Learning how to touch-type in the 1970s

My student Malena wrote an amusing text about not knowing how to touch-type: she typed it without looking and left it uncorrected. I thought I'd already written 111 words on how I learned to type, but I haven't. When I was in eighth grade in 1977-78, my mother insisted I take typing class. Reluctantly, I did so—and even enjoyed it, as a kind of problem-solving exercise and an activity with measurable progress (how many words per minute?). When I went to college in 1982, I thanked my mother, because I was one of the only young men in my dorm who could type, while almost all the young women could. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 5 April 2025)