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Re:Typing 118 WPM Broke My Brain in the Right Ways by dylan604 on Monday June 02, 2025 @05:01PM (#44163000)
I don't even come close to groking how one types without home row hand placement. How does that even work? Where are your hands if not starting at home row?
Re:Typing 118 WPM Broke My Brain in the Right Ways by n42 on Monday June 02, 2025 @05:05PM (#44163028)
I’m not sure if this how other people do it but my hands sort of float around as I type rather than being fixed in one place. They gravitate towards home row but I was never trained “classically”. I type (peak) 140wpm.

my understanding of the homerow style is that you have a sort of assigned finger for each key. while I type, there is plenty of overlap between fingers and it's constantly adapting based on where my hands are currently vs resetting to one position

Re:Typing 118 WPM Broke My Brain in the Right Ways by rconti on Monday June 02, 2025 @06:49PM (#44164100)
I'd never say I'm a classic home-rower, but I do use it as a starting point. My left hand mostly conforms, but I really only use my thumb and first two fingers on my right hand, so i get what you're saying about your hand moving all around.

And, yeah, 120-150wpm. I wonder if "kids these days" don't type as fast because they didn't grow up with IRC and AIM and so on. Of course, they're way faster with their thumbs than I am. My phone typing started bad and gets worse every year (somehow).

Re:Typing 118 WPM Broke My Brain in the Right Ways by averageRoyalty on Wednesday June 04, 2025 @12:45AM (#44177302)
Well said. I also "float", had no formal training and peak around 140-150wpm.
Re:Typing 118 WPM Broke My Brain in the Right Ways by Macha on Monday June 02, 2025 @07:40PM (#44164567)
My left hand is on WASD which I suppose you could call home row and my right hand sits at <space>KL;<rshift>

So it's not too far from home row but definitely something more influenced by my gamer days than any formal typing lessons. Just tried a web based wpm test and got 90WPM at 95% accuracy. Used to be around 120WPM in my college days where I typed more essays, but these days typing speed isn't close to the bottleneck so not much need for faster typing and I guess it's atrophied some.

Re:Typing 118 WPM Broke My Brain in the Right Ways by 83457 on Monday June 02, 2025 @11:22PM (#44165958)
I have a coworker with the wasd left hand. He ends up in this weird claw grip typing style. lol
Re:Typing 118 WPM Broke My Brain in the Right Ways by jchw on Monday June 02, 2025 @05:37PM (#44163344)
The best answer to this is literally "I don't know." I can actually observe what my hand does and give you an answer, but the truth is that I don't conciously make a choice. I do rely on the bumps on f and j to align my fingers initially, and I know I make use of keys with different shapes as landmarks. Otherwise though it just kind of floats around. I would guess it looks a bit like playing a musical instrument (but I don't play any, so hell if I know.)
Re:Typing 118 WPM Broke My Brain in the Right Ways by squigz on Monday June 02, 2025 @05:05PM (#44163031)
Home row is a reference, and once you get used to where your hands are relative to that reference point, it's pretty easy to hit the other keys. This can of course be a reference other than home row, like GP - although I think home row is simply the most logical place for it to be.
Re:Typing 118 WPM Broke My Brain in the Right Ways by rascul on Monday June 02, 2025 @09:32PM (#44165339)
My hands float around and don't really have any rules except left hand for left side and right hand for right side, where the sides are loosely defined. Some keys I may hit with one finger just to hit it with a different finger on the other hand the next word. I don't really know how I do it, I guess it's all about using whatever finger is closest and my hands float around so that the closest finger isn't always the same. I don't need the ridges on the keys, if I can find the space bar I can find every key. I also rarely use my right pinky finger except to hit Enter, it's usually too slow for anything else. I learned to type playing PK MUD games and I was up to 130-140 WPM. Nowadays I don't play MUD games very much and I'm usually around 110 WPM when I check. Also, I need a specific layout or else I'll miss a lot. Laptops don't generally have the layout I need and I'm very bad on them.