Learn Touch Typing

Rest your fingers on the middle row of letters. Your left fingers go on A S D F and your right on J K L ;. Thumbs rest on the space bar.

Feel for the small bumps on F and J. They let your index fingers find home without looking.

From home, each finger reaches straight up or down to its own keys, then returns. The colours in the keyboard above show which finger owns which key.

• Index fingers do the most work: two columns each (left covers F, G, R, T, V, B, 4, 5).
• Little fingers handle the edges: Shift, Enter, Tab and Backspace.
• Use the opposite hand's Shift for capitals: for a capital A (left hand), press the right Shift.

• Sit up, feet flat, elbows at about 90°, wrists floating slightly above the keyboard, not resting on the desk.
• Keep the screen at eye level, about an arm's length away.
• Don't look down. It feels slow at first. That's normal and it passes.
• Accuracy first, speed later. Speed comes naturally once your fingers know the way; mistakes become habits.

Ten to fifteen minutes a day beats one long session a week. A typical journey:

The average adult types around 40 words per minute. Free practice sites include keybr.com and monkeytype.com.