 15-25 desks where you can’t really think, so the work will have to be done at home, implying proper technology at your own expense, too.

my typing is slow and I can’t touchtype

[Belhaven]

I've never really thought about it, but using this post as a test case I think i usually use two fingers for typing and my thumb for space. I did learn touch typing as an optional subject in lower secondary school many years ago, but I have never managed to master it properly.

[willie1foot]

4 fingers here... 2 on each hand

[Simon G]

I've benn trying to work it out, so like Belhaven I've used this post to work it out and by and large I use the index finger on my left hand for any key to the left of the F then the thumb (for the spacebar), index, middle and pinky (for the shift key and enter) on my right.

[Jah Womble]

Three or four, I think.

Never having learned how to type properly, I've not really given it much thought. Suffice to say that I know where all the letters are by now.

I was thaught how to touchtype a long time ago....

Clearly not terribly well. (Or was that the joke?)

[Ginger Yellow]

All of them. Kind of essential as a journo. No typing class, but I used Mavis Beacon back in the day.

[Simon G]

Three or four, I think.

Never having learned how to type properly, I've not really given it much thought. Suffice to say that I know where all the letters are by now.



Clearly not terribly well. (Or was that the joke?)

When I started secondary school in 1995 I was very much a "spend all day looking for a letter" type person, then a new school friend told me to memorise the middle row and the others will drop in. I have no idea how, but it worked.

[blameless]

6 - index, middle and ring on both hands.

Technically I was taught to touch-type at school, but my hands were a lot smaller then than now (and ye olde mechanickal typing writers were a lot bigger than modern computer keyboards), so that particular skill has long since deserted me.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Is Mavis Beacon still a thing?

I think you can download it for free nowadays.

Sadly, Mavis Beacon was no more a real typing tutor than Milli Vanilli were a real band.

[Gangster Octopus]

I taught myself to touch-type on my wife's typewriter just before I started working with computers. Very useful.

[Janik]

Nine, all fingers plus right thumb for space bar though the index and middle fingers of both hands are definitely the workhorses. The left thumb hovers near the spacebar as if it wants to join in but then never does.
I also touch type, which I learned by osmosis through experience. And occasionally will type with my eyes closed if I'm struggling to formulate something. That 'eyes closed' thing includes some immediate error correction, as I often realise straight away that I've hit the wrong key. This works surprisingly, with only an error every twenty words or so needing correcting when checking the text over afterwards (auto-correct is also likely helping substantially on this one!).