Touch typing
Although the phrase refers to typing without using the sense of sight to find the keys—specifically, a touch typist will know their location on the keyboard through muscle memory—the term is often used to refer to a specific form of touch typing that involves placing the eight fingers in a horizontal row along the middle of the keyboard (the home row) and having them reach for specific other keys.
Z and S are close to each other because the American Morse codes of Z and a common diagram SE (both ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ) are near the same, so the telegraphist often needs to wait for more signals before understanding the content.
The view that the layout was intentionally redesigned to slow down the operator, to prevent jamming the mechanism, is widespread but not correct.
On July 25, 1888, an American man, Frank Edward McGurrin, who was reportedly the only person using touch typing at the time, won a decisive victory over Louis Traub (operating Caligraph with eight-finger method) in a typing contest held in Cincinnati.
Speeds attained by other typists in other typing competitions at the time suggest that they must have been using similar systems.
This method is considered inferior as not only is it slower than touch typing, the typist would have to have their fingers travel a greater distance.
A Microsoft survey suggested that many managers expect employees to be able to type at a minimum of 50 WPM.
[8] Professional career typists can exceed 100 WPM repeatedly and continuously (secretarial, data entry, etc.).
[9] A touch typist does not need to move the sight between the keyboard (that is obscured with fingers and may be poorly lit) and other areas that require attention.
Touch typing helps improve posture and reduce neck pain by keeping one's eyes focused on the display and avoiding a constant need to glance at the keyboard.
For example, many hunt-and-peck typists have the keyboard layout memorized and are able to type while focusing their gaze on the screen.
However, the study has been criticised for only selecting subjects with average typing speeds up to 75 words per minute, thus lacking generalizability for faster typists.
Learning typically includes first printing exercises containing only letters on or near the standard position and then gradually mastering other rows.
It is important to learn placing fingers into the start position blindly as the hands are frequently raised from the keyboard to operate the line feed lever (in the past) or (more recently) the computer mouse.
For instance, to type the word poll on a QWERTY keyboard, one would place all of one's fingers on the home row.
