The acquisition of typewriting skill

Digitizing Literacy: Reflections on the Haptics of Writing

“…In typing, letter appearance is immediate and the mean time between the two touches is about 100 ms (in experts). (Gentner, 1983) Moreover handwriting takes place in a very limited space, literally, at the endpoint of the pen, where ink flows out of the pen. The attention of the writer is concentrated onto this particular point in space and time.…”

“…This relationship has to be learnt during childhood and it can deteriorate due to cerebral damage, or simply with age. On the other hand, typing is a complex form of spatial learning in which the beginner has to build a "keypress schema" transforming the visual form of each character into the position of a given key in keyboard centered coordinates, and specify the movement required to reach this location (Gentner, 1983;Logan, 1999). Therefore, learning how to type also creates an association between a pointing movement and a character.…”

Review: Smart, Graham (2006). Writing the Economy: Activity, Genre, and Technology in the World of Banking. London: Equinox Publishing

“…Here, it was shown (e.g. Gentner, 1983; see already Coover, 1923) that the interstroke intervals of very skilled typists were limited by biomechanical constraints, in part effective because of the particular layout of standardized keyboards. (Note that our common keyboards reflect universal, but not ideal solutions for typing at maximum speed.)…”

“…Table 4 shows the descriptive analyses for the second task, copying a coherent text. Transition times within words are again rather fast, but clearly longer than those of professional typists, who can reach interstroke intervals of about 100 milliseconds (Gentner, 1983). The huge differences in pausing times may reflect different strategies in taking over text portions from the original.…”

“…Moreover, by means of carbon paper it was possible to produce a (small) number of copies from one typing act, already before photo-copying became prevalent. In those times, however, it was more typical than today for students either to take special touch-typing training (Gentner, 1983), or to have typists copy handwritten manuscripts for them. (Remember the thousands of books and theses with forewords in which authors thank their spouses for typing their manuscripts.)…”