Touch typing is a skill that anyone can use. Whether you’re looking for an edge over your competition – like when you’re applying for entry level positions or you’re ready to climb the career ladder – or simply wishing to be more efficient on the computer in general, the ability to touch type quickly and accurately can help you get the most out of your keyboard time.

But do you already have the ability to touch type? Assessing your touch typing skills really isn’t that difficult. In fact, the assessment basically comes down to whether you answer “yes” or “no” to one important question: Can you touch type already?

Keep in mind that in order to type, your fingertips must “touch” certain keys. But the simple act of “touching” specific keys is not what touch typing is all about. Touch typing is really about the way you touch those keys. That’s because touch typing relies on memory, and the ability to type the correct letters in the correct order using the correct symbols, numbers and/or punctuation – without the need to actually look at the keyboard in order to locate the desired keys.

When you know how to touch type, you don’t need to look. Your fingers will know where to go to find the correct letters, numbers and symbols because you’ve properly trained them to recall the correct keyboard location from memory. You’re a touch typist if your answer to this question is “yes”:

Can you type the correct letters in the correct order using the correct symbols, numbers and/or punctuation – without ever looking at the keyboard?

If you cannot touch type, start at the beginning with the simplest finger/key exercises. In fact, if you ever look at the keyboard, it’s a good idea to review the basics before trying to work on speed.

As your touch typing skills improve, you will be ready to progress to more advanced exercises. That’s one of the nice features of Typesy: it lets you work at your own pace. You can start and end each set of exercises whenever you want. Just keep in mind that the more you practice, the more your touch typing skills will improve.

Touch typing is an important skill, but for many people the term “touch typing” causes some confusion. It’s true that in order to type – whether on a typewriter or on a computer keyboard – your fingertips must “touch” certain keys. Doing so is how you produce the desired words, or proper combination of words, numbers, and/or symbols. A lot of people believe that this simple act of “touching” specific keys is what touch typing is all about.

It’s true that touch typing does involve touching. But to a greater degree, touch typing involves memory. You see, touch typing is the ability to type the correct letters in the correct order using the correct symbols, numbers and/or punctuation – without the need to actually look at the keyboard in order to locate the desired keys.

When you know how to touch type, you don’t need to look back and forth between the keyboard and the screen. Your fingers will know where to go to find the correct letters, numbers and symbols because you’ve trained them to recall the location of those keys on the keyboard from memory.

Please note that if you resemble the character Schroeder from the comic strip Peanuts while typing, you are not touch typing. Schroeder is the young boy who’s usually shown sitting hunched over his piano and using only his two index fingers to strike the different musical notes that correspond to whatever song he’s playing, which is typically something by Beethoven.

We know people who type like this, and you probably do, too. Some of these people can two-finger type quickly and with a great degree of accuracy. Regardless of their speed or their accuracy though, these individuals still rely heavily on their sight to locate the desired keys. Although glancing at the keyboard takes little more than a split second, using anything other than the touch typing method while typing can have a tremendous impact on your typing speed. That’s because all those seemingly unimportant split second glances can add up to several minutes or more by the time you finish typing. Even if you have to type for just a little bit every day, those wasted minutes can result in a significant loss of time out of your work week. That’s why learning to touch type using the Typesy system will save you time and effort for years to come.

While it’s true that nearly every job requires some typing these days – since nearly every job includes the use of a computer in some way – the amount of typing that you need to do varies from job to job. Being able to type quickly and accurately is a skill that will help you in any field, but some jobs absolutely require top typing skills. Here are five jobs that you’ll be able to apply for after using the Typesy system to improve your typing speed.

Captioning. The “closed caption” subtitles you seen on television, as well as subtitles for movies and other video presentations, are generally done by typists. Sometimes they’re done in real time mode, while other captioning jobs are project-based and done in advance.

Medical Transcription. You’ll need a good ear and a good command of medical terminology, but the advantage of this field is that it can often be done at home, whether that’s full time or part time. The health field is a good and stable area to work, and because detailed notes need to be kept in each patient’s chart (and because the doctors and nurses don’t have time to write these notes themselves), there are thousands of pieces of medical dictation that need to be transcribed every day.

Data Entry/Data Processing. Whether you’re entering catalog orders into forms or keeping a database updated, you’re providing the key link between customers and corporations when you’re doing data entry. Speed is important in this job, but what’s most important is accuracy. Mistakes cost money, and a good typist can save the company thousands of dollars every quarter.

Customer Service. A 1-800 number will get you to the customer service department, but a lot of businesses have realized that it’s usually quicker and faster to have online customer service available. Because you’re in real-time mode representing your employer, you need to make sure that you don’t make any typing errors. A professional and polished customer representative is a valuable employee, and accurate typing is definitely part of the required skill set.

Legal Secretary. Another field where accuracy is crucial is legal services. Your typing abilities will help you keep up with the huge amount of paperwork involved in any legal proceeding, and ensure that the lawyers and judges using those documents have the information they need to see that justice is served.

Back in the 1870s as the Industrial Revolution started to evolve into the Information Revolution and modern technological society needed more and faster ways of getting text and documents from one place to another, the first typewriters came into use in offices in the United States and Europe. The advantages of using a typewriter were significant: people didn’t have to worry about bad handwriting causing mistakes in orders or accounts, secretaries could learn to type much faster than they could write by hand, and business letters could all have the same professional look. The disadvantages of those early machines included typebars that would get stuck together or ink ribbons that would jam or go dry, and – before the correction tape and backspace key came onto the scene – it wasn’t very easy to go back and correct your mistakes. A typo at the bottom of one otherwise perfect page might mean that you’d have to re-type the entire thing from the top.

Electric typewriters started appearing over the next few decades, but it wasn’t until the 1960s and the famous IBM Selectric that the electric typewriter really took off. This machine replaced the typebars (with one or two letters or symbols at the end of each narrow metal striking arm) with something called an element which had all of the letters and symbols on one easy-to-replace ball. Now offices could not only have professional quality letters, they could also easily change from one font to another just by switching between elements. However, most offices just used two or three different fonts, including the standard Courier (monospace) and Ariel (proportional). Built-in correction tape allowed for easy erasing of mistakes, and every office worker had a bottle of white correction fluid in their desk to brush out any errors they found later.

Even after computers became standard in the office, they were often used just like typewriters. In some cases, the computer programs themselves weren’t advanced enough to provide anything but simply another way of typing a document. In other instances, the people using the computers didn’t know all that they could do. However, as more and more people grew up in a world where computers were more common than typewriters, those older machines started only being used for things like pre-printed legal forms. These days, it’s the people who were trained on computers who can’t figure out how a typewriter works!

Many messages go out today over smartphones that don’t have standard keyboards, or the keyboards are much too small for normal typing. Often these text message systems have an “auto-complete” option that means you don’t even have to type all of the letters in the word before it displays. While this saves time, there are drawbacks that go beyond the humorous “autocorrect” errors we’re all familiar with: touch typing techniques aren’t used, spelling rules are forgotten, and speed is more valuable than content.

Will keyboards are eliminated entirely one day? There are already voice-recognition software applications that translate your spoken words directly into text. Perhaps the next step will be to wire our brains straight into a worldwide communication network and eliminate the need for text documents altogether. Until that day arrives, though, keep practicing your touch typing skills!