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Typing or not

Straight answers to factual questions
Forum rules
Direct questions and answers, this room is not for general discussion please

Is writing on a tablet, using only 1 finger, typing?

Yes
10
28%
No
12
33%
Well, sort of
14
39%
 
Total votes: 36

UncleEbenezer
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Re: Typing or not

#444700

Postby UncleEbenezer » September 23rd, 2021, 12:49 pm

Arborbridge wrote:Maybe having to speak properly for speech recognition software will start a habit so that people who are slightly hard of hearing can join in conversations once more. Most of my children and grandchildren mumble worse than the BBC production of Jamaica Inn.

It won't do anything with the real problem in speech recognition. Namely the fact that spoken language is full of umms, aaahs, hesitations, changes of thread and mood as the speaker rethinks on the fly, or pauses for think-time without leaving a gap, and such things.

Dictation, or an actor reciting lines, are easy. Accents and speech impediments are just a little harder. Even the cocktail party effect (google it if those three words don't carry specific meaning) isn't such a hard AI problem.

Lootman
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Re: Typing or not

#444703

Postby Lootman » September 23rd, 2021, 12:57 pm

vrdiver wrote:Having been schooled when typing pools were "a thing" and managers dictated to secretaries (including their emails, when email first came out), and having spent my career first as a programmer and after, wedded to a keyboard one way or another, I still type using two fingers and a thumb. I probably should have learned to touch type, but it never seemed to be an issue.

These days it's even less of an issue, with virtual keypads, predictive text and voice recognition.

Personally, I'd be more concerned about what my child was typing than how.

I didn't work in IT but otherwise agree 100% with this. I can type as fast as I need to with two fingers. I get the impression that some of the commentators here spend a lot of time producing text and so saving small amounts of time make a difference. Maybe they write reports for a living or are authoring a book?

But for everyday casual use, touch typing seems redundant to me. And I am fairly sure I would make more mistakes doing that which would undo any time saving upfront.

Moreover if it takes more effort to write then maybe one is more selective about what one writes in the first place. Watching teenagers feverishly typing into their phones make me wonder what on earth they are saying that can be so important?

Loup321
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Re: Typing or not

#444719

Postby Loup321 » September 23rd, 2021, 1:39 pm

Thanks for all the replies. Lots of things to discuss with her. I’ll show her the whole thread sometime over the weekend. There seems to be no real consensus, which is a good thing. There are points in favour of both views.

I think my background is influencing my views (duh!). My mum was a secretary, for a few large firms, and secretary was a very good job. She was a touch typist, and wrote shorthand. I think when I graduated from University and took a job as a “secretary” for a couple of years, she was very pleased with my career prospects! I’m not sure what she thought of my becoming an administrator and then a technician. Probably glossed over it in her mind, as I’d already had the best job there was to be had in the world.

I think my mum’s memory of what she used to do, and the actual fact of me being an office junior were worlds apart. And I could never type or do shorthand. Typing wasn’t a problem – word processors autocorrect spelling mistakes, or at least underline stuff for you. Shorthand was never used by anyone where I was.
UncleEbenezer wrote:OP: if she talks of typing, maybe you should seize on it and float the idea of learning touch-typing? Express it something along the lines of "real" or "expert" typing? If she bites, it's potentially a life skill. If not, nothing lost.

Nah. Not happening. I’ve suggested it before, and apparently it’s a BAD IDEA. Furthermore, I think I had too much exposure to keyboards before my mum suggested such a thing, so even though I did a few courses from books or online, I was already in bad habits. I don’t want to forbid the small one to use the computer until she does it “properly”, particularly when I don’t!

I fear you’ve suggested I suggest other things before (writing html in Vim?) and I had the same reply. That time, I did actually give it a go, but she ended up trying to write a script in Vim for a game she thought she could code in bash. Very imaginative, but I was completely lost with what she was trying to do, and trying to cook dinner. She did have a go at some Javascript in Notepad, and that went down very well for a couple of hours. Library book for the summer reading challenge, and Mummy nowhere in sight (until bugs needed fixing).
gryffron wrote:By the time Loup's 10yo is in employment I suspect she'll be dictating to a perfect voice recognition system, and she'll wonder why anyone ever bothered with keyboards.

While I agree that technology is moving quite quickly, I still write stuff down on paper using a pen. Biro these days rather than quill pen, but still any old scrap of paper I find, to minimize waste. Maybe typing will be obsolete though. But word processing will not, because you might still need to go back an correct stuff you said wrong into the dictating machine. I'm not sure how to say "the third word on line 5 of page 8 should be there, not their" into a dictating machine, particularly when Word has repaginated everything again, just because Bill Gates knows more than I do (he is the multibillionaire, and I am not). And I don't know how the programmers will work, without keyboards.

Anyway, thanks again for all the replies. A lot to chat about with the small one.

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Re: Typing or not

#444764

Postby gryffron » September 23rd, 2021, 3:53 pm

Loup321 wrote:I still write stuff down on paper using a pen. Biro these days rather than quill pen, but still any old scrap of paper I find, to minimize waste. Maybe typing will be obsolete though ... And I don't know how the programmers will work, without keyboards.

I agree a few specialists will still need keyboards. Authors and Programmers. But I think the majority will dump them when the software is better.

Writing with a pen hurts SO MUCH these days. I can't believe I used to write whole essays using one. Even a short note and I'm in agony. Is this old age or lack of practice? :twisted:

Gryff

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Re: Typing or not

#444774

Postby AF62 » September 23rd, 2021, 4:29 pm

gryffron wrote:
AF62 wrote:Having worked in an office next to someone who had to use speech recognition software to type, I can tell you it is #*&%^S annoying; far more distracting than people having a conversation nearby and far more irritating than listening to one sided phone conversations on the train.

Yeah, but that's because current speech recognition software is rubbish.
YOU - HAVE - TO -SPEAK - VERY - SLOW - LY - COMMA - LOUD - LY - AND - CLEAR - LY - STOP
When it gets better it will be no different to a normal conversation. Indeed, use a throat mic you'll barely need to make a sound.

Though I still think some jobs will be typing. Because if you're good at it it's faster! Must confess, it's a thing I wish I'd learnt to do properly (computer programmer)

;)


It was worse than that.

Not only was the need to speak slowly, but also describing the punctuation, getting it to do corrections, etc.

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Re: Typing or not

#444784

Postby 9873210 » September 23rd, 2021, 5:04 pm

gryffron wrote:Though I still think some jobs will be typing. Because if you're good at it it's faster! Must confess, it's a thing I wish I'd learnt to do properly (computer programmer)
;)

There's still time. Touch typing is not that difficult a skill to pick up. An hour or so a night for a week using Mavis Beacon followed by a month of paying attention to not looking at the keyboard as you go about your business should get you to faster than hunt and peck. Or install a Dvorak keyboard map: you have to touch type when the key labels are wrong.

If you write a lot of specs or documentation it's worth doing unless your about to retire. It's less useful if you're coding. Unless you're using COBOL up to three quarters of your input is non-alpha from the remote parts of the keyboard where touch typing is slowest. Fastest input is a descent predictive editor so you can type "if" and get the entire template. But most coders are only producing a few hundred characters an hour so data entry speed is largely irrelevant.

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Re: Typing or not

#444796

Postby Lootman » September 23rd, 2021, 5:37 pm

9873210 wrote: An hour or so a night for a week using Mavis Beacon followed by a month of paying attention to not looking at the keyboard as you go about your business should get you to faster than hunt and peck.

Ah, did not know my typing style had a name. On the difference in speed:

"The average typing speed when using only 2 fingers is 27 WPM when copying and 37 WPM when typing from memory. The average typing speed for someone using all ten fingers is between 40 and 60 WPM.

if you write 10 emails a day for work, it might take you around 2 hours to write these emails using just two fingers at a rate of 27 WPM. It would take closer to 1 hour to write the same exact emails if you were touch typing at a speed of 50 WPM."

https://www.typing.com/blog/hunt-and-peck/

That said the over-riding factor would be whether my error rate would go up if I did touch-and-type. Fixing the mistakes might use up any time saved typing.


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