Touch Typing

Mistakes happen quickly on the computer keyboard. Because of its sensitivity, the keyboard offers both challenges and rewards. Those rewards come after a bit of practice and study to take advantage of what the keyboard gives you. Mostly those advantages will be learned through practice and additional instruction. At this point we just touch some basic points. Here are some tips to make life simpler, and your work more efficient.

Hold your hand with your thumb on the space bar, first finger on the "F" (left-hand) and "J" (right-hand). Then let your fingers naturally fall so that each rests on top of the next key along the same horizontal row.

As you type, don't hold down the key after you depress it. If you do keep your finger depressed on a particular key, it will keep sending the computer commands. In this case it will be sending specific commands to repeat itself. So your result will be a string of unwanted characters displayed onscreen.

Understanding the keyboard also means learning the special functions of certain keys. On the computer keyboard you often use two or more keys at the same time, indicated by the "+" sign. For example in managing applications you wil learn that "Ctrl + Alt + Delete" is a decision of last resort. You depress these three keys simultaneously when you just want to get out of whatever muddle that the computer has left you with.

You will see a key marked "Ctrl" This key helps you give the computer commands in combination with other keys (such as Ctrl+P to print a document in many programs). Holding down the shift key causes the keyboard to print either the upper case of an alphabetic character or the top character if two are displayed on the individual key.

The tilde (pronounced "till-deh") character is in the upper left-hand portion of your keyboard. You will sometimes see it as part of a web address (www.abc.com/~board) to indicate that one site is piggybacking on another.

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