Playing a MMO.
You will learn where every button is. Or die trying.
They make games where you have to spell words quickly or you lose and that’s how I learned as a kid.
Like one where you’re in a spaceship and have to shoot lasers at asteroids that are coming at your ship. You have to spell the word that’s written on the asteroid to hit it with a laser.
Idk if any of them are free but they’re basically simple coded flash games so I’m sure you could find one on the internet pretty easily
Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing! And Reader Rabbit. And Treasure Mountain (although that’s more math I think). Loved that shit as a kid.
Mavis Beacon motherfucker!
I used to be a hunt-and-peck typist. For me, first you have to build muscle memory for key fingerings, which key is pressed by what finger. Then you can start to get faster. Building a strong foundation first.
I would have this site open on one window: www.keybr.com
And this image on another for reference:
KeyBR has “levels” where you work on a specific set of letters first, until you’re fast enough and they give you the next set of letters, adding on to what you’ve already done.
Once you’ve completed all letters, you stop progressing and just type words with all letters.
For me, after my first completion of keyBR, I spent a day or so practicing at the “endgame.” After that, I’d restart the entire module from scratch, back to the individual letters. Rinse and repeat.
After about a month or two, I was already touch-typing.
Then I got really into monkeytype.com, and started typing faster and faster.
1 Purchase The Typing of the Dead, the House of the Dead spinoff available for PC and Sega Dreamcast.
2 While TTotD is downloading or shipping go ahead and get some blacked out keyboard keys and install them.
Here’s the tricky part:
3 You have to learn to type or you will die.Older but Mario Teaches Typing https://playclassic.games/games/educational-dos-games-online/play-mario-teaches-typing-online/
My first recommendation is maybe consider a different layout. If you have been typing for long you will have muscle memory that will be hard to erase, I could mostly blind type (though not touch type) on qwerty, I decided to learn Colemak for touch typing and have never looked back. I still retain the muscle memory and can type somewhat fast on qwerty but after years of correct typing I notice just how bad what I was doing was.
IIRC I used https://thetypingcat.com/typing-courses/basic and trained on that and similar websites for a long time. You have to know that you will be very slow during a while and have to be prepared for that, but it does pay out in the end. While I didn’t increased my typing speed significantly (70 to 85) it is a lot less strenuous on my hands.
Typing.com is how I learned and recommend people learn
Then I use typeracer to have some fun
If you’re just getting started touch typing you may as well consider switching to a more comfortable layout like Dvorak for example before spending uncountable hours on learning qwerty
Nah, bring able to type on any common keyboard is more useful than a 50-100% speed increase. I can usually type faster than I can think. Typing isn’t usually the bottleneck.
Unless you feel like learning both.
It’s not about typing faster. Effectively the difference of speed between qwerty, dvorak, colemak, etc. Are significant but not very big.
It’s about avoiding repetitive strain injuries. If you type all day long for a living, something like carpal tunnel syndrome can destroy your career. Did you know that Emacs pinky is actually a type of injury. Anyways, keyboards are the number one source of RSI in office workers. Alternative keyboard layouts reduce fatigue and strain to hand ligaments by reducing the need for repeated awkward finger motions.
If you actually wanted to type as fast as people speak, you need something like a chorded steno keyboard. If you think you can type fast on qwerty, you have never seen a stenographer doing their thing.
Yeah, stenographers are crazy fast.
I’ve been typing for a living for almost 20 years. No RSI yet luckily. I’ve tried to ensure good ergonomics elsewhere at my desk setups though.
The keyboard itself doesn’t really matter for this, you just need to set the layout in your own computer and that’s it. Unless you often have to type on other people’s computers?
Unless you feel like learning both.
That’s a bad idea. It’ll just make you slow with either layout
Occasionally enough that I’d find it inconvenient to not have the option available.
I simply just painted over the keys on my keyboard so I couldn’t read the letters I had to keep some of the symbols tho
Print out a big image of your keyboard layout and hang it on the wall in your line of sight where you type. Never look at the keyboard, only look at the image on the wall. It won’t take long to build the muscle memory this way.
This sounds like a good idea. How about getting a cheap projector to project a keyboard visualizer for immediate feedback and practicing?
Personally, I don’t think its needed. You can look at the screen for immediate feedback of what you typed and there are typing practice games which certainly help with good practice.
May i suggest : Mario teaches typing 2
…or Typing of the Dead…
edit- need to be quicker on the draw https://lemmy.world/comment/24752216
A cardboard box:
I remember my parents in the 90s using a tea-towel over their hands and keyboard
And put stickers on your keyboard. Start with a few on the home row and gradually expand once you don’t have to think about the location of the keys anymore.
one of the best things my parents did for us was make us learn to type
this is what we used in the mid 90s. weird but worked.
Removed by mod
