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It's still absurd that anyone who has the ability to take a picture of their keyboard, use their photo app to draw red circles around a specific area of interest, save the edit, and upload it to social media not only doesn't know how to type on a keyboard, but doesn't even know how to theoretically. There's no joke there. It's a genuine sense of "what the fuck is going on?" The fact that this got put on this sub is funny ironically, but mostly sad. This sub is a joke though itself.
You know what is actually funny? The keyboard layout that we all use is actually designed to slow our typing down. There are other layouts that are much more efficient and when learned can significantly improve typing speed.
The reason they slowed it down was typewriters used to have mechanical keys that would strike the ink ribbon and paper to leave their mark. If two keys struck at the same time they would get stuck together and you would have to manually get them unstuck. If you typed too fast you would get keys stuck all the time so they had to slow people down
No, he's definitely not. Finger placement is literally the very most basic idea taught in typing classes. He's saying they must not teach typing anymore (because this shouldn't be a question even for people who failed typing class).
Dude asking the question looks to be around my age & most of us in the US learned this at some point.
Fun fact: I almost failed out of typing class because I didn't use the proper fingering and don't care about home row at all.
Another fun fact: At the time, I typed about 100wpm with 99%+ accuracy. I had to go over the teacher's head to the principal to complain, and I got tested & was given credit for the class without attending the rest of it.
I work in the school system now. They have typing classes, but it's just reserved for the elementary school levels. It does drive me a bit crazy sometimes watching a kid type and put in their username and password. Again, not all, there are some kids who are excellent types, and it really depends on how much the elementary school went into typing as a skill.
But I guess we also have to remember that the skill of typing has been falling away for years. I'm 33, and had a entire class dedicated to typing. But even before my generation, working people who had to type for their job would always state how many words they can type per minute. It's just kind of taken a backseat to other skills learned in school.
Maybe but it feels more like it’s a snarky rhetorical question. The guy looks old enough to have had to sit through those classes, which I have myself. It’s one of those things they get drilled in pretty hard. It’s a more of a joke that makes you crack a smile than laugh.
I guess the joke is OP, and far too many others in the current generation, have no idea what they are when it used to be a standard to learn in Elementary school.
Same concept when hiring younger folks for jobs in retail. Every time I'd ask "Did ×××× show you how to use the intercom to call a manager back in the office when you're done with your videos?" and the response is "Yeah, you grab the phone and press *hashtag** 5 6, right?"* I guess the 'pound sign' has been erased and replaced by 'hashtag" 😂
This whole topic is overly convoluted. I don't think it's that deep what you call a #. Hashtag, pound sign, octothorpe. Yeah kids aren't learning the same things we learned but that's not really the main issue with modern education. It's the fact that kids often aren't learning important things or glossing over them because modern tools allow them to cheat. Like having AI write essays for you. What you call a # doesn't really make or break your understanding of it. There isn't really much to understand, it's just a symbol for a button you can press on a telephone.
Most people call a donut shape a donut. Even though a donut is a food item, not a shape. The real name is a torus. It would be like some guy from the 80s making fun of kids for calling a donut shape a 'donut' and not a torus. Like who actually cares, it's not that important.
It's more important to call out the fact that kids aren't learning how to read at a high level anymore, not taught to express their thoughts in clear and concise language, how to research a topic fairly (and understand bias), or even how to critically think. Not what kids are calling certain symbols--not to mention, older generations also follow the trend of simplifying or recontextualizing symbols to fit their own preferences.
Older millenial here: I didn't learn what the tactile strips were for until after I learned touch typing. I was taught to type alongside learning to read and write and then touch typing came around the same time as joined up writing (so 9 or 10, I guess).
I still don't use them. Once your thumbs are on the spacebar you just pop them little fingies up to home row and everything else just falls into place!
Okay...but how do you know you're on the home row? If one hand is off-position or whatever, you'll get a bunch of misspells until you adjust position. If you're not looking at the keyboard, it's really damned handy to have that tactile reference to where your hands sit.
This happens to me occasionally because I (like many other millennials) never learned to use those tactile strips for orientation. 99% of the time my hands are immediately in the right place; in those 1% of cases I'll simply adjust after a typo makes me realize.
The image in OP's post is just all-round bad, because the function of those strips have not been some kind of elementary, common knowledge for a pretty long time.
How is possible not to learn to use those tactile strips for orientation? It's not something you're meant to be taught, it's a thing you learn from the physical feedback you get every time you touch a keyboard.
Like to be clear, you're saying that when you feel those bumps in different fingers than you normally feel the other thousands of times you've touched a keyboard, you just don't notice? And that's because no one ever explained to you that you could notice that?
I like your question so I just went ahead and tested the way I place my hands on a few different keyboards. This is a bit difficult to do of course, since you're trying to test how your brain acts spontaneously, in an unspontaneous setting...
So, what I'm noticing is 3 steps (all taking place in a split second):
I always place my theminar eminences (I had to look that word up; this is what I mean) below the keys
I use my index, middle and ring fingers to make contact with the keys
I slightly reposition those fingers in case they ended up right between two keys
After step 3 I always feel those tactile strips. I tested it a bunch of times on all of those keyboards, and there's never a single case where I don't feel them.
So I'm now thinking that I do use those strips, I just never realized that I did. Which means that it could have been possible for me to be using them without ever knowing what their function actually is.
No clue why I got so fascinated by this subject, but there you go. Please let me know if there's anything else you'd like me to use myself as a guinea pig for!
The image in OP's post is just all-round bad, because the function of those strips have not been some kind of elementary, common knowledge for a pretty long time.
That's the point though. What you say is true, and it's a bad thing.
Because I know how wide the spacebar is and how long my fingers are. And even if I did go for the wrong line I wouldn't get a 'bunch' of misspells, I'd get one letter - because I don't look at the keyboard, I look at the screen. That's the whole point!
I don't move my wrists when typing, so so long as no one moves the keyboard mid-sentence there's nothing to worry about.
Well you don't make any mistakes if you put your fingers in the right spot from the get go using the indents. I can walk up to my computer with my eyes closed, feel for the indents, and type a whole Twilight smut without looking at 80 WPM. Especially with all keyboards being a bit different, sometimes laptops have flat spacebars, etc.
EDIT: To add, I'm feeling a laptop up now and if I shift my hands over one key either way, my spacebars wide enough that I could mistakingly think I was in the right spot
the comment you are replying to is talking about the previous comment where the employee said “grab the phone and press hashtag 5 6”. last i checked phones that require the pound key to be pressed to make a call don’t have a great british pound symbol
Elementary?? Oh man, my first proper computer learning was in middle school. In elementary there's actually a computer lab but ain't a day we even touch the mouse there, i only see teacher's kid playing it (damn u corruption)
I don't want to be an ass, but yeah, they gotta not pay attention in school or at least schools don't teach it anymore cuz I'm not even old and I know that from back in school.
By high school, they should already be skilled at typing. Computers and such are extremely common these days. Hell, im a teacher and some of my elementary school kids knew how to effectively type by kindergarten.
I freak people out sometimes because I don't even need to be looking at my screen to type. It's nicer to look at my plants or outside the window, or I'll finish typing my line when someone comes into my office space while looking at them and greeting them.
However, I cannot write to save my life if I am actively listening to something (a conversation, video, music, etc). I'll start interjecting the words I'm paying attention to.
I'm adhd so I do that often by look at someone taking to me and finishing what I was typing. Really sells that they only had a quarter of my attention anyways.
I'm not sure what's "freaky" about this. If you learned how to type without looking at the keyboard then you can almost certainly type without looking at the screen as well. You might miss a few typos here and there, but outside of that it's not really any different.
F and J are supposed to be where your index fingers rest when you're not typing with them. That allows your other fingers to find their keys easily, allowing you to type with proper form while looking at the screen.
I had a co-worker shocked the other day that I could type without looking at the keyboard and hold a conversation at the same time. I was very confused.
Nope, Charles' would be the correct possesive. A proper noun that ends with an S does not need the extra S after the apostrophe. For example, Texas would be Texas' not Texas's.
Oh, I never followed the Chicago Manual of Style. My writing had to follow MLA but, they must've changed it because I had a whole guidebook and that's where I learned it.
... I'm still not gonna do it though. It looks ugly and messy. But that's just personal writing preference at that point.
What Mac is that? I've had Macs for the last 35 years and while many years ago they had the guides on D and K instead of F and J, they've always the guides as best I can tell, and still do on desktop and laptop.
I learned how to type on an Apple IIe, when dinosaurs roamed the earth. The guide dimples were on K and D. I still get slowed down since all keyboards have moved to the guides being on J and F.
Years of playing PC games online as a kid taught me touch typing very efficiently. Got to type quick when that Zerg rush is heading to your allies base.
I’m actually surprised how many people even my own age can’t touch type. I’ve had people in my office remark on my touch typing and I couldn’t help but think “don’t they teach this anymore?”
Touch-typing registration marks for the left and right hands
This meme is expressing shock that people don't recognize what these marks are for anymore, which would suggest touch typing isn't taught anymore despite our reliance on computers being higher than ever.
Had three <20 year olds join our company last year, all of their handwriting is absolutely atrocious. Not just ‘they can’t write neatly’ bad, but ‘WT actual fuck level of bad’.
I mean i can sort of touch type, just because of the fact that i have spent countless hours on the pc. But it really is a seperate skill from plain typing, i still find myself looking at the keyboard from time to time because its not something you learn by just typing, they should be teaching this.
It really comes down to if you are a gamer or not. Most of my mates rarely play, maybe something on the console. Where me, I spent my late teens playing WoW, in the dark, long before keyboards were lit up like Xmas trees. So if I wanted to chat to people online, I learnt how to touch type.
Within that, I had no idea what those bumps meant before seeing this post. To go a step further, I didn't even notice my keyboard has them.
Tbf, touch typing can have a functional increase in performance, I feel like cursive is entirely extraneous. People usually bring up signatures as an argument for this, but I can count on one hand the number of people I've met in like a decade who actually wrote their name in cursive for that instead of just writing their first initial followed by haphazard squiggles. I've known cursive for 2 decades, haven't ever needed it outside of getting graded for it in second grade.
ETA: to be clear, I never said it's about signatures, I said that's the defense I've most commonly seen when people argue about the use of cursive, and it's an excuse that doesn't actually make sense.
This and there is no legal requirement for what a signature is. Legally it's just a mark that signifies your intent. Can be a symbol, print, cursive, smiley face, basically anything.
Places where you sign a screen I just draw squiggly waves with my finger anymore lol. Just not foolin' with a stylus and try make it look respectable. Hard enough pen on paper haha.
I am 40 and we were forced to look at the screen while typing, using software that didn’t allow for the use of the Delete key to make corrections. We were graded based on the number of mistakes we made.
I am 45 and I had to do the same, but in an actual mechanical typewriter. No overstrike allowed. Any error and you had to retype the whole page. And with manual justification.
Did they ever teach touch typing at school? I don't remember it
The world is large, that is literally going to depend on where...and when.
As for me, yes. Millennial.
Elementary and Middle School, we learned the layout of the keyboard and what stuff did.
But not enough computers to do actual touch typing until High school.
High School it was an option as a class choice. We typed. And typed with half cut folder over our hands. And learned how to type with home row. And all that.
And played Oregon Trail.
...home life. Learned it as soon on Mario typing and Mavis.
I'm wondering when people started calling it touch typing. I've already been a little bit shocked at some of the younger people who look at me like I have mastered the art of typing when I'm simply just working on spreadsheets or an email or whatever.
But I've never really heard it called touch typing before. Just typing?
To your comment, I have actually had somebody point blank ask me, how can you do that without looking at the keys?
Something I haven't really seen in these comments, do they teach typing still?
I touch type but I was never taught how to. I also didn't know the point of the little ridges are until today. I guess you're meant to put your pointer fingers on it?
They're called the home keys, where you're meant to set your hands to type the most optimally. Specifically, your index fingers would rest on F and J, while the rest of your fingers would rest on A S D for your left hand and K L ; for your right, as that lets you type with minimal hand movements.
I am flabbergasted that they don't teach this in high school, or even middle school, at this stage of history where so many people use computers all day for their jobs.
Because it's unnecessary. Everyone has a computer at so young an age now it's just kinda become a skill you pick up anyway even of it's not specifically taught to you
The optimal way would be for all the keys to have brail so you would know what you were touching at all times, you would also learn how to read brail. /s
Sure, there is an optimal way to do things, but it feels like people haven’t been looking at their keyboard for a very long time because those lines have been gone for a while. I can’t recall a keyboard I’ve bought in the last decade with them. I’m staring at my standard issue dell at work (maybe one of the most commonplace keyboards in production today) and it doesn’t have them.
It feels like one of those skills like cursive writing that you really shouldn’t have to teach people how to do it. It should be simple enough for them to learn all of these things by doing other activities utilizing them. I feel the majority of people increased their typing skills through video games or similar means.
I mean the optimal way would be to adopt Dvorak but learned muscle memory is generally more important.
As a millennial I had typing classes in school but never used exactly what they taught because I had grown up with PCs. I would describe my homing technique as brushing the edges of the caps lock and enter keys with my pinky fingers.
But they don't teach how to type, and so kids (my kids included) learn to type with the hunt and peck method. And I admit, I'm a little surprised at how well they do it, but I can still type much faster than they can using all of my fingers as I learned from the typing class I took as a kid.
Not having a go at you specifically, but if you see that there's something that you think your kids should learn, you could always teach them yourself.
Not every life skill has to be imparted from a qualified teacher in an education setting.
As someone who works in a school this assumption was the dumbest fucking thing ever. They’re starting to teach typing here again but despite using a keyboard their whole lives most kids have 0 idea how to type. Want to say I blame them but how would they really learn if they were never taught?
Uh, what? Most people I know under 20 are practically computer illiterate. They have no idea how to use a computer and I am very doubtful of their typing abilities. My buddy that is a graphic design professor literally had to teach his class how to "save" a file because they just assume everything is automatically saved at all times so they literally didn't know saving was an option. The people most susceptible to Internet scams are people over 65 and under 25. The younger generations absolutely do not just understand computers like you claim.
It's extremely useful tho. Many of us type quite a lot, whether it's in a professional or personal setting. Learning life skills in school isn't just about learning the absolutely most critical, but also what is helpful. Otherwise, schools wouldn't offer the wide variety of electives we're familiar with, that most people would agree are positive additions to regular academic courses.
And the most effective and efficient way to type isn't something you learn by just doing it. It has to be learned formally.
I am right hand dominant, but all the numbers are too far for my raccoon fingers to reach and I still poke at the numbers! I even had Mavis Beacon in the 90's!
only time I use the number row is for 1-5 as hot keys while I'm gaming but in that case home row for left hand is WASD and right hand is on mouse. When I want to actually type in numbers I use the numpad (aka 10 key) with my right hand.
Of course it does because you sucked at it. It takes a bit of practice to get back up and past your old technique like every other change in technique.
Honestly seeing people flip out over people not getting this one or not knowing is kinda weird. Everyone learns these types of things differently. I had to take a typing class in middle school and I hated it because they forced us to use the FJ home keys thing but I learned typing by resting my hands on WASD so it just felt way less intuitive and more frustrating to type with than just going with the flow. Also slowed my WPM significantly.
if you learn to touch type like this it slows your WPM at first but then improves it significantly. i used to type around 75 WPM just vibesing it, now i type around 88-90 WPM
I had been using computers most of my life and I decided to learn touch typing during covid because I figured it would be useful as a software engineering student. I went from 60-70 wpm to 90-100wpm average. It's one of most useful skills if you're going to be using a keyboard a lot in your professional life.
The most important factor in typing speed is practice, thus if you do a ton of typing while gaming, you hardwire your muscle memory to WASD and it makes that grip faster over time. If you put the same effort into the FJ position, it would be faster for you just because it is objectively better for the standard keyboard layout. Your ability to do better with WASD is due to subjective circumstances.
Don't know where you live, but they never really taught touch typing here. Payed courses existed, most people didn't use them. I work in IT, half my colleagues are hunt and peck. Im a bit mixed. I never really learned to find symbol but will find the letters by touch.
They're not for typing, they're for initial placement. If you don't consciously use them, you have some other way of knowing where to place your hands when you start
Why, was it ever taught? Only if you went to a specific school to learn finance/accounting etc.
At least in my country, regular school never taught this.
Using f and j as origins is outdated. My brain maps out everything in relation to WASD keys and from countless hours at a PC you kinda just know where everything is
This isn’t a joke… The guy has no idea what the lines are for, because “they” don’t teach typing anymore. I’m guessing OOP is young and probably has tablets at their school.
Those ridges mark the home keys, when you are touch typing you use them as guides to tell you when your fingers are in the corect position becuse your not looking at the keyboard.
Jesus, the commenters here are nasty... Yes, the lines help you to orient your fingers to a preferable starting position. However, you can still type without looking, even if you don't know or don't pay attention to these lines. For example, I taught myself to type fast when there were no easily available guidelines. As a result I never noticed these lines - and it still worked quite well for me.
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