[aomagrat]

Typing was the most useful course I took in High School. I learned on a Royal manual typewriter with blank keys that must have weighed 20 pounds.

[LibWhacker]

I would never, ever, ever have taken a typing class in high school. Typing was for girls. Then I dropped out. A year later I returned and since I needed a few more credits to graduate, and one of the courses could be a throwaway, I signed up for ... typing!

It wasn’t as easy as I thought; I was so ham-fisted I only got up to 40 wpm in one semester. Later, when I was in the Army, they made me a clerk typist and made me practice endless hours every day for an additional four or five weeks. I only got up to 55 wpm at my speediest, and if I didn’t type a lot every day, I’d start slipping back down into the 40s. But it was good enough for government work and I’ve never regretted “knowing how to type” for a minute since (especially after they came out with home computers!).

It was interesting what they said in this article about “rollover” typing. I’d never heard of it. I’m too old of a dog to be taught new tricks, and it sounds way too complicated anyway. They only taught touch typing to us back in the day. That’s what I know and I’m sticking to it. But if I were a young whippersnapper, I’d give it a try because it sounds like it’s the way to go if you want to type at a respectable speed.

[Do the math]

I agree, learning to type in highschool was a useful skill that I use every day. My teacher told us to get to 60 words per minute, and we would get an A and we would be finished for the quarter. I practiced every day over and over again until I was typing at 60 wpm. It took me 3 weeks, then I spent the rest of the quarter doing other homework and reading sci-fi books.

Youth is wasted on the young!