As someone who had to write a 20,000 word MSc dissertation before the days of word processors (or, rather, before the days of affordable word processors), I would go along with that. Typing that much out took ages, was very error-prone, and the effort involved tended to discourage endless editing and re-writing.


Alex

Yes, I remember those days. It was only 10,000, for Finals, but it still took forever and looked awful. Though those were also the days when wannabe actresses went temping, so I bless the day I did a secretarial course, and have been a proper, fast 10-finger typist ever since.

Emma

I never did any kind of typing course, but my parents bought me a typewriter for my 21st birthday, and Mum had a quick reference guide that showed which fingers to use for which keys. A 20,000 word dissertation was better than any keyboard exercise for the amount of practice I got. I made a point of forcing myself to position my hands correctly, and the typing gradually got easier as I went. The difficulty, all the time, was knowing when the next word wasn't going to fit on the line - something you don't even think about with a word processor. And, of course, there were frequent occasions when I mis-hit a key or forgot to use the space bar. That was when I found myself wishing I could afford a word processor. Most of my fellow MSc students resorted to using professional typists, of which there were a good selection in those days.

Since then, nearly 23 years of programming have taught me to type accurately without really having to think about the mechanics. If you asked me where any given letter is on the keyboard, I might have difficulty remembering. Sit me down in front of a keyboard, though, and I can hit the letter without having to look.


Alex

I never did any kind of typing course

You didn't miss much. Learning shorthand is the most staggeringly boring thing I've ever had to do with my brain, and I forgot it as quickly as possible!

If you asked me where any given letter is on the keyboard, I might have difficulty remembering. Sit me down in front of a keyboard, though, and I can hit the letter without having to look.

Me too: my fingers know it, but my conscious brain has ask them before I could tell you the answer. It makes you wonder where in the brain that information lives. And my right hand doesn't know where the left-hand keys are, and vice versa. Means that as soon as I try to use the keyboard with a phone/drink/child in the other hand I'm transformed into the most useless of hunt-and-peck typists.

Emma

I always thought that learning to touch-type was the best time-investment I'd ever made, and then I worked with a programmer who could only use two fingers but was like bloody lightning. The one thing I could never get the hang of though, are numbers, and still have to look. Damn good job I'm a writer and not a programmer.

Colin

You can get very quick with two fingers, but I don't think you can ever be as fast as a quick 10-finger typist, because you have to move your whole hand. I think it's also very, very hard to be as accurate.

The other reason for using 10 fingers is that keyboard shortcuts become worth learning. The amount of time you waste reaching for the mouse - to do a cut-and-paste or bold or italics - and then re-positioning your hand, really does mount up, plus there's the risk that your hand doesn't go back where it should, so you look down at the keys, etc. etc.

Emma

Have you ever noticed how there are two, not one, standard ways of laying out numeric keypads? PC keyboards put 7, 8, 9 at the top and 1, 2, 3 at the bottom. Phone keyboards put them the other way up (1, 2, 3 at the top). They both put 0 at the bottom, though. Whenever I start dialling a wrong phone number, it's usually because of hitting 7 instead of 1, or the like.


Alex

Yes, and I've often wondered why. Of course telephone keypads instead of dials are relatively new, at least at the consumer level, but then so are computers.

My father was so outraged by the illogic of the qwerty keyboard layout actually being designed to slow you down that he refused to learn it.

Emma

I've met lots of programmers who type like lightning with two fingers. What they type, though, often isn't as accurate as they think, as their need to watch the keyboard means they don't notice typos.

My computing experience pre-dates the mouse by several years, so I got used to doing things long-hand. I agree with Emma's point about mouse-keyboard-mouse switches. Good software is designed to allow use of one or other, rather than requiring both in equal measure. Word's shortcuts are a good idea for avoiding mouse-fatigue (but I wish Excel used the same ones!)


Alex

I love being able to touch type and have absolutely no doubt that it is a tremendous advantage, not only for writing fiction but in daily office use.

My writing tends to come in bursts, often around 4-5k words at a time. If I had to peck at the keyboard I'd never get it down.

Jon

When the qwerty layout was invented, it wasn't illogical to slow people down. Typewriters in those days often used to jam, because of people typing too fast, so slowing them down had a good engineering reason.

As to numeric keypad layout, computer keyboards have always had the same ordering of the numbers, for as long as I have been using them (25 years now). I can't remember when phones first started having buttons instead of dials, but it does seem odd to me that the number sequence was inverted. I suppose it follows a similar sequence to the dial (1-9 followed by 0), but that's no real excuse for ending up with 2 different layouts. Mind you, a computer keyboard itself has 2 different number sequences. The ones over the letter keys go 1-9 then 0, just like the phone keypad.


Alex

For me, though, longhand as in pen-and-paper is still a more direct expression of my mind. It's as if there is no interface to cross. When I realised that to brain-storm anything, specially writing, I did it on paper, I took to writing first drafts that way too. Later in the process, it's hugely valuable to have the words on screen looking separate and pristine and like someone else's, but not at the beginning.

Emma

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Alex, yes, it's just a quirk (qwerk?) of history that we've got stuck with qwerty. Presumably the first keypads were on machines for telephony and things - I have an image of Wrens in wartime HQs. I wonder which way up they were? (the keypads, not the Wrens). And what about those mechanical adding machines with a big handle to do the sum? 1 2 3 at the top is more logical if you think of writing or reading the numbers on a page. 7 8 9 more logical if you think of starting from a sitting position and reaching forward. The latter I'd have thought would be a later development, from when there started to be jobs (i.e. machines) which were all data input.

For me, though, longhand as in pen-and-paper is still a more direct expression of my mind

I'm a fast touch-typist and I've got so unused to using a pen I hardly can anymore. Even writing notes or birthday cards seems weird now, like my hand can't quite remember how to form the letters. Scares me.

Andrea

<Added>

I can't write anywhere near as fast as I can type . For me the more direct route is straight to keyboard

Same here. I can type as fast as I can think, so the keyboard means no delay between what I want to say and it appearing, so there's more flow.

It may be to do with the frequency of number usage. The number 1 occurs far more frequently than any other in 'everyday' figures (there was a Radio 4 program about it quite recently) so maybe it made sense to have it at the bottom. For telephone numbers it probably doesn't apply.

It's a good question for that other R4 show (the name of which temporarily escapes me) where they answer listeners weird questions like this.

I'm the exact opposite of you Emma - I've tried to make notes with those pen things - I tried last night in fact - but I get frustrated very very quickly as I can't write anywhere near as fast as I can type (especially if I want to read it again later). For me the more direct route is straight to keyboard. Weird.

Jon

If I'm brainstorming I tend to use mind-maps, and those are fiddly on screen, and tend to make you think in a linear way at exactly the point that you should be trying not too. There's nothing to beat the swoop of a pen across the page when you've realised what the thematic or other link between two characters is that you hadn't seen before.

I've got big, messy handwriting, and for me, not being able run my eye over manuscript as quickly as I can over typescript/screen is a positive advantage in a first draft: stops me going back and fiddling and makes me get on with it. I once wrote the last chapter of a novel when my back was very bad and lying on my side on a bed was the only painfree way. The sun was coming onto the page and I actually couldn't see the marks I was making. Remarkable liberating, and when I typed it up I hardly changed anything.

Emma