Typing

I have a wireless remote keyboard that I use when writing on my laptop computer. I’ve don this for several years now and found that it has several positive benefits. The main benefit is that I use the keyboard a lot. The computer that I had before I got my present one had to have the keyboard replaced twice because I wore out the microswitches in the keyboard. On this computer the “A” is difficult to read because it has been touched by my fingers so much. Recently I was working with our grandson on a computer learning task with my remote keyboard and I had to take a sharpie marker and re-label a whole bunch of letters: E, R, T, I, O, A, S, D, F, K, L, X, C, V, B, N, and M. Using a sharpie to renew a keyboard is a very short term remedy. The ink is gone and the keys are once again blank. I don’t mind the blank keys. I don’t need to see the letters to use the keyboard. But it does interrupt my rhythm and slow my writing when a key becomes difficult to push or fails to register the pressure. On this particular keyboard, I have to be very careful with 8 and 9, but they keys still work with just a slight amount of extra pressure. Before long it will be time to order another keyboard and get this one to a computer recycling program.

I use the touchscreen on my phone to enter emails and a few other communications, but I’m very slow at the task. My thumbs are too wide to be accurate. In addition, I’ve had “trigger thumbs” on both hands. One has been surgically repaired. The other has been treated and doesn’t work quite right. However, I can touch type on a key board without every using my left thumb for anything except to rest on the desk next to the keyboard. I have a keyboard for my tablet computer. I just can’t get any speed going with the touchscreen keyboard.

The transition in keyboards during my lifetime has been dramatic. The keys I’m using to type this journal entry are far different from the ones on the manual typewriter that got us through college and graduate school. The range of motion is much smaller. The keys respond much more quickly. It doesn’t take much pressure to produce accurate language. My grandchildren don’t know about correction tape or correction fluid and they will never need to learn those things. I have shown them how to use carbon paper to transfer paper plans to a piece of wood, but they haven’t got a clue about using it to make copies of a document.

For decades I have claimed that there are two classes I took in high school that taught me skills I use every day. Those two classes are Latin and typing. That is a bit of an exaggeration. I do a lot of things that draw on what I learned in algebra and geometry as well. But they still teach algebra and geometry in schools. Typing and Latin don’t appear on the schedule in modern schools, though I think they do have some touch typing exercises taught in computer classes. At least the arrangement of keys on modern computers is consistent with the way the typewriters were in my high school classroom.

Back in my high school classroom, our teacher told us that the arrangement of the QWERTY keyboard was based on how often letters are used in common correspondence. By spacing the letters and moving the most frequently used keys away from each other, typing on mechanical typewriters is speeded up compared to arranging the keys in alphabetical order. Somewhere along the line I read that this isn’t actually the case, but that the letters are arranged in a pattern that enabled the quickest translation of Morse Code, the code used in telegraphy. I never learned more than the basic alphabet in Morse Code and I can’t remember more than just a few letters, so I don’t know whether or not this theory is accurate. Whatever the reason, the arrangement of the letters, numbers and punctuation marks on a classic keyboard are so much a part of my life that I can’t imagine having to learn to use a different keyboard.

Our son was born with a slight difference in the sensitivity of his hands. His right hand doesn’t send his brain signals as completely or as quickly as his left. As a result, he never was able to type efficiently using the two-hand method that I use. However, he needed to be able to use a computer to write as his educational career progressed. We invested in several different alternate keyboards, none of which were successful. He taught himself his own method of one handed typing that works very well for him. As a professional he uses computers for a large part of his work. He designs web pages, writes correspondence, and manages dozens of computer tasks. His speed on the keyboard is comparable to those of us who use two hands. And he uses a conventional keyboard, which means that even though he doesn’t use the touch typing method that I learned in high school, the keyboard skills he gained through his own work and practice are serving him well. It also means that he has become adjusted to a QWERTY keyboard just like me. I take that to be a sign that I’ll have some access to some kind of keyboard that I can use for as long as I continue to write, which is a good thing, because I don’t learn new skills as quickly as once was the case.

So I guess I’ll keep on using keyboards and wearing them out. In a way, I’m eager to try out the lattes version of the wireless keyboard I’ve been using. The ad says that the rechargeable batteries in the keyboard will last up to a month. I have my doubts. I use a keyboard a lot more than the average computer user. Sill, I kind of like using this keyboard with the letters that can’t be read. It is kind of like knowing a code. I bet I can get it to last a bit longer.

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