Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Typing

  • Poise fingers two to three inches above the keyboard.
    Read the first sentence.
    Slam your two index fingers onto the keys,
    Typing the letters and words,
    Alternating fingers,
    Until your memory needs to be refreshed.
    Then, take another look at the sentence.
    Repeat.

    My first papers were typed on an ancient Royal manual typewriter given to me by my uncle. The keys had to be banged - hard - before they moved. Go too fast and the keys would jam above the paper, necessitating separating and pushing them back with my fingers which would pick up the ink and spread it onto any paper I touched.
    The ribbon on that old typewriter didn't always spool correctly so I helped it along manually. More ink stained fingers. I always spurged on erasable paper so that I could erase all the typos and rework sentences as I typed. Unfortunately, erasable paper also smudged easily. Every paper I handed in was a blotchy mess. Smeared type. Black fingerprints. I thank all my teachers and professors for reading them and apologize.

    Of course, now I type on a computer where the keys respond to a light touch, typos can be corrected without touching the paper, and revisions are made with an inserted cursor or a tap of the delete key. My papers come off a laser quality printer sparking clean.

    Unfortunately, I never learned to type. In high school, we were not allowed to take typing unless we were in the business track. Going to college? Take Latin. After years of typing I have become faster but I still needed to look at the keys. (I make mistakes even looking!) Since I really do know where the keys are, looking at the keys is a crutch that I would like to leave aside. Every once in a while I try to type without looking at the keys, and although I am gaining success, I am much slower. (I am tyong this sentence wtihout looking at the keys and without cottecting any ettods snf srr ehsy id hspprnonhz!) Translated that sentence should read: I am typing this sentence without looking at the keys and without correcting any errors and see what is happening! So... I decided to try to learn to type.

    My nephew is learning to type using a program on the web -(http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing/) - and I think I will try it. It's really for kids, but I am a novice.! I'll let you know how I make out.

3 comments:

Rebecca Hickman said...

Nice post! I miss typing.

Rebecca Hickman said...

Hi, Mom-
I see that you listed The Glass Bead Game as one of your favorite books. It's the only Hesse book that I haven't read--for some reason, I can never get past the first 100 pages.

Rebecca Hickman said...

Hi, Mom! I just tagged you to write a meme. See my last post.
Love,
Rebecca