My Accuracy is Garbage

May 23, 2021 8:30 AM

Why Am I Sp Bad At Typign? To solve my typos, I had to become a typo.
posted by storybored (50 comments total)

What continually trips me up in typing is the layout of the iOS keyboard on my iPad. That spacebar at the bottom seems to be just out of reach for me as my fingers move to it, and I hit a letter instead. Thus, this sentence often ends up reading like this: Thus, thismsentence often endsnupmreading like this:

I’m good on any other keyboard, physical or on-screen, but this iOS/iPad keyboard is an exasperating thing.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:41 AM on May 23, 2021 [10 favorites]

I thought this would be fun, but I found it extremely unpleasant and arduous. Trying to type unfamiliar strings of “asdfjkl;” hurt my brain in a strange way; seeing the red marks where I made mistakes made me angry.
...
I’m ashamed to say after a few days of TypingClub, I gave up. My speed hadn’t improved at all.

Oh good grief. Learning to touch type is not something you do in a few days. It's not even a skill you gain doing it one hour a week in 7th grade. I took three full semesters of touch typing in junior high, two of those on manual typewriters. Getting to where letters equal finger motions is something you have to develop over time with a lot of practice.

That practice was nearly all copying of text, too. That's a surprisingly different skill from typing thoughts out from your brain.

If the author (or anyone) wants to be good at touch typing, you really have to put in the hours. After that, it's more practice. And then you work at it even more. It's not a switch that turns on suddenly.
posted by hippybear at 8:48 AM on May 23, 2021 [29 favorites]

Where is Mavis Beacon when you need her?
posted by zenzenobia at 9:14 AM on May 23, 2021 [22 favorites]

I learned how to type in my 10th grade typing class one semester in high school. We learned on manual and IBM Selectric typewriters. I also learned Gregg shorthand and 10-key by touch. Nearly every job I've had since then has required typing. I never used the shorthand, which I'd love to take up again but no one teaches it anymore.

Back in the day when they would give typing tests when you applied for office jobs, I could do about 70 words a minute. I'm still pretty fast but I make 9 million errors. Computer typing and being able to backspace correct make my typing total crap.
posted by shoesietart at 9:36 AM on May 23, 2021 [6 favorites]

I’m good on any other keyboard, physical or on-screen, but this iOS/iPad keyboard is an exasperating thing.

Part of this is iOS's frankly pernicious habit of trying to help you while you type. The hit box for a letter *literally changes* as you type, according to its predictive algorithm. If you type "wendigo" there's some chance that when you hit the N it will register as a B because iOS shrunk the N hitbox and grew the B hitbox because it was expecting you to type "web" instead.

Some typos on iOS are because of this irritating feature that you can't turn off.
posted by tclark at 9:57 AM on May 23, 2021 [26 favorites]

Wow, memory flash. Grade 7 in my 80s Toronto junior high was a half-period (25 minutes) of Typing class, half period of French, every day. Teacher was Mrs. Lehr (Leer? Lear?) who was exactly 9 to 5-era Jane Fonda. “Eyes up front!” to the nursery rhymes written on the blackboard and we’d pound them out onto that thin brown recycled paper without looking at our fingers. I did pretty well in that class and still type the same way today! I never liked when we had to do numbers or reach for the punctuation.
posted by chococat at 10:08 AM on May 23, 2021 [3 favorites]

The hit box for a letter *literally changes* as you type, according to its predictive algorithm. If you type "wendigo" there's some chance that when you hit the N it will register as a B because iOS shrunk the N hitbox and grew the B hitbox because it was expecting you to type "web" instead.

Would my android smartphone keyboard be doing that too, possibly? That would help explain some of the typo behavior I+my phone exhibit.
posted by eviemath at 10:19 AM on May 23, 2021

I learned touch typing in a high school summer class. I got good at touch typing after about a decade.
posted by ardgedee at 10:19 AM on May 23, 2021 [4 favorites]

> Would my android smartphone keyboard be doing that too, possibly?

iirc, yes. But on both iPhone and Android you can replace the default keyboard with third-party keyboards that will behave differently.
posted by ardgedee at 10:23 AM on May 23, 2021 [1 favorite]

I learned to type on my own, on the personal computer in our family room in the basement. This was a time when it wasn't really uncommon to have a computer at home, but it still wasn't nearly as common as it is now. By the time I had typing class in school, my habits were already pretty ingrained and I just tested out of the lessons.

And... my way works? I can type as fast as most people who were formally trained, without looking and with relatively few mistakes. I'll never type as fast as my mom could when she was still working as a transcriptionist because I'm not typing as quickly and as accurately as I can for hours a day, but I can get close.

So yeah, it's not so much the training as being an Extremely Online Fandom Nerd, on chatrooms and message boards and mailing lists and messaging services, typing constantly for hours a day for years.

I wonder why this person ended up typing so poorly - and I kind of suspect that it might be an acceptance of mistakes??? Like, if you type badly for years without considering it a problem (and it might not really be), and you just let errors slide, do your fingers learn that this is the way to type? There's not really a way to say that without making it sound judgmental, but it's really not intended that way. I just kind of wonder at what the difference is, why some people take to it naturally and others have more difficulty.

(Also, if she was my friend I'd probably see the awful typing as a kind of endearing quirk.)
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 10:25 AM on May 23, 2021 [3 favorites]

Where is Mavis Beacon when you need her?

Crone Island.
posted by srboisvert at 10:39 AM on May 23, 2021 [17 favorites]

When I learned to type our class had mostly manual typewriters and three or four IBM selectrics at the front of the class. You had to earn your spot at the selectrics so that was well out of reach for me and all but maybe 6 girls in the class who fought over them like an F1 podium. Jubilation and chagrin at the end of week as who would get them the next week was announced. We had to hit a target of 20 wpm to pass the course and I barely scrapped through but have benefited from it almost every day since.

Kids these days with their fetish for clicky mechanical switches don't know shit. You had to practically lumberjack those manual keys...and you could type fast but not too fast or all the keys would jam. You pounded hard enough that you left strike imprints on the typewriter tape and someone could roll out the tape and see what you had typed. It was also the only textbook I ever had that had the binding on the top rather than on the right.

I kind of wish there was a youtube channel that had a lofi chill remixes of those typing records we had to listen to. JJJ FFF JFJF JJFF and on and on...while the freedom of summer break beckoned with BMX, glass bottles of cola at the strip malls, warm godawful tasting beer in the woods and staying out after the street lights turned on. Those were very medium times.
posted by srboisvert at 10:53 AM on May 23, 2021 [18 favorites]

OMG srboisvert my experience of learning typing in my South African high school in the late 80s was EXACTLY the same. The competition for the few electric typewriters, typing to music, which I loved.
I used to enjoy standing just outside the door of the classroom too, the sound of all those mechanical typewriters going for it was like the thundering of a waterfall.
posted by Zumbador at 11:00 AM on May 23, 2021 [6 favorites]

I kind of wish there was a youtube channel that had a lofi chill remixes of those typing records we had to listen to.

It's not a loft chill remix, but here, have this.
posted by hippybear at 11:02 AM on May 23, 2021 [2 favorites]

I typed my own birthdate wrong signing up for the vaccine.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:21 AM on May 23, 2021 [2 favorites]

I learned to type using MasterType on our Apple IIc. When I took typing in high school, it was a breeze. Though typing on the computer was definitely easier than typing on those typewriters.
posted by kathrynm at 11:22 AM on May 23, 2021 [1 favorite]

That practice was nearly all copying of text, too. That's a surprisingly different skill from typing thoughts out from your brain.

I was a serious computer nerd from age 11 up, but I didn't learn how to touch type until I was 20 and had a job where I transcribed my boss's handwritten documents to print them out. Doing that taught me FAST. Transcribing gets the brain out of the loop and lets your fingers be the focus.
posted by notoriety public at 11:36 AM on May 23, 2021

Yeah, I learned to type when I was maybe 8 or so on a yard sale manual typewriter whose keys stuck if you typed too fast. Pages of “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.”

But the hours spent copying BASIC code from magazines and, later, recipes and letters and pages of poetry in 7th grade typing class are what really got me typing at speed.

I make more mistakes than I’d like, but I’m still well north of 100wpm even with all the backspacing.
posted by uncleozzy at 11:50 AM on May 23, 2021 [1 favorite]

I learned touch typing in high school, but it was writing and editing fanfic that made me good at it.
posted by carrioncomfort at 11:53 AM on May 23, 2021 [3 favorites]

I took a typing class in high school and got accurate but not very fast. What really improved my typing speed was a DOS-based typing tutor program I came across maybe a decade or so later. It included a game where random letters/symbols fell from the top of the monitor and - unless you typed each character in time - took out a section of a line at the bottom. The game ended when the line at the bottom was completely gone. In the first level they fell slowly enough that you usually had time to glance at the keyboard, but as the game progressed the letters started falling faster and more frequently, sometimes in pairs or triplets, and you HAD to type by touch or you'd lose in a hurry.

I was working in an office with 4 other people, and all of us constantly vying for top score in that game* hugely improved my speed and accuracy. I don't recall that any of us spent much time in the other more serious part of the program.

*Interrupted only by crowding around the daily Jumble in the newspaper to see who got the words and final answer first (in our heads, by the honor system). Then we'd photocopy the crossword puzzle and see who completed that first. It was all lighthearted fun among pals and we had a great time.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:56 AM on May 23, 2021 [5 favorites]

Typing definitely didn't come naturally to me, but after over half a decade of computer geekdom I could do 70wpm with two fingers. Thankfully, the teacher of our required typing course in 7th grade (on Apple ][s) wasn't having any of it and made me learn to type with all my fingers. At my best I could hit a bit over 100wpm after some adjustment period.
A bit more on a good keyboard, a bit less on bad ones. Sadly, years on IRC did not improve that number.

I thought I was pretty quick, but my good friend I met a few years later could do well over 150wpm. Listening to him type sounded like an entire classroom banging away all at once. It was really quite hypnotic.

To me, typing on an electric typewriter is pretty much the same. Manual typewriters, on the other hand, are a completely different animal. People who can type quickly on one of those are true wizards.
posted by wierdo at 12:19 PM on May 23, 2021 [1 favorite]

Like shoesietart I learned (pre-PC) to type on IBM Selectric typewriters at summer school before high school, since I knew typing would be important. When I need a touch up I go to typeracer. (You type a paragraph, which makes a little car move. It puts you up against other people with a similar typing speed--you compete with people all over the world, which is fun), or I play a little shoot-the word game Ztype.

I had a hard time convincing my kids to learn to touch type, though they both eventually realized the benefit and learned (now I'm having trouble convincing them to learn to drive--"what is it with kids these days?" he yells, shaking his cane in the air). Of course they can text-type on a phone much faster than I can. I just discovered that you can get Ztype on the phone. Maybe I'll try that for practice.
posted by eye of newt at 12:23 PM on May 23, 2021 [9 favorites]

Soundtrack for the thread
posted by flabdablet at 12:26 PM on May 23, 2021 [3 favorites]

wonder why this person ended up typing so poorly - and I kind of suspect that it might be an acceptance of mistakes???

I can tell you exactly why I do what she does: because when I had to take high school typing, I got better grades for being fast and inaccurate than I was for being slow and accurate.

Look, I just typed all of this right here without errors, but the faster I go, or am trying to transcribe things, it's a complete and utter near-illegible MESS.

I related to this article, though it's a bummer she never really solved the problem. But it explains WHY it's a problem. (And I just fixed that last word FOUR TIMES.)
posted by jenfullmoon at 12:26 PM on May 23, 2021 [3 favorites]

I too learned to type fluently at a young age in the DOS era, a skill honed by my decades long love of pointless arguments on the internet. And while I cringe at full grown professional adults who hunt and peck occasionally, I have to say that the ubiquitous Apple keyboards are just so, so bad and uncomfortable I think a lot of people's accuracy problems are due to bad design and engineering. It's hard to touch type when the engineers have decided the keys shouldn't be all that touchable or responsive.

Especially after the disastrously pointless Touch Bar or the butterfly-switch design that requires the entire computer to be replaced when a key inevitably gets dirt under it, it's clear Apple sees the function of a keyboard as something that can be severely compromised in their fetishistic pursuit of thinness in all their product lines.

So maybe the author hasn't slid into acceptance of their own bad typing, but that as time goes on the engineers who design keyboards are becoming more antagonistic to the needs of people who actually type on their computers.
posted by bradbane at 12:30 PM on May 23, 2021 [3 favorites]

it's clear Apple sees the function of a keyboard as something that can be severely compromised in their fetishistic pursuit of thinness in all their product lines

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard
posted by flabdablet at 12:35 PM on May 23, 2021 [3 favorites]

My big problem these days is making typos on the phone. Some time ago I made the switch from two-thumb hunt and peck to Swype-style (now available in the default Android keyboard). The Swype style is super fast (I reckon 1/4 to 1/2 the speed that I type) but *only if you know exactly where the keys are on the touch screen*. After 5+ years with Swype, my thumbs have forgotten the exact layout, and I'm constantly hitting the wrong characters. The bigger problem is that Swype uses aggressive autocorrect to work, so it will happily take my garbled "see you later" and turn it into "sewer your latest" :/
posted by Popular Ethics at 12:43 PM on May 23, 2021

Anybody here ever cheat a typing test by pre-typing their typing book's test pages? Not saying I did that but also not saying I didn't.
posted by srboisvert at 12:49 PM on May 23, 2021

srboisvert: yes, I cheated by memorizing the paragraphs from test day. I can still type "Two zebras are in a zoo" and "Zoom over the alphabet zealously" very fast. Other things? not so much.
posted by Valancy Rachel at 1:18 PM on May 23, 2021 [1 favorite]

Like many here, I learned to type in high school on the IBM Selectric. Even though the typewriters were electric, they were not very well maintained (rural Catholic school that gave more money to the diocese than it got back for the win) and you had to hit the keys HARD at times. We were graded for speed and accuracy, so I got pretty good by the end of the class and honed my skills over seven years of churning out papers in college and graduate school. With one exception, every job I have held since graduate school has required computer and typing skills, so here I am 3 decades later still hitting the keys too hard and drawing attention to my loud, fast typing.

What continually trips me up in typing is the layout of the iOS keyboard on my iPad. That spacebar at the bottom seems to be just out of reach for me as my fingers move to it, and I hit a letter instead.

I own a Logitech K750 which I use primarily for work as it is paired with a hub and my work computer and a Magic Keyboard for my iMac. The layout of the Magic Keyboard has driven me batty from the second I opened the box. I finally figured out that the Magic Keyboard is missing several additional millimeters of real estate on the edge that is available on every other damn keyboard made in the universe including laptops and I've essentially had to retrain my fingers to be aware of where the sidewalk ends (so to speak). Inspired by the sailor mercury post I've also started putting colorful skins on the keyboard to give my space a bit of personality and discovered that textures actually MEAN something when employing the touch typing technique.
posted by theBigRedKittyPurrs at 1:20 PM on May 23, 2021 [1 favorite]

I was going to make a comment related to typing speed (and office gender politics and the whole phenomena of guys not being good at things that they don't want and don't have to be good at, but then making it out like women have some innate ability at the task in question), but then I went and read the article. It's a really interesting exploration of various factors related to typing accuracy and why people make typos (and what sorts)! And does a good job distinguishing between speed and accuracy. Eg. with typos, the author was typing around 70wpm on one particular online typing test, but the typo-adjusted score was around 40wpm (I wonder how that adjustment is made?).
posted by eviemath at 2:02 PM on May 23, 2021 [2 favorites]

Typing speed calculation formula.
posted by sardonyx at 2:19 PM on May 23, 2021 [2 favorites]

Facebook recently announced that it’s working on a wrist device that can sense the brain’s signals to your fingers to tell what keys you want to type — essentially letting you type without a keyboard [...] This opens the possibility of typing without typos — if you’re typing straight from your mind, there’s no chance of accidentally hitting the wrong key.

I see we have an optimist.
posted by aws17576 at 4:10 PM on May 23, 2021 [13 favorites]

I’m here to drop off this quote that I copied from the inside cover of an old Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing instruction manual:

“There came a moment when I realized that I was typing — without thinking that I was typing! From that instant on, my creativity soared like a condor, unchained from the burden of scratching, parrot-like, upon my papers.”
—Pablo Crane

For me, this is what makes touch typing a magical skill. It’s an incredible experience to think words and have them appear instantly on the page without any conscious effort. For me, it happens at around 40-50 wpm. Not fast enough to transcribe in real time, but fast enough to keep up with my thoughts.

If you have a reason to type, and haven’t learned touch typing, please consider it. It’s like having a superpower.
posted by LEGO Damashii at 4:13 PM on May 23, 2021 [10 favorites]

I learned to touch-type in middle and high school using a combination of typewriters and Apple II computers, and I think I managed to get up to maybe 20 WPM there. (I don't remember how it was graded, but I think accuracy was weighted higher than speed.) It was really not until I started roleplaying on a MUCK that I really started bumping up my speed and accuracy to around the 50-60 WPM I get nowadays, and it's automatic for me, I'm not thinking about the movements my hands are making which makes the experience much more pleasant.

The main thing with touch-typing is you really do have to keep up the discipline to not go back to hunt and peck or whatever mechanism you used before, even when it's frustrating and slow, which I suspect is the hump that a lot of people have a hard time getting over.
posted by Aleyn at 4:24 PM on May 23, 2021 [1 favorite]

My typing skill came into its own whilst chatting on IRC in the dark, way past my bedtime, on school nights, with the 14" monitor brightness turned down as low as possible so as not to betray my activities to my parents, who, truth be told, probably didn't give a shit.
posted by glonous keming at 4:38 PM on May 23, 2021 [5 favorites]

Glonous Keming - me too, except for the last part - I would have gotten in so much trouble! Amazing what motivation does for learning speed :)
posted by esoteric things at 4:41 PM on May 23, 2021 [1 favorite]

Typing was probably the single most useful-in-the-long-run class I took in junior high, I think. I have respectful if not entirely fond memories of manual typewriters with blank key caps (and the one row of Selectrics that the best typists got to use) as well as the cranky old teacher roaming the classroom saying "Quick quick! Time is money!" and occasionally smacking the wooden chalkboard pointer down on someone's desk if they were goofing off.

The memory of those blank key caps and the charts hanging in the front of the room came in useful recently. I'm learning Korean and am working on learning to type in hangul. I had been using a keyboard reference chart that showed both the Roman characters and the hangul, and seemed to be stalled and unable to increase my speed. Then the thought of blank key caps and charts made me think to alter the reference chart to remove the Roman characters and leave only the hangul. After making that change, my speed increased noticeably.

Imgur link showing the reference charts and my speed scores.
posted by Lexica at 5:08 PM on May 23, 2021 [2 favorites]

Editors are typo negative.
posted by bryon at 5:56 PM on May 23, 2021 [8 favorites]

I moved to Washington DC around 1990 with the idea that I would get a job working on Capitol Hill. Unfortunately I was at exactly the wrong point in my career: unwilling to accept an entry level job but not so accomplished that I could land a decent position given my lack of prior federal government experience. Anyway, applicants for committee staff positions were required to take a typing test. Having typed papers throughout college and grad school as a side hustle, I was pretty good on an IBM Selectric (side note: I always thought it was "Selectrix," a la "dominatrix").

Every fifteen minutes a new tranche of hopefuls cycled through a dreary HR room deep in the bowels of the Capitol complex, obliged to take a five minute typing test to complete the application process. We sat at small desks furnished with recycled paper and a table top and holding the exam text. Next to each line were digits corresponding to the score one would earn if that was the last line completed when the typing test ended. So I started banging away, got to the end of the page and realized that there was no more paper. However, I saw that my score corresponded to 105 wpm. "Good enough!" I thought, pretty sure I'd made no errors, and turned in my paper, eager to receive my score and get out quickly.

But the exam supervisor was horrified that the lack of paper cheated me out of the opportunity to do my best. She apologized profusely and urged me to retake the test. I declined. She insisted. To my enduring shame and regret, I explained, "No, really-- Any position that requires more than 105 words per minute is not a job that interests me." The examiner looked like I'd slapped her.

In the end, I wound up sticking with consulting. And I don't think I typed that fast ever again.
posted by carmicha at 6:17 PM on May 23, 2021 [3 favorites]

I failed my first typing class in community college. We were only allowed to correct three errors on a page... any more than that, you had to start over. I was trying to work full time and go to school full time, and there were literally not enough hours in a day for me to keep retyping the same homework over and over. I wept more than once. I dropped out of school after two quarters.

About a decade later I took a vocational class to learn secretarial skills, and learned to touch type using Mavis Beacon. I'm pretty fast now, although I never did learn the numbers/symbols row. I always meant to go back and learn them someday. It's only been about 30 years, I guess I haven't really missed them all that much.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 8:01 PM on May 23, 2021

I moved to Washington DC around 1990 with the idea that I would get a job working on Capitol Hill.

My mother took a full secretarial course in high school, and was offered a clerical job at the FBI right after graduation. Her mother convinced her she’d never be able to take care of herself in the big city and talked her into turning it down.

Often in my long, late-night games of What If, I imagine how different and probably better her life would have been if she’d accepted.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:27 PM on May 23, 2021 [2 favorites]

I used to have a pretty personal typing style, mostly a product of Mario Teaches Typing (playable link) and responding to chats in Starcraft with one hand on the mouse building more Zerglings.

Switching layouts and keyboards every once in a while has forced me to be much more orthodox in terms of which fingers are used for what keys and where the hand returns at rest. I'm not any faster, but it's easier on my hands and more "correct".

I have worked with someone who, despite working in a field with massive amounts of typing for years and years, would always hunt and peck with alternating index fingers while nervously glancing up and down at the screen. Not quickly, either. No typos, though!
posted by Anonymous Function at 12:33 AM on May 24, 2021

Typing class is where I first heard music by The English Beat. :)
posted by Hutch at 6:09 AM on May 24, 2021 [3 favorites]

I learnt to type on manual machines and learning to touch type was a great time investment. The ability to procrastinate rather a lot and then bash through a draft document by the due date has been highly useful.

I agree copy typing is really different, it is like your conscious brain is not involved at all, it’s an odd feeling. I secretly sometimes retype something rather than copy/paste just to get a little bit of practice.

I’ve definitely amazed colleagues by typing while watching someone else do something, or while looking out of the window etc. I used to have a boss with a non existent attention span who liked to edit by speaking aloud, and he just loved it that I could type almost as fast as he could think what he wanted to say, and mostly while still making eye contact.

I haven’t typed on a manual machine in many, many years, I’d love to have a play with one just for fun. Just think of the noise! The way the carriage lurches when you press the tab key, or the sound of the carriage return lever. I suspect this nostalgia would wear off pretty quickly though. My little fingers are probably not as strong as they became back then.
posted by ElasticParrot at 6:29 AM on May 24, 2021 [1 favorite]

I learned to touch-type using a program that ran on a VAX and VT101 terminal. The keys were very much like the mechanical keyboard I use now, to be honest. It's a skill that has served me well over the years even as spellcheck and autocorrect have become available.
posted by tommasz at 6:57 AM on May 24, 2021

But on both iPhone and Android you can replace the default keyboard with third-party keyboards that will behave differently.

I feel that QuickPath, iOS’s integrated swipe input feature is getting pretty good.
posted by zamboni at 8:08 AM on May 24, 2021

I'm an inaccurate typist, which leads to me being a slow typist because I am constantly deleting and retyping. Somehow my fingers and my thoughts don't sync up correctly, and jams and interferences predominate. This is also true for me with instruments; I can play a lot of instruments and play some pretty good rhythm guitar. But when I go to take solos I suffer a barrage of stray notes and clams. Does anyone know a way out of this, or is this just a trait I endure as I have for my life so far?

(For referenced, the above paragraph probably required 40-50 presses of the backspace key.)
posted by argybarg at 11:56 AM on May 24, 2021 [1 favorite]

My typing is wretched. When I was in high school, college-bound kids didn't take typing, and I've never really gotten touch-typing. Lately, I make so many repeated errors. Why are there not decent predictive and correcting keyboard apps for computers, not just phones? Thank goodness for cut-n-paste and spellcheck. Years ago I had a Motorola flip phone, numeric keys only, that had the best predictive text app I've used. Weird that htis* critical task is still so hard.

*left in b/c htis is an error I now make a lot, transposing t and h. Maybe voice recognition will get better.
posted by theora55 at 12:12 PM on May 24, 2021

Editors are typo negative.

A priest, a minister, and a rabbit walk into a blood bank. The rabbit says, "I think I might be a type O."
posted by zeptoweasel at 1:25 PM on May 24, 2021 [15 favorites]