Typing practice for beginners
If you have never touch typed, start here. Take it slowly - speed is not the goal today, and trying for it now will teach you habits you will have to undo.
Just start typing.Tabrestarts
Before you type anything
Sit with your feet flat and your back supported. Your forearms should be roughly level with the keyboard rather than angled up towards it.
Float your wrists rather than resting them on the desk. Anchoring your wrists forces your fingers to stretch from a fixed point, which is where most long-term discomfort comes from.
Put the screen at eye level, about an arm's length away. You will be reading from it constantly, and looking down at your hands is precisely the habit you are here to remove.
Your first session
Find the ridges on F and J. Rest your left hand on A, S, D, F and your right on J, K, L, semicolon. Thumbs on the space bar.
Type slowly and correctly. Every time you finish a key, bring the finger back to its home key. That return is the actual skill you are building - the keypress is the easy part.
Expect to be much slower than your current hunt-and-peck speed for about a week. This is normal and temporary, and it is the price of a ceiling that is two or three times higher.
The rules that matter most
If you only take three things away, take these.
- Do not look at your hands. This is the whole discipline. If you must check, look at an on-screen keyboard.
- Accuracy before speed, always. Speed built on errors has to be unlearned later.
- Practise a little every day rather than a lot occasionally. Motor learning consolidates between sessions.
Common questions
I am much slower this way. Am I doing it wrong?
No - that is exactly what the first week looks like for everyone. You are trading a familiar method with a low ceiling for an unfamiliar one with a high ceiling, and the crossover usually happens between two and four weeks.
How long should each session be?
Fifteen minutes is plenty, and stopping before your accuracy degrades matters more than the total time. Practice done sloppily teaches the sloppy version.