Typing feels like a mundane activity to most. Nowadays, classes for learning typing etiquette are uncommon. Most people don’t think twice about the effect typing really has on their life and thus put little effort in their keyboards and skill.
Now more than ever, a lot of what we do in our lives indirectly depends on typing. It is the fundamental way we chose to interact with computers. This is a link of communication between us and the machines, and if we are efficient in the way we type, we can fluently and effortlessly communicate our thoughts and opinions over to the digital world.
The brain is a bad medium of storage for long term thought. Who knows how much we have lost from the past because it was lost in translation through the ages.
The more well versed you are at a language, the better you can interact with locals of that language. If you went on a trip to a foreign country, you’ll have a better time if you can easily interact with the locals. For a lot of us, learning proper typing can be a huge benefit to their lives. I made this realisation during the start of 2020. I found that my typing and reading speed directly impacted my academics and digital hobbies. So, I got to work on it, and this is my journey.
My journey
I didn’t start out being average. From a young age, I was interested in computers and typed faster than my peers throughout the ages. I was always very curious and into gadgets, always wanting to understand them from the inside. Admittedly, this ruined my track record with devices, but it did help me wanting to dig deeper in this topic of typing optimise my speed.
To be faster, you have to go around optimising your muscle memory for each aspect of perfect typing. The first is the layout. Learn to type all alphabets at once without looking at the keyboard and make mental data structures for words when typing them, almost like making the shape you get by glide typing something on your phone. Then comes the part of assigning the appropriate fingers to the keys. A rather lengthy process it is. The most important thing to remember is that accuracy triumphs everything. Speed will come naturally with time and practise but a perfect form will help you be the most efficient.
Another very interesting change you can adopt to increase your typing speed is your keyboard layout. Try DVORAK or COLEMAK. The layout we use nowadays is the QWERTY layout. It was created in the late 19th century by Christopher Sholes. Simply put, it is shite.A century after Sholes finalised the keyboard, historian Jan Noyes of Loughborough University published a lengthy analysis concluding: “There appears … to be no obvious reason for the placement of letters in the QWERTY layout.”
The layout was not designed with touch-typists in mind. As Noyes pointed out: ‘the original QWERTY keyboard was intended for “hunt and peck” operation and not touch-typing’. That may explain the well-known practical shortcomings of QWERTY. In the 1930s, as typewriters and typing became more common, researchers began questioning its usefulness. One fierce critic, educational psychologist August Dvorak (a distant cousin of the composer), had a team of engineers test 250 keyboard variations and concluded that the QWERTY design was one of the worst possible arrangements.
The real reason for its stubborn persistence is inertia: imagine the cost of designing, testing and manufacturing an alternative – and then retraining billions of people to use it. As long as keying letters into a machine is needed, QWERTY is here to stay.
With that said, learning a layout like Colemak is a one-time investment that will allow you to enjoy faster and pain-free typing for the rest of your life. I would recommend it over DVORAK due to the fact that common shortcut keys remain in the same place like those for Copy and Paste. It would really suck to re-wire your brain for such elemental operations. Also, Most of the typing is done on the strongest and fastest fingers. Low same-finger ratio.
Benefits of Colemak:
→ Ergonomic and Comfortable - Your fingers on QWERTY move 2.2x more than on Colemak. QWERTY has 16x more same hand row jumping than Colemak. There are 35x more words you can type using only the home row on Colemak. Lesser locomotion means your fingers would be less fatigued.
→ Fast - Most of the typing is done on the strongest and fastest fingers. Low same-finger ratio.
→ Free - Free software released under the public domain. You don’t have to buy a new keyboard, just install a program.
→ Easy to Learn - Allows easy transition from QWERTY. Only 2 keys move between hands.
→ Basic shortcuts remain same - Many common shortcuts (including Ctrl+Z/X/C/V) remain the same.
A very interesting, un-noticed aspect of switching to a new keyboard layout or learning the same layout again with perfect form is that there is a middle period of about two to three weeks while learning when you are in the process of forgetting your previous muscle memory and building new neural links in your mind while learning the new layout, when your speed drops to the lowest. You typing is abysmal and dysfunctional. If out of necessity, you switch to your old habits, then you start to lose the benefits of the new process and would have to start over. There are several ways to combat this - learn typing at a time when you do not have much pressure and your work doesn’t demand, only use your phone for any typing tasks, use voice dictation or just have very understanding peers.
Finally, until we get brain chips (that can be trusted) to directly translate our thoughts onto a computer, typing on a keyboard is the fastest way to command the mighty computer, and I suggest you get damn good at it.
