If by 'follow any standard typing style, which most Colemak user do', you mean to imply that most Colemak users touch type "by the book" I think you may be wrong. All the best Colemak typists I've heard from at least, have advocated some alternative fingering tips (even if the main pages seem to say that you won't need such tricks with Colemak IIRC?).

The first one you should learn is probably the 'nk' digraph: When typing 'think' I'll invariably avoid the same-finger digraph by slightly sliding inwards. I think that's the kind of thing Sean does except he probably does it a lot more than me! :)

I think that Sean means replacing Shift totally with Capslock.

Type "Colemak" = Caps-c-Caps-olemak. Type ENTER = Caps-enter-Caps.

Since Capslock is typed handily with left pinky you won't have to move much.

The benefit of using caps lock is that you can avoid simultaneous key presses, just like when using sticky keys.  I think this feels more relaxed on the hands, and allows hand realignment (I hate using modifiers - never know if this is the right expression - in my old age.)

A month or so back I started to use sticky keys on my laptop and it felt pretty liberating.  I'm not sure if you'd be able to use that type assist feature though in a championship!

Using caps lock to uppercase a letter requires three sequential key presses.  And a downside about caps lock, is that it doesn't behave like shift, in as much as having caps lock on and typing the number 7 will not get you an ampersand (uk layout).

Sticky keys require two sequential key presses for an uppercase letter rather than two simultaneous key presses, and behave more as you'd expect.

On the mac (OSX10.4) two taps of the shift key results in the shift key being depressed (virtually), until you tap it again.  Which is kind of like the caps lock behaviour.  You can also turn on visual notifiers for sticky keys which I find a help.

I had to disable Gnome's accessibility daemon on Linux, to get sticky keys working as expected as it kept asking me whether I wanted to turn it back off.

The caps lock is a much neglected key.  I'd certainly suggest that noobs use either sticky keys or the caps lock to toggle between uppercase, it's less of an awkward manoeuvre.

Hey! A celebrity! ...oh hell, when WAS the last time I cleaned this place? Do pardon the mess. Um... have a seat... wait no, let me get that for you. I'm afraid we don't have anything to drink, but we do have cookies...?

I see what you mean now about using the capslock. I never really gave it much thought to the implications of typing at 200 wpm (heck, sometimes I doubt I even think at 200 wpm). 200 wpm is, what, around 17 keystrokes per second? If you are going that fast, what is an extra key or two. Or five. Right?

Anyway, I was thinking about your comments about typing with whatever finger is most comfortable and positioning fingers based on upcoming text. That sounds somewhat like what I might do when forced to type one handed. Most efficient fingering with the least amount of movement, disregarding the home position. That is what I consider advanced float. Strategic typing, if you will. The thing is, it isn't something I could do with two hands. Or without glancing at the board and generally spending more time planning my next keystroke than my next word. Home position is a little too ingrained in the system. So, I got to thinking that maybe training each hand to float over the whole board individually, then combining them might get similar results to your system. If you don't mind me asking, as a point of comparison, I was wondering if you know the speed you type with a single hand?

Final question, if I remember correctly, on the site provided by Tony_VN you say you set most of your online records with a Das Keyboard (mechanical), but are currently using a Logitech Illuminated (scissor). Again, if you don't mind me asking, any reason?

Well, 200 wpm is not my average.  174 wpm is clearly my overall average (since my TypeRacer career average on arenasnow2, my non-race-selection account, my 50-minute hi-games.net score, and my nitrotype.com average all converge there), but that would still be 14.5 characters per second.

I have never tried to assess my ability with one hand before, but I do know that I'm not very good at one-handed typing, and that there are many, many, many people who do that better than I do (I tried to do a 1-minute one-handed tests on hi-games.net and was only at 41 wpm with my right hand, and 33 wpm with my left hand).  I've been touch typing with two hands for so long I can only think about how I would type something with both hands and I was making tons of errors trying to use only one hand...

I have rarely recorded myself typing or anything, nor have I watched videos of people typing using the home-row method.  I'm sure I mostly still do use home-row, but the key is to not always do so without any variation whatsoever (and definitely do NOT repeatedly search for the f and j keys to center your hands, not that that applies to anyone using Colemak, but I digress).  Furthermore, I'd imagine that most Qwerty typists diverge from home-row much more than they think they do, given the frequency of typos in general.  One of the other top TypeRacer users commented in the YouTube video taken at the Ultimate Typing Championship that I do mostly use the home-row method except for typing the backspace with a different finger, but I'm less sure myself because I haven't tried to analyze my style yet to a great degree (when describing this, I often have to reconstruct by trying to think about how I'd type a specific word, and I'm not 100% positive I'd always type the same word using the same fingers every time).

With regard to the Das Keyboard vs. Logitech, this is an embarrassing story.  I won the Das Keyboard as a prize for making the Ultimate Typing Championship finals, however I live with my mom and she spilled soda in the Das last April.  I've been unemployed most of the last two years so I bought a relatively cheap replacement Logitech keyboard from Staples.  To be honest, it wasn't much slower.  While some keyboards are certainly better than others, in terms of average speed differential I kind of doubt it would be more than 5 wpm from keyboard to keyboard.  I set records on the Logitech too (at this point I don't remember which records I set on which keyboards).  Later, Das Keyboard did an interview with me and after I told them the other keyboard was destroyed they sent me a new one in exchange for the interview, so I am using a Das again.

Interesting point about using caps lock to avoid simultaneous key presses. I'm not at the speeds where releasing shift fast enough matters but it should help with comfort. In fact I have now started using sticky keys as an experiment.

[shift] h e l l o
"Hello"

u s e r s   [shift] [shift] w h e r e [shift]   i d
"users WHERE id"

A dangling control key press can be destructive, though :-)

@erw: My sentiment exactly about the Ctrl key! Isn't it possible to have a sticky Shift only?

The pattern I demonstrated is from sticky keys in GNOME. I don't know how it works in other systems, sorry.

But I was just looking into the possibility of using only sticky shift when I noticed how pleasant it is to have the other modifiers sticky as well. You have to pay a bit more attention, though. But I have an indicator in the menu bar showing the state of each modifier (off, once, locked) which helps.

Edit: Sticky keys also really help for single handed typing which is kinda hard on a Kinesis Advantage.

I tried but couldn't do it myself, neither could I find any on their forum. Here's a topic so we can continue our discussion about this there: https://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?pid=8862

We are not worthy!

When starting out with touch typing, I was looking for some good examples of typing, and came across the ultimate typing championship video featuring Sean.  I noticed that he doesn't type by the book at all!  His fingers look quite straight, he has a bit of a hunch, but it clearly works for him!

Pianists are told to arch their fingers - but some professional pianists don't do that also, so it goes to show there are many different approaches and styles.  What might be good for one, isn't necessarily right for another.

@cevgar? can you define what you mean by floating style then?  I assume you mean floating the hands rather than resting the wrists?  I have noticed a general improvement since adopting this style.  It certainly helps on the longer reaches like the number row.  And I now move my arms as well as my fingers.  I'm stretching my fingers less and less.  And generally my typing is becoming more relaxed and easier with time.

When I started out I was vigilant about returning my fingers to the home row.  These days they return to roughly that area, but I'm not groping about for bumps (my last keyboard the bumps wore off entirely.)  I'm sure my mind has learned to not return to the home row for some scenarios, it's natural to find shortcuts.

I found an old rubber dome in the bin the other day, and decided to clean it up.  And was pretty surprised to find that I typed almost at the same rate on it as my mechanical.  Though I do prefer my Dell.

Sean's comments are a welcome antidote to some of the keyboard snobbery found on some forums.  I doubt I would see that much of a change between my £10 recycled keyboard, and something costing ten times the price.  But as I said in another thread - I think my typing has gotten better as a result of using a mechanical (but it's a hard thing to quantify.)

I don't think I could consciously think about using alternative fingers in certain scenarios.  I think though that subconsciously you end up doing this anyway if you are pushing yourself for speed or comfort.

When I was cleaning the mentioned keyboard, I decided for a laugh to switch the layout (swapping key caps) to Dvorak for the first time.  I couldn't even remember the position of O and E without doing a bit of mock typing.  It's funny how brainless typing becomes.  The brain is amazing (said with a Brian Cox like enthusiasm)!  I find reading ahead by a word helps my typing - but I don't feel that I'm consciously doing anything more than reading the word - it just comes out!

@pinkyache
To me, float means a flexible home position, or hand or finger motions that bypass home position between keystrikes. Ideally it would be to reduce finger motion in favor of hand/arm motion. For instance, 'you' on qwerty. You could extend your fingers to reach each letter. Or you could move your hand up a row and a little to the left, floating your fingers above the top row keys, instead of returning to home positions between each strike. A sort of floating home position. Another example would be 'nothing'. At the beginning of the word, my right hand spreads out for N, O and I simultaneously, despite not needing I till the fifth letter of the word. After the N, my index finger goes straight to H, bypassing J, and so on.

Also, you shouldn't be resting your wrists over much, as that tends to lead to wrist extension. Wrist rests are like lumbar supports, poor replacements for proper posture.

Beyond that, erw is right. Mechanical isn't really about speed. It is about comfort over time. Dome and scissor keyboards require 'bottoming out' to register. That means jamming the thing straight into the backboard, usually with far more pressure than is required, because if you miss connecting, by even a hair, you get nothing. That kind of repeated jarring impact, honestly, you might as well be typing on concrete. Or on a touch screen. Mechanicals are designed to register about midpoint of the motion, often with a soft tactile and audible click to let the typist know that the strike is good. Once the typist adapts to the keyboard's specifics, they can often apply just enough pressure to get it to register without bottoming out. This greatly lessens the stress typing on the fingers. On the same point, I often find myself wondering if the old model m's might not be even more ergonomic than those silly wave shapes Microsoft has been pushing.

About StickyKeys. Windows has them as described, single modifier for one instance, with the option to lock with a double click. There does not seem to be anyway to turn on StickyKeys for only the shift, or to disable StickyKeys for the other modifiers. StickyKeys can set off sounds when a modifier is pressed and display modifier status in the taskbar.

Yes, DreymaR, I'll agree to that. My own definition of float was poorly worded (I realized after posting that I was talking through my hat), and is perhaps more of a description of changes to typing style that might happen after you've been floating for a while, or a technique aided by floating rather than of  floating itself. I think I was trying to cover all my bases and instead missed most of them.

While I still think of it as advanced float in my mind, I'll go along with this 'home-flex' term for now. Then to explain the advanced 'home-flex' I accused arenasnow of earlier, lets take the word 'tree' on qwerty. Basic home-flex has typist sliding the hand/fingers up so the Middle and Index are on ER and stretching for the T. Advanced home-flex would have the typist moving Ring, Middle and Index to ERT.

About mechanicals, rounding up my previous statement, I present you with this analogy. Shoes don't make you run faster. They make running more comfortable, and ease impact on joints. You can probably run just as fast barefoot, maybe even faster, but not as long. While it might not seem like much now, in 30-40 years the guy with shoes is still going to be running, and the barefoot guy is going to be reduced to trampoline exercises. Or like parking. Sure you can pull up to the parking curb slower, or touch it more gently, but overall it is better not to hit it at all.

Out of curiosity, how do you avoid bottoming out on a membrane keyboard? Granted most people don't really JAM keys down, as I was implying, and I don't doubt a skilled typist can reduce the effects, but the very design makes coming to a dead stop at the bottom of the key motion necessary, no matter how gently. Maybe I am using the term wrong?