Typing speeds

Date: 05 January 2007 16:13:16

In my break, I was reading Ruth's blog, which mentions Bob Jones's post on religion and journalism, which links to his site on touch typing.

This set me thinking about my English teacher from when I was about 13. She was passionate about her subject and about teaching us to be politically aware (particularly the girls - it is thanks to her lessons on the suffragettes that I will always vote). One of her bugbears was the rise of typing rather than handwriting. One time, she asked us to put up our hands if we could type faster than we could write. Various hands went up (can't remember whether this included mine at that stage).

Head in hands, she groaned and bemoaned the state of education that had failed us. This week, in an attempt to wean myself off the internet, I have been switching the computer off to work and making notes from a book by hand. It takes so long! It isn't so bad when there is paraphrasing to be done, because the thinking process means that I write about the same speed as I think, but if it is copying quotes to use, it takes what seems like forever.

I have never really got the hang of writing both quickly and legibly (you may take your pick of one or the other, although legibility is not always available, but not both) and being a secretary for a couple of years and always having a screen and keyboard meant that I got really out of practice. Lectures in the first few weeks of college were interesting and the notes somewhat sparse.

Anyway, what I meant to say is that I might try typing using the Dvorak keyboard layout instead of Qwerty, but that should probably wait until after this weekend.

And in case you were wondering, this was a legitimate diversion from what I was writing, but is not relevant enough to remain in my essay so I put it here. OK?