Re: Qwerty and Dvorak touch-typing.

["Michael Edwards" mje@xxxxxxxx]

                         Michael Edwards.

[Resent because the original got lost some hours ago.]

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[Walter Jowers:]

>As a guy who's quite a good qwerty touch-typist, I'd venture a guess that
>the training it would take to overwrite 30 years of muscle memory would more
>than offset the fractions of seconds I'd save by going Dvorak.
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   Well, it's not quite that bad for me: I've been typing only for about 12
years, and I essentially learned the basics in a week, from a standard typing
book. I decided to try to learn it quickly, and spend many hours each day
learning, to see if I could pick up the basics in a week or so, and that seemed
to work. I wasn't fast or accurate, but I essentially knew it all after that
week, and speed and accuracy came with further typing in subsequent months.
   I suppose I could do it again with the Dvorak keyboard - I'm just a bit
worried about whether I'd lose the qwerty skill, which I don't want to.

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>Also, there's this: There will be times, I'm sure, when I'll need to sit
>down at somebody else's qwerty keyboard and just get something done. I'm
>afraid if I tried it with a brainful of Dvorak re-training, my head would
>explode like that guy in Scanners.
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   Yes, that's exactly what I was afraid of.
   Well, I've already had two opinions which tend to go opposite ways. Maybe
I'll just have to try it, and abandon it if I start getting the idea that it's
going to cause trouble.
   I would imagine that it's not at all like trying to learn two languages
(which plenty of people do), because languages differ from each other far more
than do two different keyboards. I suppose it would be more like knowing two
different kinds of shorthand - and I don't know if anyone has ever mastered and
retained two different shorthands.

             Regards,
             Michael Edwards.