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.
Instead, you can use whichever finger is easiest or most comfortable for reaching and pressing those keys. With the four fingers of both hands on the home row , there should be a total of eight fingers positioned over the home row. Most don't consider the thumbs "fingers. When typing, your palms should be raised and not resting on any surface, including a wrist pad , and held at a 10 to degree angle. Raising or lowering your wrists too much in either direction or resting them while typing can cause stress and lead to carpal tunnel syndrome.
While keeping your palms raised while typing, there are also other tips you can follow to help prevent carpal tunnel and pain while you type. Keep the following suggestions in mind every time you type. Other major browsers, such as Apple Safari , Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer should generally be ok, however please make sure you are using a current version.
Older versions or other browsers may give inconsistent results. Javascript is required for the typing functionality, so please ensure it is turned on in your browser preferences.
Some third-party extensions for web browsers, such as ad blockers, might interefere with the typing functionality. If you are using such an extension, turn it off temporarily and see if that is the cause. If so, it should be possible to whitelist this site so that the extension is turned off for this site only. This course is not designed to be used with a soft keyboard on a tablet, although it has been successfully tested to work with iOS devices iPad and iPhone.
If you are on Android or a Windows Mobile device it is hit or miss, however it should work absolutely fine with an external keyboard. It is highly recommended to learn touch typing on a physical keyboard for the tactile feedback, and bluetooth keyboards can be obtained very inexpensively these days i. This is a VERY worthwhile investment to learn touch typing, a skill which will last you a lifetime.
If you're still having problems, you can still access the old, Flash-based version of the course here. Each finger rests on a particular key in the home row of the keyboard when not typing, in order to keep "grounded" and oriented at all times. The thumbs remain in the air, or very gently in contact with the keys below. The use of all fingers is of course the optimal condition and who really masters typing with 10 fingers, types faster and more relaxed. However, if you find it very difficult to retrain your self-taught typing technique or if you have anatomical difficulties using all fingers, you can of course use fewer fingers or type keys with other fingers than we recommend.
The key to efficient operation of the computer keyboard is that you know the positions of the keys and the necessary movements of your fingers and that you can utilize them without lengthy thought or looking at the keyboard. The technique we recommend only offers you a method that has proven itself.
However, you can of course - if you think it is necessary - adapt it to your needs. Who is our offer actually intended for? And is it worthwhile for you to invest the time and learn to type "the right way"?
And also privately we spend more and more time in the digital world. The time we spend every day entering texts on the computer may vary according to our profession and private usage patterns and may not seem so much to us - but the long-term approach is decisive here.
Let's assume you spend an average of 1 hour a day entering texts. Projected to one year, that is already hours. If you double your typing speed, you will save about hours per year. Of course, this is only an example calculation. Depending on how fit you are on the keyboard at the moment, even a 3- to 4-fold increase in typing speed is possible - with correspondingly higher time savings.
The time needed, which probably prevented you from learning to type with 10 fingers, can therefore be completely neglected in comparison to the possible long-term time saving. If you can't type very quickly with your own typing technique right now, the learning effort is definitely worthwhile. You can check your time spent on your typing practice in the statistics of our typing tutor at any time.
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