Touch Typing

Summary

These pages are meant to help you learn to touch-type (type without looking at the keyboard), by memorizing locations of keys in relation to your fingers.

Middle Row Hints

We'll start out simple, remembering the middle key for each finger (aka the middle row, or "home row").

 

Here is an image of the middle row, including some silly mnemonic devices.

 

Optionally remember the hints

Mnemonic devices often don't need to make much sense in order to be memorable. Remembering the gist of the image and the hints (with the help of the following table) can speed up the memorization process. Click the (memorize) link, (See /Help if you're confused about the table).

 

Letter	Hint for key
S	Second key
F	Fourth key
G	GHOST in middle
H	GHOST in middle
J	points to left
K	2 points
L	points to right
	memorize

 

Don't worry if these hints are vague in your mind. They will come to your aid later.

Groups of Three

Keeping it simple

To simplify memorization, we'll split the keyboard up into groups of three keys:

 

 

We'll also only consider the 3 rows above the spacebar (10 keys each) as pictured above.

Fingers and keys

As you most likely already know, when typing, each finger is responsible for a group of three keys. An exception to this rule are the index fingers - each index finger is responsible for the group under itself as well as the group above the adjacent thumb.

 

Thus, we'll memorize the letters each finger is responsible for. First we'll memorize the middle row key for each finger, then the other 2 keys for each finger.

Middle row keys, left hand

You may want to look over the table for a moment before beginning. Click (memorize) next to Middle Key and go through the table.

 

Middle Key	Letter
A
S
D
F
G
	memorize

 

Now, to memorize in reverse, click the above (memorize) next to Letter.

Middle row keys, right hand

Now do the same for the right hand.

Middle Key	Letter
H
J
K
L
;
	memorize

 

Remember that the thumb doesn't actually press any keys (other than the spacebar). The index fingers are responsible for the keys above the thumbs (in addition to the keys above themselves).

Three keys for each finger, left hand

Now that you can recall, we'll memorize whole group of three keys for each finger. This finger-centric approach but has some benefits. Among them are that it will encourage you to mentally envision the keyboard.

 

Memorize the left column and then the right.

Finger	Three Keys
	Q A Z
	W S X
	E D C
	R F V
	T G B
	memorize

Three keys for each finger - right hand

Do the same.

Finger	Three Keys
	Y H N
	U J M
	I K ,
	O L .
	P ; /
	memorize

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