Both index fingers are responsible for an additional column, the one next to their home columns towards the middle of the keyboard. The thumbs are used for the space bar, and depending on the shape of your keyboard can also be used for the "command" Apple computers or "Windows" PCs key. The left-hand pinky is also responsible for all the keys to the left of its home column, including the left shift key, caps lock, tab, tilde, escape and others.
The right-hand pinky is a real workhorse, covering everything to the right of its home column. Take a look - there's a lot of stuff there! And with this in mind, you're ready to Start the Course! All rights reserved. This page last updated: 12 November Privacy Policy. No mistakes. Always be sure and in control. Slower is faster. Speed comes from certainty. The more you type things correctly, no matter how slow it has to be, the more certain you will be, and the faster you will become a proficient typist.
Increase speed only when you feel sure enough to do so. Don't look at the keyboard! If you don't know where a key is, look at the keyboard to find it, then look away and type the key. Do not guess; always be sure. Type to a steady rhythm. Typing quickly and accurately with correct finger placement involves building up some muscle memory in your hands, so they feel comfortable reaching for keys in sequence and the movements become automatic.
There are courses designed specifically to teach you typing. They show you where to position your hands on the keyboard and walk you through the right keys to hit with each finger. Some programs, such as Touch-type Read and Spell, use a multi-sensory technique to reinforce what you learn. To help you practice each key, the corresponding letter appears on the screen and is read out loud. This strengthens memory, along with repetition and dictation exercises, and gives you plenty of opportunities to practice new material.
The good thing is when you learn touch-typing you open up new career opportunities and can even improve your academic performance. Students who learn to type the TTRS way typically improve their reading and spelling skills as well.
Typing can be a great boost for children with self-esteem issues and specific learning difficulties. It has also been successfully used to assist individuals with dyslexia , dyspraxia , autism spectrum disorder and visual impairments in reaching their full potential when it comes to developing strong literacy skills.
The position of the hands is much the same as it was when the method was developed back in the s for use with a typewriter. Perhaps the most relevant difference for typists was the addition of the delete key with the advent of the computer! At rest, the fingers sit on the home row keys.
The fingers of each hand should sit on four keys each. This ensures your index fingers can guide the rest of your hands back to the home row at each pause in typing without looking. The rest of the keyboard has been divided up so each finger is responsible for a certain group of keys the letters in its vicinity. Every finger is used to reach the keys diagonally above and below it.
However, the fingers on the ends of rows have slightly more work to do as they are also involved in functions other than letter choice, such as indenting, moving to a paragraph and capitalising. Each index or pointer finger is responsible for two rows of keys. Typing can also improve the quality of your work, as thoughts flow freely through the fingertips and onto the screen, without the interruption of searching the keyboard for the right keys.
Basic finger positioning is fairly straightforward to master, but it can take some time to get used to reaching all of the keys. How long does it take to learn?
It all depends on the individual. Following the TTRS method of teaching this skill, the average person who has no learning differences or difficulties can expect to cover the fingering on the keyboard in about three to five hours.
Older hunt-and-peckers might feel frustrated in the very short term when slowed down by finding the right key without looking. However, persistence is well worth it. Touch-typing is a skill that sets you up for life. Learn more. Completing one level at a time and receiving plenty of positive feedback from your online scores will keep you motivated and help you reach your goal at the pace that is right for you.
Since looking into the typical hand placement and checking out other alternate keyboards, I have decided to try a different hand placement and include your recommendations here. I have been at it for less than a week and my speed is up at I was approaching 47 with regular qwerty. Would appreciate comments from those who would try it.
I find that I now am going with a new home position qwer — uiop — v — n — at least when I start — and then try to get back to it as much as possible. So other than that there have no few other problems. I want to know why you have distorted the offset of the upper two rows of keys in your diagrams.
In fact, the upper two are hardly offset at all and look a LOT like the TypeMatrix board that you disparage and discard without a proper examination. What is your motivation for this lying deception that you are foisting on readers? My diagrams are pretty close to accurate. I do wish the left-hand top row formed a better cascade, like on the right side.
As I wrote in the article, I would love the TypeMatrix layout if each side of the keyboard were angled slightly. As it stands, I would need to bend my wrists at an uncomfortable angle to fit my fingers on the completely vertical columns.
My forearms form a wide angle on my desk. Stu, I am looking at my Dell Inspiron laptop and it does have a much smaller offset of the upper two rows than between the middle and bottom row. The cascades to the left do not look entirely pretty, but they do work. Now up to for speed. Not too far fetched when you think of the TALQ keyboard and using all thumbs — do have to keep the wrists up though.
Your finger placement is an improvement to the standard but it still seems unnatural to me. Our hands are symmetrical about the vertical axis so why is the standard finger placement designed as if we have two right hands? Yeah, I definitely agree you could do it that way. The reach from [D] to [R] is much more offset than the reach from the equivalent right-hand [K] to [I].
The distance between the center of the keys is closer, despite the movement being slightly in the wrong direction. I am in the same boat as you. I always thought that my ring finger should hit the Z key and so on. It is nice to know that I am not the only one who types like you. I also have my hands angled out a little so they naturally circle up to the top keys.
I rarely ever reach for them. We are not alone in the way we type. Anyway, the point I wanted to raise is pinky placement. To me, typing a is a top row movement. The whole hand goes up and to the right in a nice diagonal, so the fingers reach a,e,r and t.
This is my custom version of Healthy Typing which advocates keeping the hand in a relaxed position and moving the forearm itself to reach keys. Someone also mentioned something along these lines earlier in the thread. But a lot of people are comfortably enough using the official way instead of your suggestion. The choice is yours. But what about the numbers row? Some ergonomic keyboards which split the buttons in two sides becoming consideration about positioning key number 6.
Some manufacturers put it in the left side along with keys 1 to 5 because of hardware design matters — putting number 6 on the left becoming equal to both sides since the right side have 6 keys such as 7 to 0 zero , hyphen and equal signs. But some are put it in the right side according to the keyboarding technique. This is still becoming a question. For the number keys I prefer to type 6 with my right index finger.
It is the most difficult one to type unless you choose the upper row as the home row. I find it also hard to type 0 and — unless I type them with my right ring finger. One programmer said that he used his right ring and right pinky for these enclosing symbols. Note that Alexey Kazantsev mentioned above — uses a similar left sweep to the left lower keys in his alternate home position — similar to what is advocated here. I just went with what was comfortable.
I use my pinky for z and my middle finger for x. Do whatever is most comfortable for you. Never used any learning software or anything either.
I just type a lot on skype, forums and in multiplayer games. I am 15 years old and have always had to search for letters. I am doing an online course to learn to type faster. The problem in that my hands have unusually long ring fingers and very short pinky fingers. That brought me hear and this is exactly how i do it! I totally agree that curling the fingers on the left hand down, as you do on the right makes more sense.
My GF is just learning to 10finger type and I was really surprised to look at the official layouts. This was driving me absolutely mental, as the recommendations were completely unergonomic. My hands rest at my mechanical keyboard in an inverted V shape, as I have this thing called a body between my arms, and it goes against all logic that the left fingers should follow the patterns of the right. Unfortunately I think that the QWERTY layout is now so ingrained in popular perceptions it would be very difficult to encourage people to use systems like Dvorak or other potentially less stressing keyboard layouts.
I found this website I tried and I must say that feels natural your method method. I am learning on keybr. My speed is still slow but I am learning to touch type. The red zone was when I changed to the index finger.
Typing fast is not about how fast can you hit a key, but how many words per unit time can you output as a whole, thus WPM. A crucial part in being really fast is to anticipate the position of the fingers one or two keystrokes in advance. A few more examples: — press backspace with ring finger in general requieres just pivoting of your palm instead of slightly raising the whole palm, especially for those with short pinkies and if palm is resting infront of the keyboard and not hovering over it.
That said, when just typing no mouse using right shift for caping left handed letters is faster. A while ago, when I was just starting out the adventure of learning to touch type I wrote this little program that given a corpus of text, will output a histogram of each letter and what is the frequency of any other letter occurring after it in order to come up with the ultimate dynamic, I might add finger placement configuration!
This will force you to break habits a few times, which might sound like a bad idea, but actually is good for your brain. After typing with fingers for 30 years or so I decided to learn the finger system.
The ZXC seemed very akward to me. This alternative placement seems very logical to me. One question though: the [b] is purple in your layout, but what does that mean? Which finger strokes the [b]? You can use either finger. Never liked typing class, but after a summer of coding and googling a few years back, I taught myself to type.
The biggest thing to note is that I use my left index a LOT, sometimes even bleeding over into the right of the board. If you want a sample. Let me know. Not sold on Amazon any more. It is intuitive. Organized the letters in better way.
Paul Streitz. Dead on! This is exactly the way I type with the left hand. An adaptation to my needing to use so many special characters in my day job…. Hi Peter, thank you so much for this article!
I went with the classic lessons not knowing anything else, even though my left hand felt uncomfortable when reaching for Z, X, C.
So thank you again, I think you have just saved me from future possible injuries or at least a big discomfort. Man, you should keep your hand in right way and not make a theory. I am blind typist for 20 years and more, and if I would type your way I would have wrist pain, and brain damage.
Now in retirement I am wanting to develop the skill. Looking for a finger template I googled up your site. In a way it is the equivalent of a simplified golf swing. The less things to concentrate on the quicker and easier learning is. Thank you for posting. This page alone is more valuable than many complete typing courses that teach the awkward method.
I fully agree with you there. I have dispraxia a developmental coordination disorder, which causes me to have a poor motion in physical movements especially in my fingers.
Every time when I restarted trying it after some months I always came to be stuck in the last lessons when I had to type the z x and c, those 3 letters always gave me a super hard time. If you look at the position of your hands they naturally face each other outwards, while making outwards key strokes on the bottom line with right you always make inward key strokes with the left hand on the bottom line.
Which makes no sense that why both hands would prefer a different configuration. There has to be symmetry when you type so one must be wrong and when trying it out you always feel the left one feels wrong. Most people who start learning blind typing often chose to type the bottom left keys in the configuration you mentioned and not how it should be done and then they are retaught to do it differently. I just think this universally accepted thing is plainly wrong. Either they reinvent the keyboard keys position or they should reteach people how to type blindly.
Please send me an email back I would appreciate it a lot. I found your article seaching for how mad i am writing as you propose. Mother nature complitly agree with you! I started typing recently. It inherently felt natural to do things your way. I thought this was the standard method until today when my girlfriend told me she uses her pinky for qaz, mind blowing.
As it turns out, I have been doing the same thing all these years without realizing that it was wrong either. I guess I just never thought about it until now…. I actually tried typing the normal way just now, and I agree that it feels award and somewhat painful to contort the fingers on my left hand in order to hit the bottom row keys like that.
Thank you for this article, especially for the diagrams. It solved my wrist problems I had when approaching my 40s. I got into problems with the bottom left row too. Thank you for this post. I know this is a few years old but I just started taking typing classes and was baffled by the standard placement.
Thanks for the article! I am glad to have come across this article. I type similarly to you, but with some quirks. Because I never learned to type properly, and because I learned on a European keyboard, I basically only use my left pinky finger for the shift key.
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