New to the Colemak world, but still trying! - Experiences

ping111
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From: Canada
Registered: 05-Apr-2013
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05-Apr-2013 15:20:57#1 New to the Colemak world, but still trying!

Hi there!
I'm TFNG, having only been using Colemak for two weeks (and still nowhere near done - I just finished the home row at about 20 wpm), but hey.

Also, I am ashamed to say that this entire post has been written in QWERTY, for the sheer sake of time.

I've been a life-long QWERTY user, unfortunately, and it's been quite deeply rooted in my brain. I don't use textbook postures (my right hand dominates more than half of the board, and I rarely use my ring or pinky fingers.) I can type 75-85 words a minute, which is about 3x as fast as any student in my school. I believe there are one or two teachers who can still catch up to me, though. After going all-out in a 5-hour typing session, my aching wrists told me that I needed to get away from these awful mushy keys (I'm getting my first mechanical keyboard today), and that QWERTY had to go.

I installed Colemak on my Mac (Colemac?) almost half a year ago, but after getting frustrated with only being able to spell "sisters" over and over, I left it until about two weeks ago. I got a more refined training program (Master Key), and have practiced for about half an hour every day. Master Key judges your mastery of the lesson being taught on 3 points - speed (your WPM must be over a certain point, ranging from 10 to 45 wpm), accuracy (how many typos you leave and don't correct - must be over 90%), and another thing, of which I forget the name (how many typos you make - must be under 5%). I hate that last thing to death, because I'm always hovering just under that 5%. I never worry too much about the other two, because so far I'm just typing "tt nn tn tn tn ao ao ooa ooo" for the first half of the lesson, so I can boost my wpm up so that it won't decay when I get into actual words. The two longest words I can type efficiently are "Tennessee" and "states".

I know that eventually it'll iron out of my brain, but the one key I have the most issues with is R. My left ring finger is by far my weakest finger, and occasionally when I type, it just randomly flexes and hits an R. It's not a muscle spasm as much as it is my brain, but are there any tips for making sure I don't press R when I don't mean to, but I would still be able to hit it quickly without stopping for a second or two to make sure I press the right key?

Well, that's my first post on this forum, and I look forward to meeting you all!

Cheers!
~ping111

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pafkata90
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From: Sofia, Bulgaria
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05-Apr-2013 16:04:22#2 Re: New to the Colemak world, but still trying!

Welcome to the forum and Colemak!

Your problems are quite common for first comers to touch typing. The only solution is more practice. Your weak fingers will gain the needed strength and your brain will stop consciously thinking of the location of the letters. But that comes with time, as you would imagine, so just keep up practising and you'll get there.

Given the fact that you'll be touch typing Colemak and typing Qwerty with your old technique, I assume it won't be that difficult to maintain both for some time, at least compared to if you touch typed Qwerty as well.

Also it's good that your software is focusing on accuracy. That's getting more and more important as you raise the WPM stairs :P . You might be struggling with it until you learn the whole keyboard and then it should start raising and you can keep the overall accuracy in the high 90s.

Hi-games profile: http://hi-games.net/profile/4663
TypeRacer profile: http://data.typeracer.com/pit/profile?user=patcm

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Tony_VN
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06-Apr-2013 12:37:45#3 Re: New to the Colemak world, but still trying!

I agree with paftaka90. Accuracy is the keyword. You should not move to the next keys before reach 95-98% accuracy with the learned keys.

R-S confusion is common with newcomers like you. It happens to us all. It will be diminished after a few weeks of practice.

So keep on practising and focus on better accuracy instead of speed. The speed will increase on its own accord.

My fastest typing records http://hi-games.net/profile/4314
My switching experience https://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?id=970

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UltraZelda64
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From: Ohio, U.S.
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07-Apr-2013 21:09:18#4 Re: New to the Colemak world, but still trying!

ping111 said:

Also, I am ashamed to say that this entire post has been written in QWERTY, for the sheer sake of time.

There's no need to be ashamed of that. As long as you do put some time out of the day towards practice, it'll still count. I was able to switch cold turkey to Dvorak, but the reality is most people would be unable to switch to any layout in such a way. Sometimes it's just not practical to go all the way without looking back... at the very beginning, even I had a tendency to do some things in QWERTY... for example, some more complex things that I had to put extra thought into aside from the typing, and things that needed to be done much faster or in real-time (instant messages, text messages).

My background is similar to yours and probably many other people's: [Former] Life-long QWERTY user with a few "personal" touches, shortcuts and bad habits in the way I type. The major difference is that I have learned the proper touch-typing technique way back in high school, so it was mostly a matter of re-training my muscle memory. This is approximately the fourth month on Dvorak, and my speed is very close to where it was on QWERTY. With Colemak being so similar to QWERTY in the first place compared to Dvorak, you'll probably have a much easier time than I did switching to your layout than I did mine.

Interestingly, I can type in Colemak (still quite slowly; admittedly things have been ruining my plans to practice it), but what's interesting is that while trying to type with Colemak, I often have to remind myself that the S key is one place over. I haven't really touched QWERTY for the most part since I started on Dvorak... but it just goes to show, old habits die hard.

Last edited by UltraZelda64 (08-Apr-2013 08:44:10)

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