A Note About Typing Skills

My first manual typewriter looked like this.

My mother told me there were three things she never learned while young that she wanted to make sure her four boys learned. They were: how to swim, how to drive and how to type.

I'm especially grateful that she had me take a typing class in high school I received my first typewriter as a graduation present. Even if typewriters are dinosaurs now, mine proved invaluable when I attended college. To this day I love the QWERTY keyboard.

There are many ways to tell one's life story. One way could be to follow the thread of one's relationships to their typewriters. Mine began with that first cool blue Smith Corona.

When I was in Bible school eight years later I did an internship in Puerto Rico and did not bring my typewriter. A classmate named Maggie Godward, who was doing prison ministry here in Minnesota, said there was a fellow there who would benefit from having a typewriter because he wanted to write his life story. So it was that my Smith Corona went to prison. (Ironically, when I got to Puerto Rico, I was invited to help do some prison ministry there, at the Bayamon Prison outside of Old San Juan.)

My Olivetti looked like this.

When I returned from Puerto Rico for my senior year at Bethany, the Bible school, I acquired a typewriter for the year from another student who was leaving for his internship. (Thank you, Ray Heath!) When he returned I bought a used Olivetti manual typewriter that was so flat that it could be slid under the front seat of my car when we went to Mexico after graduation. I loved that Olivetti. It was so compact, a well-engineered machine.

But manual typewriters had certain limitations, and eventually I bought a Brother electric typewriter as I became more serious about my writing. This was the 1980s and though we were on the threshold of the digital we weren't quite there yet. In 1987 all that changed. I acquired my first McIntosh, a 512Ke. That is, a small box with 512K of computing power, and 1 MB of temporary memory. With no hard drive to write to at all, one had to have a second disc drive to save your work to a floppy. This was 30 years ago, but that Mac still works to this day.

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Typing Skills Still Matter

There was a time when literacy was not a necessary survival skill. In today's world, however, reading and writing skills are assumed. Job postings often outline the software programs now required for these openings.

What about typing skills? I recently heard someone say that with the advent of voice-recognition software, typing will become a thing of the past. I'm willing to wager that this won't happen in my lifetime, and it may not happen in your children's either. In a country where we have difficulty even feeding a large swath of the population it is hard to imagine a day when everyone will own computers with voice-recognition software.

It takes time to learn how to type well, but there's a payoff. The ability to type well is empowering. Good typing skills means more than just being a fast typist. Accuracy is essential.

For home school teachers who want to help their children become faster and better on a keyboard, there are plenty of software programs that can assist. Do a little research first, though. Make sure it's compatible with your operating system. And, if available, read reviews of others' experiences, especially with tech support if a complication should come up. There are also free online tutorials that don't require a download.

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Some of the information on this blog post was excerpted from my book Writing Exercises: How to Teach Writing and Prepare Your Favorite Students for College, Life and Everything Else. Writing Exercises was written to help homeschoolers teach the important skill of writing. The books is $7.95 and I promise that any homeschool parent who applies its principles will see improvement in their children's writing skills.

Meantime... life goes on. Have a great weekend and stay warm.

Are Typing Skills Really Necessary?

One of the projects I’ve been working on this past year is a book about the experiences of a man named Ralph who grew up in Estonia and experienced the tragic repercussions of World War II. We used to get together and listen to classical music as he told these incredible stories that I eventually turned into an unproduced Hollywood screenplay. He had become a cripple by falling off a fencepost when he was three so that he had a withered leg, but an ambitious heart. Because he was unable to be active like his peers while growing up he developed a fondness for libraries and also claimed to be the second fastest typist in Estonia. I can’t verify this last claim but I can assure you that his story is remarkable.

The first story Ralph enticed me with was about how learning other languages saved his life. Ultimately he had numerous scrapes with death in his efforts to escape the crippling effects of life behind the Iron Curtain. A rough draft of my novella-length book, titled Uprooted, is currently on the back burner behind a few other projects. The alternate title that I toyed with carries the intrigue of his claim to have been The Second Fastest Typist in Estonia.

I mention all this because I wanted to write briefly about typing. It’s a new world and typing is no longer a non-essential skill. It’s the 21st century, friends. We’re way past the dawn of the age of communications. With a billion people on Facebook and all of academia pushing students to online discourse, the development of typing skills is nearly as essential as breathing.

There was a time when even literacy was not a necessary survival skill. In the developed world today reading and writing skills are assumed, and when job-seekers read want ads many of these will outline even the software programs that are now a requirement for these openings.

I recently heard someone say that with the advent of voice recognition software typing will become a thing of the past. I'm willing to wager that this won't happen in my lifetime, and it won't happen in your children's either. In a country where we have difficulty even feeding a large swath of the population it is hard to imagine there that everyone will own computers with voice-recognition software.

It takes time to learn how to type well, but there's a payoff in having this skill. Just as the ability to write well is empowering so, too, is the ability to type well. Typing well is more than just being a fast typist. The essential thing is accuracy.

For home school teachers who want to help their children become faster and better on a keyboard there are plenty of software programs out there that can assist. Do a little research first though. Make sure it's compatible with your operating system. And, if available, read reviews of others' experiences, especially with tech support if there's a complication.

I myself am grateful that my mom had me take that typing class in high school. As a grad present I received my first typewriter, which proved invaluable when I attended college. I love the QWERTY keyboard.

Write on.