[johndallman]

Speed-Reading is the IQ/A ability to read very quickly. It has no default, and no skills default to it. Your reading speed is increased by 10% times your skill level, so Speed-Reading-15 adds 150% to your reading speed, making it 250% of normal. The skill takes language comprehension modifiers, and appeared in Compendium I for GURPS 3e.

Typing is the DX/E skill of using a typewriter-like keyboard. It defaults to DX-4, or skill-3 for several skills that require using a keyboard at the appropriate TLs, including Administration, Computer Operation, Research, Professional Skill (Journalist) and Writing. Typing speed is skill x 3 words per minute on a manual typewriter, or skill x 5 on an electric typewriter or computer keyboard. Different keyboard layouts seem like familiarities. The skill appeared in Compendium I for GURPS 3e.

Speed-Reading has some unique mechanics. When you finish reading, make a skill roll to retain what you have read. If you succeed, you remember the material as well as if you'd read it normally. If you fail, then each time you try to use the material, you need to make an IQ roll at a penalty equal to the margin of failure. If you fail, you can't remember it; on a critical failure, you remember it wrongly, but believe your memory to be correct. To eliminate this IQ roll, you need to re-study the material at normal reading speed.

At TL6-7, typing was a low-status activity, and it was unheard of for managers to do their own. That was what secretaries and shorthand typists were for. They were trained in "copy-typing", transcribing handwriting without changing its phrasing, which is a different familiarity from composing on a keyboard. This meant that typing up a document was a significant step, and it usually would not be changed much after that, simply because of the labour required to retype entire pages. I learned to type, at late TL7, from a teacher who normally trained copy-typists and she was adamant that composition on the keyboard was just wrong. I'd read Isaac Asimov's autobiography, and carried on doing it anyway. The appearance of computers on many office desks early in TL8 changed the world of copy-typing, after some resistance.

Typing shows up in only a few GURPS books: High-Tech describes typewriters, Infinite Worlds lists it as a skill that may have cross-world penalties, and Horror, oddly puts it on a few templates that have skills which provide a default. Fairbairn Close Combat Systems and SEALS in Vietnam use it more convincingly.

Speed-Reading is a fairly common option on templates for library researchers and sages, and thus some kinds of magician. Action has rules for really fast research, and DF has the same for magical writings, lets Scholars use it for changing their Modular Abilities, and has a version of Oracle that can use it. High-Tech has a default reading speed for use with this skill, and Monster Hunters has rules similar to Action. There are talents, a quirk and wildcard skills for Speed-Reading in the Power-Ups series, Enhanced Senses has a specialisation for Braille, and Back to School has a cinematic rule for acquiring temporary knowledge.

I've never run into the lack of these skills. They seem to be mostly enablers, or needed for NPCs. Have you done much with them?