jacob wrote: issues like typing "the the"(*) instead of "the" and similar slip-ups [of similarly sounding words] were quite common. At the time---when I was still watching my fingers while typing or maybe being younger---I had never experienced it or heard of it, but now I see and do it often. Somehow, my brain tells my spinal chord what to write and so it does it but not perfectly. Anyone else notice it? As a function of age? A function of typing speed?
Not a function of age. Quite definitely a function of typing speed.
I myself learnt typing when I was 14. On those clackety clack machines that today can’t be seen outside of pictures and movies : you know, a real typewriter. I ended up with a typing speed of a shade over 50 WPM, on that now-antique Remington.
Naturally one types much much faster on a computer. I’d once tested it, many years back, and it was around 110 WPM. Not too bad, huh?
I wasn’t aware of the numbers that are mentioned on this thread, about the speed at which we speak. It seems, going by what you people say, that the speed at which I type (which I suppose would be normal for those who’ve learnt how) isn’t much slower than the rate at which most people speak.
Although Jacob’s 70-80 WPM sounds impressive too, given that it’s without training. Would anyone know what the average rate would be be, for regular typists (which is everyone, these days) without training? Or with training, for that matter, on computers? (I remember the average for manual typewriters would be in the range of 40 to 50 for non-typists, while those who typed regularly would sometimes boast of 60-ish words.)
Of course, there are qualifications to my speed-typing :
1. How you measured typing speed back when I was learning this was by taking a word as five characters, spaces and punctuation included. I have no idea how you measure the speed of speech, but counting characters or letters of the alphabet won’t make sense there. So perhaps one uses actual words there : and unless one is a ten-year-old, or speaking to ten-year-olds, the average size of words one uses will probably be larger than that. So that should temper the measure of my 110 WPM typing speed (when compared with how fast one speaks).
2. Also, to arrive at your typing speed, you’re supposed to deduct your errors from the count, I forget how exactly, but using some formula that hugely penalizes any errors you made. Not just a simple subtraction—which stands to reason, since no one wants shoddily typed pieces, no matter how quickly done. So when I say I typed ~50 WPM on a Remington, that’s 50 correctly-typed words (and spaces etc) per minute. My 110 WPM on a computer, on the other hand, comes with errors. Not too many, and that level of errors you may let be if you wish without correcting (although I as a rule don’t) : but definitely it does come with errors. (Now that I think about this, perhaps it is the fact that errors are so easy to correct that is the main reason why typing on a computer is so much easier and faster than on a manual typewriter. Also, the keys were stiffer on the manual machines, and you needed to forcibly clack! the key down hard to get th e letter to register)
What I myself do, to take care of these errors, is make a quick proof-read an automatic part of any typing I do. It doesn’t take long at all, hardly a minute or so per typed page (at a guess), since you have software that marks possible errors with those red and green squiggles (most of which you ignore, but it lets you totally forget about the unmarked text). This may not matter all that much if you type with one finger : but if you’re typing fast, then a brief proof-read becomes more or less necessary.
So that takes away from the typing speed of us trained speed-typists (unless the non-trained people also makes lots of errors, and need to proof-read a bit to leave their typing intelligible—in which case the two will cancel out).
Incidentally : I myself never, NEVER, N-E-V-E-R keep the auto-correct function turned on. Probably no one does anyway : but certainly I’d say, DON’T when you’re speed-typing. Auto-correct does really weird things to what you speed-type, and what’s more those auto-“corrections” aren’t highlighted by spell/grammar-check, and thus you don’t notice them unless you re-read everything very minutely and carefully (which generally you never do, not with everyday stuff).
As for the errors themselves?
In my case they come in all shapes and sizes. There are repeated words (“the the”, “and and”, or perhaps “repeated repeated”) ; sometimes missing words ; then there are errors in spelling ; and there also are weird errors, including phonetic errors (where you type “know” for “no”, that sort of thing). And sometimes, especially if you’re distracted, you notice mistakes that looks Freudian-ish : these can be entertaining.
And no, I don’t think the number of these errors increases with age. At least it hasn’t for me, not thus far.