Symbol typing practice
Symbols are handled almost entirely by the little fingers while the other hand holds shift. Press shift with the opposite hand - reaching for both with one hand is the habit that caps symbol speed.
Just start typing.Tabrestarts
Why symbols never improve on their own
English prose is about two percent punctuation and contains almost no brackets, operators or shifted number-row characters. You could type a million words of practice text and barely touch them.
That is why a typist can reach 80 words per minute on prose and still hesitate visibly over a curly brace. It is not a general speed problem; it is an untrained set of specific keys.
The groups worth drilling separately
Each of these is a distinct motor pattern, and they interfere with each other less if trained apart.
- The shifted number row: ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( )
- Brackets and braces: [ ] { } - the same physical keys, shifted and unshifted
- Angle brackets: < > - shifted comma and full stop
- Operators: _ - + = which carry every identifier and expression
- The pinky column: ; : ' " / ? \ |
- Backtick and tilde: ` ~ - the far top-left reach nobody practises
The shift rule, again
Every shifted symbol needs the opposite hand on shift. For a right-hand symbol like a closing brace, that means the left little finger presses shift.
This feels slower for the first few hundred repetitions and is permanently faster afterwards, because the typing hand never leaves home position.
Common questions
Which symbols should I train first?
Whichever ones you actually use. For developers that is usually brackets, braces and the underscore; for writers it is quotes, dashes and parentheses. Take a test with punctuation enabled and the results will rank them for you.