Teach yourself touch-typing in two hours

Sergei Winitzki, Ph.D. February 24, 2009

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Touch-typing means typing on a computer keyboard (or a typewriter) without looking at the keyboard. I would like to help you teach yourself touch-typing using an innovative method. The method is very fast and literally requires only two hours of exercise. You do not need an actual keyboard you can learn and practice touch-typing using just paper. After going through the seven lessons (this takes about half an hour to one hour), you will be able to touch-type with the speed of about 60 keystrokes per minute.1 Typing only 60 keystrokes per minute (1 keystrokes per second) is, of course, very slow, and you will need more practice. After another hour or so of practice, you will increase the speed of your typing to about 200 keystrokes per minute. If you have played the piano or another keyboard instrument, your nal typing speed will be faster since your ngers are already used to performing nely controlled movements. Here I show exercises geared to the standard American QWERTY keyboard. However, the same method can be adapted to any other keyboard layout. The author has learned two keyboard layouts (the Russian typewriter and the American QWERTY) and retained the use of both layouts after many years. If you want to learn another layout, you will have to prepare your own exercises, which is not dicult if you can A A edit a little L TEX. The L TEX sources this document are attached to this PDF le. This document is copyrighted by Sergei Winitzki (2009) and distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Each of the eight ngers is responsible for typing letters belonging to some vertical row. To avoid any misunderstanding, we will be counting the ngers of each hand from 1 to 5 by starting from the thumb, which will be the nger number 1. From this point and until Lesson 7 you do not need a keyboard. Left hand The nger number 5 of the left hand (also called the little nger, or the pinky) rests in the vertical row QAZ. The nger number 4 (also called the ring nger) of the left hand rests in the vertical row WSX. The nger number 3 (the middle nger) of the left hand rests in the vertical row EDC. The nger number 2 (the index nger) of the left hand rests in the vertical row RFV. You now need to memorize the four nonsensical words: qaz, wsx, edc, and rfv. They correspond to the four ngers of your left hand, counted left to right starting from the little nger. Use your imagination to memorize these words. Invent some funny prononciation for them. For example, pronounce these words to yourself like this: qaz wsx edc rfv quasi wessex educ (short for education) are-fever

To make sure you memorize these four words and associate them with ngers of your left hand, repeat these words to yourself in the order of your ngers, each time tapping that For now, we ignore the punctuation keys, special characters, nger. Perform two exercises: First, tap with the nger that and digits; we concentrate on the letters. The keyboard has corresponds to a given word. Second, tap with some nger a strange slanted shape; the letters are not quite on top of and say aloud the corresponding word. each other. However, you should imagine that the keyboard is a rectangular array of letters, 3 10. Each vertical row has three letters, except for some rows at far right. The rows read Lesson 2: Right hand QAZ, WSX, EDC, RFV, TGB, YHN, UJM, IK, OL, P. (Remember, the punctuation keys are ignored for now.) The nger number 2 (the index nger) of the right hand The idea of touch-typing can be summarized as follows: rests in the vertical row UJM. The nger number 3 (the middle nger) of the right hand rests in the vertical row You type the letter keys with eight ngers (thumbs are IK. The nger number 4 (the ring nger) of the right hand used only to press the space bar). rests in the vertical row OL. The nger number 5 (the little nger) of the right hand rests in the vertical row P. (Well, 1 Typing speed is sometimes measured in words per minute but this is ambiguous, so I talk about keystrokes per minute, that is, the number this is a very short row, but the nger number 5 will eventuof all keystrokes including letters, digits, spaces, and punctuation. ally have more work to do.)

Lesson 1: General ideas. Left hand

You now need to memorize the four nonsensical words: ujm, ik, ol, and p. They correspond to the four ngers of your right hand, counted left to right starting from the index nger. Use your imagination to memorize these words. Invent some funny prononciation for them. For example, pronounce these words to yourself like this: ujm ik ol p you-jump eye-ck ole (short for old) pee

Sheet 1 Sheet 1 has many rectangles; each rectangle contains a schematic diagram of the ten vertical rows. Each row corresponds to one nger of one hand. (As explained before, the index ngers are responsible for two rows each.) In every little diagram, one of the vertical rows is lled in black, indicating one of the ngers. Place your ngers on a table top. For each diagram, you need to tap the nger indicated and then you need to say aloud the corresponding word. For instance, the diagram

To make sure you memorize these four words and associate them with ngers of your right hand, repeat these words to means the left nger 3, so you tap that nger and say edc. yourself in the order of your ngers, each time tapping that The diagram nger. Perform two exercises: First, tap with the nger that corresponds to a given word. Second, tap with some nger and say aloud the corresponding word. means the right index nger shifted to the left, so you move the right index nger a little to the left, tap, say yhn, and return the nger to its normal position. If you had to move the index nger to the side when you tapped, you need to return the index nger to its normal position right after you tapped it. Do not let an index nger Each of the the index ngers actually services two rows. The stay in a sideways shifted position! index nger of the left hand normally rests within the RFV If you cannot recall the word corresponding to some nger, row but will move a little to the right in order to press any of maybe you can remember the word for a nearby nger? This the keys in the TGB row. The index nger of the right hand may help recalling the right word. will normally be within the UJM row but will move a little to the left in order to press any of the keys in the YHN row. Sheet 2 You now need to memorize the words tgb and yhn. ProSheet 2 has many rectangles; each rectangle contains a word nounce them, for example, like this: (drawn vertically). You need to tap the nger corresponding to that word. For examole, if you see tgb tee-gee-bee (not KGB and not TGV but close) E yhn yeah-hon (short for yes, honey) D C Now you can practice all the possible 10 words. Repeat these words to yourself, each time tapping that nger, in the order of your ngers. Note that you need to move the left index nger to the right when you tap tgb (and the right index nger to the left when you tap yhn) and then you need to return the index nger to its usual place. Do not let an index nger stay in a sideways shifted position! then you need to tap the left nger 3 (the middle nger). Again, it is important that you return the index ngers back to their normal positions after moving them sideways. For example, when you see T G B

Lesson 3: Index ngers moving sideways

Perform two exercises: First, tap with the nger that corre- you need to extend the left index nger a little to the right, sponds to a given word. Second, tap with some nger and tap, and then immediately return the index nger to its norsay aloud the corresponding word. mal position. There are four versions of Sheet 1 and four versions of Sheet 2; each time the diagrams were generated randomly. You should Lesson 4: Practicing the vertical rows practice rst Sheet 1, then Sheet 2, then another Sheet 1, then another Sheet 2, and so on. You can also practice a half of Sheet 1, then a half of Sheet 2, then the second half of Sheet 1, You have by now memorized the words qaz, wsx, edc, rfv, then the second half of Sheet 2. tgb, yhn, ujm, ik, ol, and p. Now you will practice all the ten words in random order. This is most easily done with Going through one complete sheet takes about 5 minutes. Practice no more than four sheets a day. special exercise sheets (see Exercise Sheets 1 and 2). 2

In this exercise you will be shifting ngers up and down as you tap. It is very important to return every nger to its If you have more time to practice, here is another set of ex- normal position immediately after tapping. Never leave any ercises that can be performed with the same sheets 1 and nger in a shifted position! 2. You need to go through the four versions of Sheet 3. Do For each diagram in Sheet 1, tap the nger that is in the not practice Sheet 3 many times in a row; instead, practice mirror symmetric position and say aloud the corresponding a half of Sheets 1 and 2 each, and then Sheet 3. Although word. For example, left nger 3 is mirror symmetric to right practice sessions are very short, you could leave several hours nger 3. So if you see the right nger 3 marked, you tap the between practicing sessions. Turn Sheet 1 upside-down to get left nger 3 and say edc. a dierent exercise sheet. For each word in Sheet 2, tap the nger that is in the mirror symmetric position to that normally corresponding to that word. For example, edc normally corresponds to the left Lesson 7: Take back the keyboard nger 3, so if you see edc then you tap with the right nger 3. Now you are ready to type on a real keyboard.

The mirror exercises

Lesson 5: Looking at letters and typing rows

This exercise is performed with Sheet 3. Sheet 3 contains random letters. You need to look at each letter and say aloud the word in which this letter occurs. For example, if you see the letter G then you say tgb because this is the word that contains G. Then you need to tap the nger responsible for the word tgb (this is the left index nger shifted to the right). Repeat the same for each letter in Sheet 3.

The position of the hands The index ngers (that is, the ngers number 2) are positioned on the keys F and J; note that these keys have small indentations these are made to help you put the index ngers in the correct position by touching the keyboard, that is, without looking at the keyboard. After you nd the two indentations, put your middle ngers next to the index ngers in the horizontal row, and put all other ngers onto the neighboring keys in the middle horizontal row. This is the normal position of your ngers while typing. The wrists must be high over the keyboard, and the eight working ngers must lightly touch the eight keys A, S, D, F, H, J, K, L. It is quite important to maintain this position of all the ngers while typing.

There are four versions of Sheet 3, each randomly generated. Do not practice Sheet 3 many times in a row; instead, practice a half of Sheets 1 and 2 and then Sheet 3. Although practice sessions are very short, you could leave several hours between The Shift keys practicing sessions.

The two Shift keys are pressed by extending the left and right ngers 5 (the little ngers). If you need to press Shift-A, you Lesson 6: Actually typing letters deduce that A belongs to qaz, which is on the nger 5 in the left hand, and so it is convenient to press the Shift key with This exercise is again performed with Sheet 3. This time, you the nger 5 of the right hand together with A. need to move each nger a little more precisely. Sheet 3 contains random letters. You need to look at each letter, determine the word in which this letter occurs, determine the nger responsible for that word, and tap the nger. However, during this lesson you will need to move each nger a little more precisely. If the letter is at the beginning of the word, you need to shift your nger a little upwards when you tap. If the letter is the third letter of the word, you need to shift your nger a little down when you tap. If the letter is the second letter of the word, you tap the nger in its normal position. If you are tapping with an index nger in a sideways position, you need to shift additionally to the sideways shifting. Diving in

Take some short text and put it in front of you and/or to the left of the keyboard. You do not need to look at the keyboard! Look into the text instead. Look at the rst letter of the text. For example, if the text is A quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog the rst letter could be the capital A. Determine the word that contains this letter; this is qaz and is typed with the left nger 5. The Shift key is therefore pressed with the right nger 5. Since A is the second letter in qaz, the left nger 5 remains in its normal position and presses the key. Done! Move the right nger 5 back to its For example, if you see W you determine that it belongs to normal position. Now go on to the second letter. Continue wsx, and you determine that wsx is tapped with the left until your text is typed. nger 4. Since W is the rst letter in wsx, you shift the left The Space bar is pressed with either of the thumbs. nger 4 a little upwards and then tap it. Then you move the left nger 4 back to its normal position. After that you go on The more you practice, the faster your typing will become. to the next letter. Remember: 3

 Never look back at the keyboard! Return every nger to its normal position! Digits, punctuation, other keys Digits are typed with the same eight ngers extended all the way up. It is not dicult to gure out how to type digits: the left ngers 5 to 2 type the digits 0 to 4, and the right ngers 2 to 5 type the digits 5 to 9. Punctuation keys (. , : ; - ? ! and so on), as well as any special keys such as @ or #, need to be memorized separately. Many often used keys, like the period (right nger 3, shifted down) and the comma (right nger 4, shifted down), will be memorized quickly once you start typing. If you need to type a lot of special symbols, you will nd that you automatically remember their positions with practice.

cannot prohibit other people from distributing your modied versions or from modifying them further.
A In order to modify the document, you need the L TEX sources. The sources are bundled in the PDF le as a tar.gz archive. To extract the sources, you may use the free utility pdftk and type the following command:

pdftk touch_typing.pdf unpack_files where touch_typing.pdf is the name of this PDF le. The archive touch_typing.tar.gz will be created in the current directory. If you want to change the source and to rebuild this PDF le, you need to execute the following commands (long lines were broken by the backslash \ symbol): pdflatex typing.tex pdflatex sheets.tex tar zcvf touch_typing.tar.gz typing.lyx \ typing.tex sheets.tex sheets.pdf random.tex \ arrayjob.sty multido.sty multido.tex pdftk typing.pdf sheets.pdf cat \ output touch_typing.pdf pdftk touch_typing.pdf attach_files \ touch_typing.tar.gz output touch_typing_guide.pdf These commands are also given in the Makefile, so you can execute them by running make. In order to adapt the exercises to the keyboard layout, you need to edit the le sheets.tex and modify the arrays named Rows and Letters at the beginning of that le. Examples are given there for the German keyboard layout.

Final comments
The method presented here is radically dierent from the traditional method. The traditional method is to make you type a-f -a-f and so on, until you slowly learn the keyboard, one letter key at a time. In the present method, you rst need to learn those funny short words qaz, wsx, and so on and then you just need to use your imagination to control your ngers. It is perfectly possible to learn and to practice this method without an actual keyboard. The history of my acquaintance with the method is the following. There was a researcher in psychology whose name I never knew; her thesis was that it is much easier for humans to learn and remember words even short and nonsensical words like wsx than to remember individual letters, and furthermore that the human brain can manipulate such short words much easier than individual letters. To test this hypothesis, she designed a course of touch-typing for school children, very much like the one I present here. One of her friends organized this class to be given in a local high school on a volunteer basis. I was one of the subjects in her class. Everyone in the class learned to touch-type in four half-hour lessons. In that class we learned the keyboard layout of a Russian typewriter; later I used the same method to teach myself the QWERTY layout. Indeed, it appears to be much easier and quicker to learn short words than to learn one letter at a time. During the practice exercises, the memorized short words reinforce the learning of the keyboard layout in a way that is not available with the traditional method.
A Obtaining the L TEX source of this document
A I produced this text with the LYX and L TEX document processing systems. You may distribute this text according to the GNU Free Documentation License. (Look it up on the Web if you need to see the precise terms of that license.) In particular, you are entitled to modify this document. If you distribute a modied version of this text, you must distribute under the terms of the same license. In other words, you

Sheet 1 For each of the shown ngers, you should pronounce the corresponding word to yourself.

Sheet 1 For each of the shown ngers, you should pronounce the corresponding word to yourself.

Sheet 1 For each of the shown ngers, you should pronounce the corresponding word to yourself.

Sheet 1 For each of the shown ngers, you should pronounce the corresponding word to yourself.

Sheet 2 For each of the given words, you should lift and tap the corresponding nger.

E D C R F V U J M E D C T G B P

Q A Z I K

T G B Q A Z P

W S X Y H N U J M O L

Q A Z W S X U J M W S X T G B P

R F V Q A Z O L

O L

Q A Z T G B E D C Q A Z Q A Z T G B U J M R F V I K

Y H N R F V W S X P

U J M Y H N O L

O L

T G B R F V O L

W S X I K

Q A Z W S X R F V I K

U J M Y H N W S X R F V Y H N W S X

R F V T G B O L

T G B T G B W S X P

I K

R F V T G B Y H N W S X T G B

W S X W S X R F V Q A Z T G B

E D C Y H N U J M

Y H N E D C

U J M E D C

R F V

Sheet 2 For each of the given words, you should lift and tap the corresponding nger.

Y H N I K

E D C O L

I K

E D C I K

R F V U J M E D C O L

I K

W S X Q A Z O L

I K

E D C E D C Y H N W S X I K

W S X U J M Y H N P

T G B O L

Y H N Q A Z Y H N P

Y H N U J M Y H N Q A Z E D C R F V U J M Y H N T G B

U J M I K

E D C Y H N W S X I K

O L

Y H N P

T G B E D C U J M Y H N I K

E D C P

R F V T G B P

R F V W S X P

I K

Y H N R F V E D C Y H N

I K

Q A Z O L

U J M Q A Z T G B

W S X T G B

Q A Z O L

Y H N Y H N

Sheet 2 For each of the given words, you should lift and tap the corresponding nger.

Q A Z Q A Z W S X Y H N U J M Y H N W S X E D C Q A Z E D C O L

O L

E D C O L

W S X O L

E D C Y H N T G B I K

W S X Q A Z U J M P

O L

O L

T G B W S X R F V Y H N W S X P

E D C T G B I K

O L

I K

I K

U J M Y H N E D C O L

R F V O L

E D C P

I K

Q A Z O L

I K

T G B O L

W S X Y H N Y H N E D C T G B R F V

O L

Q A Z O L

T G B Q A Z Y H N O L

R F V I K

E D C O L

W S X Q A Z P

I K

R F V R F V

I K

T G B P

E D C

E D C

Y H N

Q A Z

Sheet 2 For each of the given words, you should lift and tap the corresponding nger.

Y H N W S X P

Q A Z Y H N P

O L

I K

Q A Z U J M W S X E D C Y H N U J M R F V W S X Q A Z U J M Q A Z R F V

O L

I K

T G B U J M W S X I K

W S X W S X I K

E D C P

T G B U J M P

O L

Q A Z I K

O L

U J M P

O L

Q A Z O L

T G B O L

Y H N T G B U J M I K

Y H N Q A Z E D C O L

Q A Z T G B E D C P

Q A Z I K

E D C I K

U J M I K

I K

O L

I K

U J M T G B R F V

U J M Q A Z P

W S X I K

E D C E D C

T G B P

Q A Z

E D C

Sheet 3 For each of the shown letters, you should pronouce the corresponding word and then lift and tap the corresponding nger (either in normal position or in shifted position, see text).

Sheet 3 For each of the shown letters, you should pronouce the corresponding word and then lift and tap the corresponding nger (either in normal position or in shifted position, see text).

Sheet 3 For each of the shown letters, you should pronouce the corresponding word and then lift and tap the corresponding nger (either in normal position or in shifted position, see text).

Sheet 3 For each of the shown letters, you should pronouce the corresponding word and then lift and tap the corresponding nger (either in normal position or in shifted position, see text).