Form practice: a pretend form to learn on

The parts of a form on a screen

• A star (*) next to a box usually means the form will not go on until that box holds something. Many forms say so in a line near the top. Some write the word “required” in place of the star, and some mark the other boxes “optional”.
• A box with no star can usually be left empty. A form may ask for more than it needs; leaving an unstarred box empty is allowed.
• A drop-down list shows one line, often “Choose one” or “Select”, until it is clicked. Then it opens and you pick one line. On a phone the list often opens as a panel or a wheel over part of the screen. With a keyboard, the arrow keys move through the lines.
• Circles (some people call them radio buttons) come in a group, and only one circle of a group can be filled. Clicking another one empties the first.
• Small squares (check boxes) are separate from each other: any number can be ticked, or none. Clicking a ticked square again takes the check mark out.
• A date has to be typed in the shape the form asks for. The shape is usually written in or under the box. MM/DD/YYYY means two numbers for the month, two for the day and four for the year, so the seventh of March 1961 is 03/07/1961. Forms in the United States usually put the month first; forms from many other countries put the day first. Some forms show a small calendar to click, or three lists.
• A phone number is taken in any shape by some forms. Others want it one way, such as numbers only. A line by the box usually says which.
• A red note comes up when a starred box is empty or something is not in the shape the form takes. The form usually stays on the same page and says what is missing, near the top or next to the box. It is not a penalty and nothing has been sent. What you already typed is usually still there. Fill in what the note names and click the button again.
• Pages. A long form is usually cut into pages, with a button such as “Next” or “Continue” at the foot of each. Many forms have their own “Back” or “Previous” button too. On some forms the browser’s own Back arrow empties what was typed, so the form’s own button is the safer one to use.
• A page to look the answers over comes at the end of many forms, with a button such as “Change” or “Edit” next to each part. This is the place to read slowly.
• Nothing is sent until the last button, which may say “Send”, “Submit” or “Finish”. If the page is closed before that, the form has usually not been sent. Some forms keep a draft for later; many do not.
• A confirmation usually follows: a page that says the form was received, often with a number, and sometimes an email as well. Writing the number down, or taking a picture of the screen, gives you something to point to later.
• Some forms close by themselves after a stretch of time with no typing, often forms that ask for personal details. Having the papers you will need next to you before you begin helps.
• Before typing personal details into a real form, look at the address bar: the name of the site is the first part of the address. A form can be made to look like anyone’s. Web page practice has a lesson on the address bar, and Scam check has questions to ask before trusting a page.

How the lessons work

• The pretend form is the light-colored box. The strip at its top shows the address of the pretend page; the rest is the page. The form signs a made-up person up for a class at a town office that does not exist. Its address ends in .example, a name set aside for examples, which no real site has.
• The pretend person of each lesson has one of six first names and one of six last names, a date of birth the page puts together, and a phone number that begins 555-555-01, a range kept for made-up numbers. None of it is anyone’s.
• Only the step at hand answers. The step is written above the pretend form. If something else is clicked, picked or typed, the page says what it was, and the pretend form stays as it was. Nothing can be broken.
• The box or the list the step asks for has a blue edge, and what to type or pick is written once more right under it. A box is done the moment it holds what the step asks for, and the words of the step change to the next one. A name forgives capital letters. A date may be typed as 3/7/1961 or 03/07/1961. A phone number may be typed with or without its short lines.
• Some lessons open with part of the form already filled in, so that the lesson can begin at the part it is about.
• Lesson 6 asks, on purpose, for the button to be clicked while a starred box is empty, so you can see what a form says and that nothing bad follows. Lesson 7 opens on the page that shows the answers, goes back to change one, and sends. “Send” sends nothing.
• The page waits. There is no countdown, and taking a long time costs nothing. At the end it says how long the lesson took, from the first time the pointer went into the pretend form, and how many times something else was clicked, picked or typed.
• “Start this lesson again” makes another pretend person and other answers.

Every time the page is built, a program makes 32,000 lessons, half in English and half in Spanish, and walks through their 144,000 steps on a pretend form of its own, written apart from this page’s: that the thing each step asks for is on the screen when it is asked for, that using it changes something, that the step is said in full, and that nothing but the step’s own thing answers.

What this page does not do

• It is not a real form. Nobody is signed up for anything, nothing is sent, and the pretend answers are gone when the lesson ends.
• It does not look like every form. Real ones differ: some check each box as you leave it, some show a calendar for a date, and some put everything on one long page.
• It does not teach adding a file or a photo to a form, signing with a finger or a typed name, picture puzzles that ask if you are a person, paying, a form that is a file to open and print, or a form’s own “Back” button, which this pretend form does not have.
• It cannot tell you what to answer on a real form, and it is not advice about a job application, a benefits claim, a lease or any other paper. The office that owns a form is the one to ask about its questions.
• It is not practice for the hand: Mouse and trackpad practice and Typing practice are.
• It does not keep your times or which lessons you have done, gives no certificate and makes no promise about how fast anyone will learn.
• It can be worked by keyboard (Tab, Enter, the space bar and the arrow keys in a list), but it has not been tried with a screen reader, a switch or an eye tracker.