Poll: Do you touch-type?

I type in a strange fashion: I hover my fingers over the home keys, but never let them touch unless I am depressing a key, and I only use my pinkies for the shift and enter keys. I make surprisingly few mistakes, especially considering that I don't look at the keyboard when I am typing. I also feel that I am able to type as fast as someone who uses the correct technique.

I would suggest that you only use the Mavis Beacon method as a guide; you need to work out what you are comfortable with. Just because touch-typing is considered 'best practise' doesn't make it right for everybody.

Truthfully, I don't think 'proper' touchtyping is necessary, per se. I type without looking at the keys, but I only use - I think - three or four fingers of each hand, tops. No doubt proper touchtyping would be more natural for me had I learnt it from the beginning, but I haven't, and trying the proper way hurts my hands after a few hours. I'm able to keep up 100wpm with ease just by having typed a lot in my life. I don't think I'll ever need to type faster than that. Thus, I don't see a reason to learn to touchtype.

Also, I've always disliked those exercises where you have to type jj ff jj ff jj ff jjf jfj ffj fff fjf etc. etc. One of the reasons I can type fast is because I like to hold complete sentences (or blocks of text) in my head and then WHAM it all in on my keyboard. With these exercises, there is no such link, and I have to look at each specific character on my screen. It annoys the crap out of me.

I learned to touch-type on a basic mechanic typewriter in the late 80s -- no electricity whatsoever, you had to hit the keys very hard to make it work. The teacher was an old style professional typist; she was almost able to hear each mistake (in a class of 20 people).

There was a huge screen at the end of the classroom that showed a keybord; when the teacher would say "A" she would lit the letter up at the same time. She made us type bizarre and unnatural sequences of letters just to practice some fingers. It was quite funny at times, but I don't think I ever saw her smile.

It was an optional course that didn't give any credit and that you had to pay for (the rest of my education was free, as this took place in France). Best investment I ever made.

i retrained myself to touch-type when i was 16.

only thing it took was forcing myself to not type any other way, no matter how slow i ended up being. within a month or two i was typing at my previous speed. (and continued to improve from there. these days i type faster than almost anyone who isn't training for competitions)

no tutorials, guides, books, teachers needed. just do it.

ps: yes, those two months are painful. try getting into a heated argument on irc and losing because you can't type fast enough. don't break your touch-typing-only rule. just try hard to type faster the right way! that's where the motivation comes from ;)