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Typing practice: the keys, one pair at a time
Typing without looking down at the keys is a skill that job applications, school work and most office jobs lean on, and it is practiced one small step at a time. This page has 19 short lessons. They start with two keys, F and J, and add two more each time, then capitals, numbers, whole words and sentences. It shows the text to type, a picture of the keyboard with the next key lit, and says which finger goes there. At the end it says how fast you went and how many keys were right the first time.
Good to know
Where the hands go
- The home row is the middle row of letters. The left hand rests on A, S, D and F, the right hand on J, K, L and the key to the right of L. The thumbs rest over the space bar.
- F and J are where the two index fingers rest. Many keyboards have a small raised line or dot on those two keys, so the hands can find their place by touch. The picture marks them with a short line.
- Each finger has its own keys: the key it rests on, and the keys just above and below it. The two index fingers each take two columns. The picture gives each finger a color, and the line under the picture says the finger in words.
- A capital letter takes two hands: one little finger holds Shift on the side away from the letter, and the other hand presses the letter. The page lights both keys.
- After each key the finger goes back to its place on the home row. That is what lets the hands find the next key without looking.
- This is the way typing is most often taught. It is not the only way that works. If your hands, a missing finger, pain or a one-handed keyboard call for something else, the lessons still run: the page checks the key, not the finger.
How the lessons work
- Lessons 1 to 14 add keys two or three at a time, from the home row out: F and J first, X and Z last. Each text uses only the keys met so far, in short drills, in made-up groups of letters and, as soon as the keys allow, in real words.
- Lessons 15 to 18 are capital letters, the numbers, whole words, and sentences with commas and periods.
- Lesson 19 is a text of your own, up to 600 keys: a paragraph from a letter you are writing, an address you type often, anything. It stays on your device like the rest.
- How much to type: about 60, 120 or 240 keys. “New text for this lesson” gives other words with the same keys.
- A wrong key is counted one time, the letter turns red, and the page waits for the right key. There is nothing to erase.
- The speed is counted the usual way for typing: every five keys, spaces too, are one word, and the clock runs from your first key to your last. 120 keys in one minute are 24 words a minute.
- Right the first time is how many of every 100 keys you hit without a wrong key first, rounded down.
Every time the page is built, a program makes 12,960 lesson texts (each lesson, in both languages, on both keyboards, at all three lengths) and reads every one back with code written apart from the page’s own: that each text uses only keys its lesson has reached, that every new key is in it, that every key is on the keyboard picture, and that the finger the page names for a key is the one in the program’s own table.
What this page does not do
- It knows two keyboards only: U.S. English, and one with an ñ key to the right of L. On the second, the picture shows the letters, the numbers, the comma and the period, and leaves the other keys blank, because those signs sit in different places on keyboards from Spain and from Latin America. Other layouts (Dvorak, AZERTY and the rest) are not here.
- It has no lessons for accents, the signs above the numbers, the question mark or the number pad. You can put them in a text of your own; the page will check them, and will say it cannot show where they are.
- It is made for a keyboard with real keys. On a phone or tablet the lessons run with the on-screen keyboard, and the fingers the page names do not fit it.
- It does not keep your speed or which lessons you have done. To see a change over weeks, write the numbers down somewhere of your own.
- It gives no certificate and no test result an employer or a school would take. Some job postings ask for a typing speed from a timed test of their own; this page is practice for the hands, with a short, rough count of speed.
- It makes no promise about how fast anyone will type, or by when.
- It has not been tried with a screen reader. The text to type is on the page as plain letters, and the next key and finger are said in words under the box you type in.
- It is not advice about your hands. If typing hurts, stop and rest; pain that keeps coming back is a thing to bring to a doctor or a nurse.
Tools that go with this
- New to computers: where to begin: this page and three more like it, in an order, with the words they use.
- Resume builder: one plain page, made here.
- Cover letter: a short letter in your own words.
- Interview practice: say it out loud before the day.
- Job search log: every application on one list.
- Flash cards: your own cards to go through on the screen or print.
- Mouse and trackpad practice: clicking, dragging and the parts of a form, one step at a time.
- Web page practice: tabs, Back, the address bar and links, in a pretend browser.
- Sign-in practice: passwords, sign-in codes and “Forgot your password?”, on a pretend account.
- All the free tools, and how to save them on your phone.
The tool and the wording around it were written with AI (Claude) for Scarlet Beast (our AI policy). There is no AI inside this tool: the texts are put together from short word lists by plain arithmetic on your device. It has been checked by a program, not yet by people new to typing or by teachers, and the Spanish has not been read by a native speaker. It keeps nothing, so it has no line on My data on this device. Also in Spanish: Práctica de mecanografía. Found a mistake? Email [email protected].