Home row and posture: the base of every speed gain
Where your fingers rest, how you sit, and why both decide your ceiling.
Most people who type under 30 words per minute are not slow because their fingers are slow. They are slow because their hands leave the keyboard to look, then search for the way back. Fixing that one habit is worth more than any drill.
The home row
Rest your left fingers on A, S, D and F and your right fingers on J, K, L and the semicolon. The two bumps on F and J let you find the position without looking. Every other key is reached from here and your fingers return here after each press. Thumbs rest on the space bar.
Each finger owns a column: the index fingers cover two columns each (F, G, R, T, V, B on the left; J, H, U, Y, M, N on the right), the others cover one. Reaching with the wrong finger is the usual reason for errors on P, Q and the number row.
Posture
- Sit with your back supported and both feet on the floor.
- Elbows at about ninety degrees, wrists straight and floating, not resting on the desk edge.
- Screen at eye level so you are not looking down at the keyboard by habit.
Wrist pain after long sessions almost always traces back to wrists bent upward on a desk edge. A folded towel under the forearms fixes it for most people.
A two-week plan
- Days 1–4: type only home-row words (sad, lad, fall, ask) for ten minutes, eyes on the screen. Speed does not matter.
- Days 5–9: add the top row, then the bottom row. Keep accuracy above 95 percent before adding more.
- Days 10–14: take the 60-second test once a day and write down net WPM. Expect a dip in the first days, then a steady rise.
The dip is normal. You are replacing a fast bad habit with a slow good one, and the good one has a much higher ceiling.
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