up vote 0 down vote favorite
share [g+] share [fb]

There is a bunch of sites that offer typing lessons, games and what not, and they are already covered in several questions here.

Every game seems like has different rules and they don't give you much explanation what is going on. I want to find some official document that describes all the theory behind them.

  • which fingers should be responsible for which keys
  • which hand and finger should be used for a space key
  • which hand and finger should be used for shift keys in different situations
  • same for backspace, and other control keys including function keys, arrows, numpad and the rest of keyboard

Thanks.

link|improve this question
67% accept rate
My theory of proper typing is that QWERTY sucks, but we can't be bothered to learn something new. – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Jul 12 '10 at 23:07
@Ignacio - absolutely. As the old story says, QWERTY was essentially designed to be bad deliberately - ie in part to slow typists down - due to the limitations of mechanical typewriters. – Steve314 Jul 12 '10 at 23:33
@random so typing theory is not something a "superuser" is supposed to be interested in? If it is not a SU question then where it should be asked? – serg Jul 13 '10 at 0:29
So what is your actual computer problem? – random♦ Jul 13 '10 at 0:46
feedback

closed as off topic by random♦ Jul 13 '10 at 0:04

Questions on Super User are expected to generally relate to computer software or computer hardware, within the scope defined in the faq.

1 Answer

up vote 1 down vote

There are some fairly well known definitions of the home keys etc, but there are inconsistencies even with that. For example...

http://www.typing-lessons.org/preliminaries_4.html

That illustration is pretty close to what I was taught, with the ASDF and JKL; as the home keys. But that consistent diagonal isn't what I was taught - outside of the home row, I was taught to do slightly different things with my right hand. For B and Y, I was taught "do whatever works for you as they are roughly equidistant from opposite home keys anyway".

OTOH I don't really remember exactly what I was originally taught, as that was 20+ years ago, and to be honest I find touch-typing doesn't really work that well for me, mainly because programming involves so many non-alphanumeric symbols.

I suspect any serious study of this has been limited to a few commercial organisations that kept the results pretty much to themselves, the goal mostly being to run training courses with widely respected qualifications so that typists would have to take their course to get a job.

link|improve this answer
feedback

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.