I have been typing too fast lately. Making a lot of silly misspellings and spacing errors when I type. Worse, a lot of them are slipping by my internal editors.
There’s no easy to identify reason behind it. It’s not a matter of an unfamiliar keyboard, or (haha) a lack of knowledge of the English language on my part (ha, just did it there again… “aprt”). I think it’s just my brain getting ahead of my fingers. But, as a content editor – it’s a frustrating bad habit to be falling into lately.
I’ve fooled around at www.typeracer.com and I’m typing at an average speed of 71 wpm. I pleased by and proud of the fact that I type the same way at the site as I always do. In other words, it’s a valid measure of my speed (as opposed to the “ddff ddff” I’d type at 90 wpm on my old IBM PC XT when I was first learning.) If anything, I get slowed down because typeracer.com doesn’t simply penalize you for a mistake… you have to back up and type it correctly. My number one type of mistake in the typeracer races? Spacing errors… such as “My number onem istake in…”
I can’t call it “keyboarding” even though I haven’t seen an actual typewriter in a long time. I learned to type on a manual typewriter. The force required to move those keys served me well. Much like when you learn to play the piano, typing on a manual typewriter requires that you strike the keys with a hammering action. (“remember, the piano is a percussion instrument” – I hear over and over, the same is true for a keyboard.)
Anyway, I can’t call it “keyboarding.” Isn’t that playing music? Or maybe that’s an outdated ’80’s definition.
Contributed by: Scott Copperman (Guest Author)
Tags: By Scott Copperman