How did you learn to type?

Wondering about how most SPers did it.~

Me: I was computer-literate before my parents, so I had to teach myself how to type. I don't type "correctly", but close enough. When I did take a computers class, though, I had been so accustomed to my method that I stuck with it. :l

Mostly self-taught. Took a couple computer-related classes in middle school and I did fine. Then I took the (required) keyboarding class in 6th 9th grade and showed everyone my pro-1337 skillz (and improved as well).

EDIT: I just realized I was mistaken in a couple of my details.

We had some kind of typing in primary school, which is when I started typing with all my fingers instead of two. By sixth grade keyboarding I already knew how to type.

But all that didn't matter because I retaught myself everything I need a couple of years ago.

I self taught. Lol I started with computers playing Doom with an Online community for it with my real life friends and I had to search and press keys, but after playing Doom for about a half of ayear, I learned the entire keyboard by heart. 6 years later, I can now type pretty fast, as many people tell me. ._.

Elementary school. Room full of Macs for '00-'02 ish by the Library. We had to do it. xP I don't even remember what my scores were.... D: Were we measured in words per minute, or characters... I forgot. xP
Just remember "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" over... and over... and over... again. 30 wpm, if I had to guess.
The 5 or so years of practice I've had on the Internet have helped me change that 30 or so wpm to 60-70, depending on what I type/how hyper I am. Even 75 is horrible for internet standards though... I really should work on improving.

In middle school, I used some software to try to learn but I kinda stopped that after a while, although I wasn't very good. Then I just developed my typing speed over the years. Afterwards, I ended up actually taking a class where I had to learn how to type, although I already knew how to type well at that point. (It was required in high school...I somehow managed to get denied from taking anything involving a computer until my senior year. >_>) I average somewhere around 100-105 WPM with 100% accuracy right now.

>Look at keyboard.
>Press buttons.
>Eventually memorize buttons.

I got my first computer in 1999. I've been on one ever since.

When I was a kid and first saw a keyboard, I went "hey...the letters arent in order", so I took all the letters off and put them back on in alphabetical order and showed my mom. She got mad.

As for where I learned to type, it was at school in grade 2 where they made you play games that taught you to type home row.

I learned of the concept of typing on our old Commodore 64 and Amiga 500. We also had a couple of old typewriters hanging around the place as well which my parents still used at the time, so I was exposed to typing from a very early age. Pretty sure I still don't do it "right" though, even now.

There were all sorts of typing games that we had in 5th through 8th grade, but since they were all game-based, they all really sucked. It wasn't until I took an actual keyboarding class with a real, not-game keyboarding program that I really learned to type.

When I was a kid and first saw a keyboard, I went "hey...the letters arent in order", so I took all the letters off and put them back on in alphabetical order and showed my mom. She got mad.

That is the greatest thing ever.

Typing Challenge or whatever the hell the 3rd-5th grade typing program was they made us do. If any Americans know what I'm talking about you'll remember it as that one program where you could fly to various planets in our solar system by passing certain typing challenges.

Did it help? No. When you were deemed "good enough," they "upped the challenge" by placing a cardboard visor over your hands so you couldn't look at the keyboard. Which meant I f[ucked up all the time. Plus there was a glitch in the program where you could lag it, then type the whole sentence as slow as you wanted, un-lag it, and have it count as a super fast score. Lol elementary school glitching.

But the real way I learned how to type, and I think is the case for many: AOL Instant Messenger.

EDIT: Fun-fact to go along with Retalion's story: The first commercial keyboards were designed in alphabetical order, but the design was quickly changed to the modern QWERTY format when people became such fast typists that companies wanted to slow them down. Clearly that didn't work.

My elementary school offered a computer class from K-8. I had no prior knowledge of typing, and by grade 5 or 6 (around the time I started to play RuneScape and really use the internet regularly) I was easily typing around 100 WPM. My highest is 120 when I'm actually trying for speed.

Mostly self taught. I used to always do chicken pecking for my typing, then I started playing an MUD game called Legend of the Green Dragon, and that started me typing more because I would talk with others on there. Eventually it just grew to be second nature.

I started using computers at the age of like 12. I realized I i 8 typin lik dis. So, I just practiced and got really good. Now I type like, 45-60 GWAM. :/

In elementary we did a 30 minute typing thing for quite a while, with some spaceship man and we were typing in a spaceship....
Yeah....

Internet... no really

Well, my parents got me a ton on learn to type thingies, but they never really worked for me. All i did was look at the basic position, throw the programs away, and form then on, try to type like that instead of hunt and peck. It went surprisingly well, in a week or so I could type faster than my parents.

I just basically typed stuff and memorized the keys....like 4th grade? I was slow as hell, though. My typing speed zipped up to the 1xx when I started playing....Maplestory.

Forums. I started typing to online communities at the age of 13. I had to learn by myself. I poked then. I now learned to type properly. I still poke. Actually, with my 'poking' index fingers, I can go up to 120+ wpm. With properly using both hands, I can only go around ... 80-100, it's strange. I'm more accustomed to doing it my own way.

Between first and eighth grade, there had to be at least 4 years where learning to type was part of computer class. Sometimes it was done with a program, sometimes with just the teacher calling out keys while we typed in Wordpad. "a. s. d. f. j. k. l. semi-colon. return."