How many fingers do you use to type? At the moment I've got my own "system" using about 5-6 fingers, and I think I'm reasonably fast with it. However, I'm curious if I could type faster with ten fingers, especially because I have to look at the keyboard when using my current system. Does someone of you use ten fingers? How long did it take to learn it?

Well.. to use a keyboard, you first plug it into the computer, then you place your fingers on the letters and press down.


I usually use about 4~5 fingers, and am reasonably fast that way. I can type so~so without looking at the keys, but generally need to be looking at the keyboard. I used to be purely hunt&peck, but have gotten much better simply through daily use.

I'm using exactly nine fingers to type: All the ones I have but the smallest one of the left hand which rests safely next to the left shift key. Don't ask how it came to that. I once actually tried to learn how to type the 'right way', but switched back to my own system again.

Anyway, according to this test, I did 256 keys per minute (~ 51 words per minute) and made one single mistake which I'm pretty satisfied with. No, I'm not looking at the keyboard, but at the screen when typing.

Edited by Mr Creosote at 18:57 on April, 25th 2005

It depends on what I type. If I'm typing a text, I usually use about 4-6 fingers, and besides I can't spell I don't make to much mistakes.

But when I'm programming, I use more fingers and type a lot faster (once I figuer out what I need to type in the first place) as I know the syntax rather well.

But I usually go for shortcut keys and I can keep up with people that type with 10 fingers but don't use shortcut keys.

I use about 7-8 fingers but don't type particularly quick when copying stuff since I have to look at the keys while typing, too. I tried learning the 'correct' method once but it was just too unnatural for me.

I always use my 10 fingers when I'm typing. I can do 80 words/minutes without even a sweat tough I always make a lot of mistakes that way. Not that I care about mistakes either, the backspace key is there for that.

When I am copying a text I usually do very little mistake and I am able to type it very quickly.

I use all fingers for typing on this keyboard, except for my right pinky, as it rests of the colon key when I type. On 'tests' if I really hunker down and concentrate I can sometimes pull 140 wpm with a mistake ~every other sentence. My normal speed is about 40 wpm. Currently though I'm all messed up as I've been going from windows keyboards to Sun keyboards regularly... enough difference to mess me up.

How much time did you spend learning until you were able to type at a reasonable speed with ten/nine fingers? At the moment I can hardly imagine that I will ever match my current speed with ten fingers. I probably will, but frankly I don't have enough patience to spend months with it.

It certainly helped that I've used things with keyboards since I was little (Odyssey 2!!) but we had a whole year of typing classes in school when we were about 10. They had this hull they'd put over your hands so you couldn't see your hands while you typed.

Edited by Tuss at 02:04 on April, 28th 2005

Got a class in this in Secondary school. In practice it took a year but in reality I was able to write very fast only after one or two months.

You could very well grab a program to learn how to type and learn it yourself in a very short time. It's far from hard to learn.