Easy Ways to Improve Your Typing Skills (10 Fingers Typing Game)
Updated on: February 07, 2020
Does your job require copious amounts of typing during the day? Learning to type doesn’t have to be painful or unpleasant. Practicing some changes in your posture, hand placement on the keyboard, and some quick tips, you can improve your typing game in no time.
Check it out: Workplace Ergonomics (Infographic)
Posture Perfect
Proper ergonomics are often overlooked when typing away at work. Working on your posture and training yourself to sit in a better way, will make a big difference in combating “text neck” that is so common today.
Sit upright with a straight back
Position your monitor at eye level, so that you're not hunching over and bending your head down.
Plant your feet flat on the floor, with your legs bent at a 90-degree angle, or use a footstool under your desk.
Bend your arms at a 90-degree angle to your keyboard
Keep your wrists parallel with your mouse and keyboard, so they're not bending too far up or down.
Check it out: Spice Up Your Office Desk
It’s not easy to retain this exact position for an 8-hour workday and that’s understandable. Like anything else, practice will get you far. If you contribute enough time during the workday practicing this position, you will eventually be able to maintain this posture for the entire workday.
10 Finger Typing Method
You have ten fingers, so why not use them all to increase typing efficiency and speed? In elementary school or any part of your education, you probably learned about the “home keys”. The home keys are a basic start and end position for your fingers on the keyboard when typing. This placement allows you to type using all 10 fingers in the most efficient way possible to avoid hunting and pecking for letters.
If you use the 10-finger typing method correctly, you will be able to type without looking at the keyboard once.
Check it out: How To Type (Video)
Here’s the Method
On your left hand: On the right hand:
Index finger on the “F” Index finger on the “J”
Middle finger on the “D” Middle finger on the “K”
Ring finger on the “S” Next finger on the “L”
Pinky on the “A” Pinky on the “;” or “?”
Once you begin practicing this position, you will be able to reach all the other keys around the home position with ease and notice how much faster your typing becomes while your error rate decreases.
Shortcuts!
Work smart not harder, am I right? Improving your posture and typing skills is the best place to start, so when you feel confident in those areas, you can move on to utilizing some keyboard shortcuts to help improve your typing speed as well. Going from the mouse to the keyboard can be a tedious task that adds extra time to your typing, but with keyboard shortcuts, you can cut that time.
To copy and paste something, instead of clicking with the mouse on the desired content, you can use “CTRL + C” to copy the highlighted text and “CTRL + V” to paste the content in the position you desire. Yes, this tip is small and may not sound like it will save you time during the day but think about those long documents or forms that can be so tedious when you need to retype everything. Now, with this shortcut, you’re able to save yourself those extra few seconds or minutes when some online forms don’t allow you to right click or paste.
If you are trying to copy and paste content from the Internet, sometimes the formatting can transition to your own document and you need to change it. With the shortcut, “CTRL + SHIFT + V”, you can carry over the desired content without its original formatting.
Check it out: Take Control Of Your Life With These Word Shortcuts
Here’s a list of typing games and tutorials to get even more practice:
Good luck and happy typing!
SHARE BLOG POST