Typing Tips and Tricks

As we mentioned in a previous post, it’s true that setting a goal is an important first step. But goal setting is easy. Just think how many times you have said, “I want to quit smoking” or “I want to lose weight” or “I want a better paying job.” These are all goals that people set. Defining a goal, whether it is quitting smoking or losing weight or something else, is the first step in reaching that goal. The problem is this: that’s as far as most people get. And when they don’t back up their words with actions, they continually fail to meet their goals. Once you have set a goal, there are three things you need in order to actually achieve that goal. #1: Commitment In order to reach your goals, you need commitment. In addition, you also need to be confident that you are committed to working towards achieving your goal. When you feel a strong commitment towards achieving your goal, it is much easier to make necessary sacrifices, overcome obstacles, effectively deal with conflict, and devote yourself to the effort. Achieving your touch typing goal, whether it is speed or accuracy or both, most likely will require certain sacrifices. You’ll need time to practice, and if your schedule is already full, you will need to decide what you will sacrifice, temporarily, in order to free up time to practice. Your actions must display a commitment to being ready and willing to make those sacrifices, whatever they…

Whether you’re starting at the very beginning or just re-training yourself to touch type, you’ll eventually complete all the beginner level exercises available. Once you’re satisfied with what you have accomplished, you can move on to advanced courses where you can focus on activities designed to build upon the basics and help you improve both your touch typing speed and accuracy. Once your basic training is complete, your fingers know where they’re supposed to be positioned on the home row, and you can type all of the required letters in words and sentences – including punctuation – using the proper fingers, and you rarely need to peek at the keyboard to locate the keys you need. With that basic skill set, you can turn to working on building touch typing speed and touch typing accuracy. You’ll be happy to know that Typesy offers focused instruction in specific advanced skill building areas. Included in the advanced course are specially designed “fast typing tonics” for working with the regular keyboard, the numeric keypad, and more. Typesy’s Fast Typing Tonics are designed as quick refresher courses that take fifteen minutes or less to complete so you can work on them whenever you have spare time. Typesy also offers an advanced free study section. This lets you select from a number of activities and games, and allows you to select the text that you would like to practice with. The types of practice text you can choose from include drills, stories, and other types…

Anyone who has ever achieved a goal knows that setting a goal is the first step in reaching that goal. That’s because a goal really is nothing more than a desired result. Some people like to compare a goal to a destination on a map. It defines where they want to eventually end up. A goal gives them direction and something to look forward to. Knowing exactly what your goals are makes it easier to define all of the smaller steps you need to take to achieve those goals, or desired results. In keeping with the map analogy, you could compare these smaller steps to the different roads you must travel in order to reach your ultimate destination. Most business owners would never attempt to open their doors without clearly defining both short-term and long-term goals. The ones that fail to do this – whether because of a lack of time or a lack of goal-setting knowledge – are usually the ones that fail. But the businesses that set short-term and long-term goals – and know what’s needed to accomplish those goals – will always be in a much better position to succeed. The same is true with personal goals. It all sounds so easy and so obvious, doesn’t it? But you would be amazed by the number of people who don’t know what it takes to achieve their goals and, as a result, never realize their business, career, or personal dreams. The simple act of going through the process…

Whether you’ve come to Typesy to upgrade typing skills you learned long ago in school (yes, typing was once taught in school) or whether you’re a new typist who wants to start out on the right foot (or should that be “hand”?), you need to know that there’s more to learn than just the layout of the letters on the keyboard. To be an excellent touch typist, you’ll also need to learn the proper layout of sentences and paragraphs, especially if you’re doing transcription or dictation rather than typing out something that has already been formatted. And as you’ll know if you’re an “old school” typist – someone who learned to type on a typewriter – the rules of format and layout have changed with the use of computers. With a computer, you can create tables and complex formatting that would have been impossible (or would have taken a long, long time) on a typewriter. On the other hand, some rules have stayed the same; for example, we still capitalize the first letter of the first word of a sentence. However, some rules have changed, and not everyone knows that. One of the most disputed rules of formatting is whether to use one or two spaces after a period. You need to have some space between sentences, otherwise the text is hard to read. But like other formatting issues, how you create this space has changed since the first days of typing. Here’s why you need to use one space…