The home row

The small bumps on F and J let your index fingers find their place without looking.

Try this before reading on. Put your hands in your lap and close your eyes. Bring them up to the keyboard and feel for the two keys that have a small ridge or dot on them. On most keyboards those are F and J. Once your index fingers are on them, let the other fingers drop onto the keys next to them. Now open your eyes and check. If the left fingers are on A, S, D and F and the right ones on J, K, L and the semicolon, you have found the home row without looking, and that is where every touch typing method starts.

Eight fingers on eight resting keys

On a US QWERTY keyboard the home row is the middle row of letters. The left hand rests on A, S, D and F, with the little finger on A, the ring finger on S, the middle finger on D and the index finger on F. The right hand mirrors it: index on J, middle on K, ring on L and little finger on the semicolon. Either thumb presses the space bar. The bumps on F and J exist so your index fingers can find home without your eyes, which is exactly what you just did. A full-size keyboard repeats the idea on its numeric keypad. There the 5 usually has a bump, the right middle finger rests on it, and the index and ring fingers sit on 4 and 6.

Why the index fingers do the most work

From the home row each finger travels up and down its own slanting column of keys. The columns slant because each row of keys is shifted a little sideways from the one below it, an arrangement inherited from typewriters. The index fingers get the most work, since each one covers two columns. The left index finger types F and also G, R, T, V, B, 4 and 5. The right index finger types J and also H, Y, U, N, M, 6 and 7. The colours on the practice keyboard show these columns, and the chart follows the BCcampus open textbook Computer Studies.

One key, then straight back home

The rule that makes all this work fits in one line: after each key, the finger goes back to its home key. If the left index finger reaches over to G, it returns to F right away. The hand then always knows where it is, and the next reach starts from a known place. At first this feels slow and a bit stiff. That is expected. Good typists are fast mostly because they never have to search for the row, and that only happens once coming home has become automatic.

Why a fixed typo still counts

Typing teachers put it in different words, but the advice is the same: get accurate first and speed will follow. A mistake costs more than it looks. You notice it, press Backspace, then type the letter again, three actions where one would have done. The accuracy number on the practice keyboard judges each character once, the first time you type it, so fixing a mistake doesn't erase it from the count. The how-to-type.com lessons suggest repeating an exercise until you reach 95 percent accuracy or more before moving on. That is a sensible target here too.

The practice keyboard in three steps

Choose a lesson from the menu below the keyboard. The outlined key is the next one to press, and the line above the keyboard names the finger. Click the practice area once so it can hear your keys; on a phone or tablet, tap the keys on the screen instead. If you make a mistake, Backspace lights up in red. Start with F and J, then the whole home row, then G and H, the two sideways reaches for the index fingers.