h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've taken keyboarding classes before, and i've learned the home-row keys and all, but I never liked doing things with the screen blank and my hands covered. After i got out of those classes, though, i moved on to my own method of typing, the one that AOL's Instant messenger helped me come up with. When i first got AIM, i was a slow typist, and all the other people i was talking to could type 60+ words per minute. As time went on wiht AIM, i realized that i wouldn't be able to make rapid progress with the standard method of typing, using memorization of letters, and looking at words as groups of letters and spaces. I looked for patterns, common sequences of characters that repeated in written english, strings like "ing", "tion", and "comma+space". I also looked at the words i used most, like "the", "and", and "because". after typing those words and sequences time after time after time, i can rattle them off with nary an error at some respectable speed.

My current typing method is something like this: I look at words as groups of letter clusters, clusters that I have trained my hands to recognize and repeat. When i want to use a relatively uncommon word, it's easy to look for common patterns and similarities shared with more common ones. The result is a more word-based typing method, where i can keep up normal conversation with impressive speed in IRC and IM communication.