How to type faster without looking at the keyboard?

By user60251 - updated: 9 years, 2 months ago - 11 messages

Good day everyone! Does anyone here can give me some tips on How to type faster without looking at the keyboard? I'm just a beginner, I just actually made my account this morning. Well, I'm really tempted to look at the keyboard but still I cant type faster. So sad, Help me guys. Thank you.
By toddhicks209 - posted: 9 years, 2 months ago

You're just going to have to memorize the keyboard. However, there will be times when you will have to look at it, such as when you must type punctuation marks or symbols.
By youdztherider - posted: 9 years, 2 months ago

Yah that's right
By user60251 - posted: 9 years, 2 months ago

Okay. I'll try this dude
By user60251 - posted: 9 years, 2 months ago

Really? So, how can I overcome this problem?
By mmjepxvh - posted: 9 years, 2 months ago

I would ignore the advice about needing to look at the keyboard for punctuation marks. Knowing how to touch type properly includes the whole keyboard. I would argue you should aim to never look at the keyboard for anything, even for hotkeys, the function keys, etc. One of the reasons I retaught myself to touch type with proper form is because I couldn't reliably touch-type on the number row and I was constantly mixing ' with <enter>, and m with , and .

Mostly this was coming from having developed bad habits where I only used my pinky fingers for the modifier keys and homed my fingers so my index fingers covered too much and I was moving my hands around too much to be consistent. While I had reasonably good bursts of speed when typing simple lower-case text without punctuation or numbers, my speed plummeted when I needed to use keys outside the alpha group, like when writing code or inputting data that was mixed text and numeric.

Eventually, I just got really frustrated with a typing speed that could never really get above 55 WPM for any length of time, and could be as low as 25 if I was writing code that was symbol-heavy. I decided about a month ago that I would finally force myself to use proper form. The most useful site to teach this, I found, was keybr.com. The computer-generated lessons will adapt to you as you learn, and keys are introduced in order based on how common they are in English text. You also have the option of including capitals and punctuation later on once you have mastered plain alpha-key typing.

The key for me was just never looking at the keyboard. To resist the urge, I put it on my lap under my desk. This is also a pretty ergonomic position too, so it helped get me through the discomfort of having to retrain most of my keystrokes to use the right finger and motions.

Here's the thing though: your speed will plummet at first if you are accustomed to looking at the keyboard and especially so if you use the wrong finger for some keys, like I did. You have to get through this trough of poorer performance if you want to really improve. It took me probably 50 hours of practice spread over a little more than two weeks before I could even match my old speed. After a week of trying to retrain myself, I had basically ruined my typing speed, because I was stuck between styles and only able to type 30 WPM or less.

It really paid off though, because now--only a month later--I can consistently hit 80 WPM typing simple passages, even when there is moderately heavy punctuation. More difficult passages with complex, unfamiliar words and brackets and numbers can trip me up, but I can still maintain 60 WPM across almost any quote on this site, something I had no hope of doing before.

Now I'm moving on to other things, like getting my speed up on the number row and on lesser used punctuation using Typing.io.
By kaikaikaikaikai - posted: 9 years, 2 months ago

I have little to add to mmjepxvh's post, but I want to say that I'd also stay clear from looking at the keyboard for anything else than cleaning it. If you want to be able to type fast in real-life applications such as writing coherent sentences or code, you will need to memorize punctuation marks as well as numbers.

The tool I used when I first started out was http://www.sense-la…

They start with "j" and "f" and the space bar in lesson 1, and let you type a random sequence of those. Each lesson adds two keys, so lesson 2 is "j", "f", "k" and "d" + spacebar. Repeat the drills until you reach a speed of 30 and an accuracy of 95% or better, then move on to the next lesson. It's boring and needs a lot of concentration, but I learned touch typing from scratch that way and never went back to my old hunt-and-peck after a week's training.
Updated 9 years, 2 months ago
By toddhicks209 - posted: 9 years, 2 months ago

You said you're working on mastering the number row. I think it's easier to use the ten-key pad on the right side of the keyboard but it's up to you how you want to type numbers.
By svillars - posted: 9 years, 2 months ago

These are the biggest milestones I encountered as I progressed. Keep in mind... this was over the course of about 10 years.

Step 1 (beginner): memorize those keys so you never have to look at the keyboard.
Step 2 (50-80wpm): become so familiar with where those keys are that you no longer have to think before you press them.
Step 3 (80-100wpm): begin to familiarize yourself with typically used letter combinations for larger words so you no longer fumble keys when you come across them.
Step 4(100+wpm): begin to familiarize yourself with less common words so you no longer fumble keys when you come across them.
By braylin675 - posted: 9 years, 2 months ago

I try not to look at the keyboard but I miss every letter.
By toddhicks209 - posted: 9 years, 2 months ago

Once you fully memorize the keyboard, you will hit any key at will more times than not without having to look where you're typing.
By warriors30 - posted: 9 years, 2 months ago

Usually when you want to type faster you should check out those typing games. Those typing games come in handy sometimes. If you don't want to do typing games just start off with lessons on the keyboard then slowly start to write sentences and paragraphs and soon you will know the keyboard. But sometimes its hard when you have to do punctuation marks but you will get used to it in a snap. Well not in a snap like literally just I mean like it will come to you easily. That wasn't helpful at all..........