How to type

Good day, I am Dane McBean from Powerup multimedia learning. Today I will be teaching you how to type on a keyboard. Whether you are writing a paper, an article or a letter you can do it more efficiently if you know how to touch type. What is typing? “ The action or skill of writing something by means of a typewriter or computer.” There are three things that are important to know when learning how to type; proper posture, proper hand and wrist position and correct finger placement. Let's start with proper posture.

Proper posture

Many persons when they are sitting around a computer they tend to have a slouching or ease back posture. These position can lead to bad hand position and bad wrist position which may lead to crapol tunnel syndrome. The first thing you should know when learning to type is the proper posture; back against the seat and straight, wrist at your side, and feet flat on the floor. Let us see if this person is doing it correctly.

Proper Wrist position

Wrist placement is important because if you have the correct wrist placement it allows your fingers to curve so they can move freely. They should curve naturally on the home row keys that they are responsible for. Wrist must not be resting on the desk or keyboard so that the fingers can curve ready to be used. Now let's move on to finger placement. Finger placement will explain where the fingers of the right and left hand should be on the home row keys. From that we will move on to which fingers is responsible for which keys when typing. We will also look at how to use the shift keys.

Show image of the right finger positions

There are little bumps on the “F” and “J” keys to indicate where you need to place both your index fingers, so you don't have to look down. After locating the “F” and “J” keys with both index fingers lay your other fingers sequentially on the other keys in that row. The right pinky finger should be on the semi-colon and the left pinky finger should be on the “A” button.

Next, learn which fingers control which keys. The right index finger is responsible for the "M", "J","U", "7","6","Y","H","N". The right middle finger controls the "8","I","K" and the "," button. The right ring finger controls the '9','O','L' and period button. The right pinky finger is responsible for '0','P',';' and the '?'.

The fingers on the left hand control the same pattern of letters as the right hands. For the shift key when you are typing a word with the left hand and you need to capitalize a letter you use the right hand to press the right shift key and vice versa.

The key to mastering typing is practice. Here are links to a few typing games that will entertain you and improve your typing.

Games to play:

Type Attack

Bubbles

You can test your speed by doing a free online typing test