Reporters’ two-finger typing style

Typing with two to three fingers and the thumbs–derogatorily called “hunt and peck–was (and perhaps still is) used by reporters who (naturally) didn’t go to secretarial school to learn touch typing. This style was prevalent 75 or so years ago when reporters hammered out the words as best they could. Like my father before me, I grew up using this style and, for years, could type faster than many touch typists due to long practice.

I didn’t like the term “hunt and peck” because it conjured up a vision of a person trying to type who had never seen a typewriter before.

Even people in my generation were taught how to set type in journalism school because letterpress was still the prevalent printing method. We saw type differently than a touch typist who often learned the ten-finger method in secretarial schools and high school programs focused (in those days) on women who would ultimately work in offices as secretaries.

Linotype

My parents enrolled me in a touch-typing class during a summer session. I went kicking and screaming through the course because it was entirely unnatural and much slower than the two-finger method. I was employed by computer companies years later before shifting to touch typing keyboards that required a lighter touch than manual typewriters and linotype machines (that set type in metal “slugs.”)

Most veteran journalists typed very fast using two to three fingers and in most cases had no reason to change over to a style they saw as being for secretaries. In a hand-set/letterpress world, we saw letters as physical objects rather than impressions on a page.

Times change.

—Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell worked for Navy newspapers, a regional magazine, and computer companies before shifting to fiction.