If you get your typing skills right, you will be saving a lot of your daily hours that you waste fighting with the keyboard to finish up your work. So here we start, read all the points and try to follow all of them daily while you work. You yourself will notice the change in your typing skills after some time.
1. Position
Sitting position is very important. A bad position can affect your typing speed and can lead to many errors.
- Sit up straight, with your feet flat on the ground.
- Keyboard should be at an appropriate height for your fingers, keep it at waist level.
- Type using pads of finger rather using tips or nails.
2. Placement of Fingers
First of all, use both hands for typing equally. Do not rely on the right hand for major typing part. Put your fingers in the home position described in the image below. Place your right index finger on the "J" key and let the other three fingers fall naturally on "K", "L" and ";" keys. Place your left index finger on "F" key and let the other three naturally fall on "D", "S" and "A" keys, and your thumb for space bar.
3. Defined Motion
Never be hasty while typing, because hitting the keys hard and fast won't increase your speed or productivity, you will just end up hitting multiple keys. Type with quick but defined motion, aim your hit, and be gentle with the keyboard.
4. Avoid Seeing
Stop looking at the keyboard from now on, try to type without taking your eyes off the screen. Initially you will find it difficult, but do not give up. Try to memorize the positions of alphabets and judge the distance with your fingers without seeing.
5. Do not confine yourself to alphabets
Increasing typing speed doesn't means to write words correctly and with great speed. But you must also be familiar with other keys on the keyboard. Numbers, special characters, function keys, Alt, Ctrl, Shift etc must be within your reach, and that too without seeing the keyboard. You can practice by typing in mathematical expressions, questions or by using emoticon symbols while chatting.
6. Listen and Type
Try to type whatever you hear, switch on to some interesting news channel and start typing while listening to it. Initially you will lag behind, but with time try to catch up with the running news and you don't have to look at the keyboard. You can even try this with songs you listen, or the people talking around you.
7. Tip for Professionals
In case you are trying to receive a typing certificate, try (if possible) practicing on a regular keyboard and not a laptop keyboard. The letters on most of the laptop keyboards are closer together than the ones you'll be using for typing test.
Additional Tips
- Type each key from left to right a s d f j k l ; , you must not move your fingers from their positions, just press the keys that they are resting on. Repeat the same, but this time capitalize them (A S D F J K L :) , do so by using Shift Key with your pinkie finger while typing other keys with rest fingers. Use left Shift Key for letters in the left half, and right Shift Key for letters in the right half. Practice this daily.
- Get addicted to gain more speed while typing, by playing this game TypeRacer and compete with other users to type faster.
- Use other freely available Softwares to help you out with your typing techniques.
- Rapid Typing Zone is also an interactive and fun place to enhance your typing skills and practice.
