On Thursdays I am a man of my word

[venta]

Spot question for the day:

Without googling, does the following phrase mean anything to anybody ?

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.

Comments

[venta.livejournal.com]

Having examined my typing of it, I'm guessing that you can type it easily whilst keeping at least one finger on the its home key at all times. Discounting double letters, typing each letter with the 'correct' finger means that you are typing alternate left-right all the time, so you can keep your hands in position very easily. There are also no 'awkward' letters like Q and Z to reach for.

[venta.livejournal.com]

you are typing alternate left-right all the time

Well, nearly.

[pm215]

Er, what layout are you using? NO, IM, OM, ART are all same-hand strings. Given that one of these is the first letter pair in the string your theory doesn't hold up very long :-)

Anyway, aren't you meant to keep your spare fingers on the home keys all the time when touch typing?

[venta.livejournal.com]

QWERTY, see the ammendment to 'nearly' :)

Yes, you are supposed to keep your fingers on the home keys. I don't. Do you ?

I noticed when typing that phrase the it was much easier to do so than it usually is. That it's mostly alternate hands, thus giving you time to re-locate after each keystroke, was the best explanation I could come up with in a hurry for why.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

Of course I don't keep my fingers on the home keys.

I don't rest my fingers on any keys at all. They're permanently poised just above the home keys, ready to leap into action the moment I decide I want something typed.

Given that, and the fact that I look at what I'm typing and not down at the keyboard, I can only presume I have some mysterious superpower that enables me to locate the right keys.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Aye, I don't rest me fingers on the keys either. I've never been sure whether the idea of keeping your fingers on the home keys was meant to be a style-point, or something to reduce strain, or increase speed, or just an aid to learning. I could see that before you were familiar with a keyboard, knowing where your fingers were at all times would be useful.

I suspect we (as children of the internet) are probably the first generation who have, en masse, learnt to type by custom and usage rather than by formal secretarial training.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

Actually, I learned to type thanks to secretarial training. I have a certificate somewhere that says I can lay out letters and everything :)

But the internet honed me into the lean, mean, typing machine I am today.

[helenbr.livejournal.com]

Bartleby's Quotations suggests it was devised in order to test the speed of the first typewriters (http://www.bartleby.com/73/1388.html), i.e. to test the machine rather than the typist. That may explain why it swaps hands quite frequently so you can type faster with less risk of the typewriter keys becoming entangled.