Moderately Confused by Jeff Stahler for February 04, 2023

Me too!

It has been 55 years since I took typing in high school, but I definitely agree that it has been the most useful skill that I possess.

Hunt and peck are my typing skills.

It took a speed typing course to reveal that I have a slight case of dysgraphia. :P :P :P

Back in the 70’s I had a typing teacher who would walk around with a wooden ruler and SLAP anyone on the back of the hands if she caught them resting their wrists on the typewriter. “OUCH!!”

asdf jkl;

Learned qwerty on Remington manual in the 50’s. [Electric version arrived in senior year.] Used same keyboard ever since – college, military, sales, teaching. To me, computer is just another keyboard with a screen and some truly irritating quirks.

I miss the left hand wave for carriage return.

I had a typing Teacher that looked like she stepped out of Little House on the Prairie! A gold tooth here, frameless round glasses, a knitting needle in her hair….She was a horrible teacher…she would say, today we are do the letters d and p So she would stand there and say, d, p d, p so that’s what we were to type…awful! Monotonous!

I have said this exact thing for decades

How do typing skills relate to working a smart phone? I don’t recall pounding the keys with my thumbs. Or tapping or double tapping or swiping or tap and hold or tap dancing, either.

I still very much believe that. Giant manual typewriters.

True for me, the only boy in the class (1960) and touch typing has served me well to this day.

I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but being able to type has served me well.

https://youtu.be/GXqREyyG-e8

Moderately true.

Me too.

yep

Intro to Phones: Swiping and Typing While Walking

That and Bio and AP Calculus.

I attended High School in the 60s, and my father insisted I take a typing class. His idea was that since I was a guy, I would become a company clerk if I were drafted and could also type. Although I was never drafted, I was the only guy in typing class, which was a pretty nice situation for a young man. I met my High School sweetheart there, who sat behind me in class. Sadly, she passed away a few years ago. However, I later became a Software Engineer, where the ability to type was a good skill. I’ve continued to use my typing skill my entire life, making writing comments like this one a lot easier.

I took Typing I and Typing II in the early 70’s and after 50 years I can still type 25 mistakes a minute.

My senior year in High School we had just moved from Georgia to Iowa. It turned out they had very little to offer academically I hadn’t already done, so out of 7 ‘periods’ I had three off. Of the other 4 at different time of the year I ended up taking ‘Health’, a euphemism for sex-ed except they didn’t really teach us anything except to say No, Driver’s ed, and typing. For a male to take typing in 1967 was a bit unusual, and my father’s idea. He got his career start as a radio operator for an airline in 1948, where part of his job was to listen to morse code and type it out onto a ‘teletype’. In the late 50s he got into computer programing. What he told me that was in the future everyone would need to be able to type to communicate and work with computers. Boy am I glad I took his advice!

Haven’t touched a typewriter in years, but I still like them — I even have my Dad’s portable that I used for college papers about 45 years ago. Coolest thing about that model is that it appeared on a 2014 calendar that celebrated the typewriter.

I took typing in 8th and 9th grades, in the mid-70s. By then it was provided to the entire class, boys and girls alike. And I took an adult education refresher class offered by my old high school after I finished college. Maybe not the most important thing I ever learned, but I’m pretty much touch-typing as I write this comment, so I guess it served me well.

Does anyone who took typing back in those days remember typewriter art? The teacher would hand out an instruction sheet that told you, line by line, what to type (which characters, how many spaces) and you’d end up with a picture. You can google it now to see examples. Anyone know what I’m talking about?

I took typing for 2 reasons. It was an easy class and it was filled with pretty girls. Turned out to be much more useful than I expected.

Me too!

Living in Mannheim Germany in tenth grade I had to come up with an elective to take to fill in my schedule. I had soccer after school, so it had to be in the morning. There was art, music and some others that did not appeal to me. My mother looked at the list and said that my best bet would be to take typing. I laughed at her and said something along the lines of not wanting to be a secretary. She gave me her ’Don’t be stupid’ look. Turned out it was one of the most useful classes I ever took and it had lots of cute girls in the class which was fine since I was the only guy.

Yes, i agree, mind you I was the only guy with a class full of girls and hot looking teacher who dress to kill.

That’s so true. In high school I never got a great speed but I passed, but now I’m sure I do a gazillion words a minute. LOL Not on the phone though. I’m still really slow at that.

I took in H.S. and must admit it has been more helpful than Trig.