Basic finger position

Make sure that you understand this concept.

• Feel the bumps on the "F" and "J" keys.

• The bumps are there to guide you to position your fingers on the keyboard without looking.

• Place your index fingers on the F and J keys. The other fingers should be placed on the keyboard as shown in the figure.

• Your fingers should lightly touch the keys.

• This is the "Basic Position". When not typing or after pressing a key your fingers should always return to the basic position.

• Ten finger touch typing can be summarized as: basic position and then press a key, then basic position again. And so forth.

• Each finger rests on a particular key in the home row of the keyboard when not typing, in order to keep "grounded" and oriented at all times. The thumbs remain floating in the air, or very gently in contact with the keys below.

• Each finger is responsible for a vertical column of keys, which you can think of as a "home column". The column is not straight up and down, but rather slopes up to the left.

• Both index fingers are responsible for an additional column, the one next to their home columns towards the middle of the keyboard.

• The thumbs are used for the space bar, and depending on the shape of your keyboard can also be used for the "Command" (Apple computers) or "Windows" (PCs) key.

• The left-hand pinky is also responsible for all the keys to the left of its home column, including the left shift key, caps lock, tab, tilde, escape and others.

• The right-hand pinky is a real workhorse, covering everything to the right of its home column. Take a look - there's a lot of stuff there!

•