Touch typing basics – The ultimate beginner’s guide with all you need to know

Touch typing – such an amazing typing skill that lets you reach speeds of upwards of 250s WPM. In this article, I will tell you all the basics stuff that you need to know before even starting to learn touch typing.

Those are the fundamentals that you need in order to learn the proper technique. This article will NOT teach you to touch typing. It will only give you basic information and things that are essential.

Let’s start from the beginning:

What exactly is touch typing?

Many people might already know it but here it is to make your life easier. If you want to read more about what touch typing is you can read my article about it here – ARTICLE WHAT IS TOUCH TYPING

Here I will only put a quick summary of the most important things:

Touch typing is a typing skill that uses muscle memory to develop semi-automatic typing habits. Because of that touch typing technique opens a door to a much higher speed than any regular typing method could provide. It makes use of all your ten fingers almost simultaneously which gives much better movement efficiency.

That’s a quick summary of what touch typing is – a skill of typing. It doesn’t need to be fast typing. It can also serve more slow pace typing but it reaches its full potential in the higher numbers.

What is the difference between regular typing and touch typing?

What is so special about touch typing that makes it superior to any regular typing method?

Let’s think about this – how do you regularly type? If you never learned any more advanced typing methods you need to do a few things. Thirst look down at your keyboard, find a proper key to type, press that key, and then look back up.

After some time you might make it a little bit faster like pressing two keys before looking back up. Either way, you have no way to reach the highest speeds. Plus you need to look up and down constantly. That just puts a lot of stress on your neck.

There’s a big difference in the effects that those typing methods have because there’s a big difference in the technique that they use:

Touch typing is a skill that uses muscle memory to automate typing on the keyboard. It creates a muscle memory picture of the whole keyboard that you know exactly where each key is (without even looking). Plus it has advanced typing techniques. Regular typing has no such thing. You need to look down at your keyboard each time you want to type.

That’s why touch typing is superior to any regular typing method. With touch typing, you not only remember the whole layout. You have this in your muscle memory. If you want to type the letter „R” you know exactly where to move your finger.

Not only that. After some time you start doing it automatically. That’s what creates such high possibilities with touch typing. That’s why you can learn to type at the speed of your talking and even faster.

How do I touch type?

„Touch type” – is that even a verb in English? Well, I guess it is now. How do you actually type using touch typing? The idea is really simple, it is the execution that is difficult.

First, you place your fingers on the home row of the keyboard. Your left-hand index finger rests on the letter „F” and the right index finger on „J”. Of course looking at the QWERTY keyboard which is the most keyboard out there.

There are a few more fingers that you need to place on your keyboard. No, I didn’t forget about them. The rest of the fingers need to be next to your index fingers on the same row. Like that:

Next, you look at the screen or think about the letter that you want to type. Then you type it from your memory. It’s that simple. After some practice, you stop typing letters and you start typing whole words instantly.

Typing using the touch typing technique is really simple (the idea) and hard (the execution). You just put your fingers in the right place on the keyboard (as in the photo). Then think about the letter that you want to type and press the key from your memory (without looking down at the keyboard). The hard part is developing this memory.

Sounds simple, right? But how can you do this?

It all comes with practice. Just by opening a typing test and practicing over and over again, you will eventually get the memory that you need. But there are ways to make it faster.

How can you learn touch typing?

This is the question that everybody wants to know the answer to. How can you learn touch typing as fast and easy as you can?

I will tell you this: If you don’t want to put your time and effort into learning this skill you better walk off. You will waste your time.

I won’t tell you lies about it. This is how it is. You can’t learn touch typing without practice. Without spending your time and effort on practicing muscle memory and coordination of your fingers. If you just want a quick tip that will make you instantly type using touch typing then you’re in the wrong place.

Learning touch typing requires time and dedication. First, you need to know the important fundamentals. Next, you need to put the keyboard layout into your muscle memory. Then comes the fun part – practice and practice to get better at touch typing. There are ways to learn quickly but you can’t skip the practice.

The right order of certain exercises, a few tips here and there, and experience from somebody that already can type using the touch typing technique. Those things will help you a lot along the way. They won’t skip the learning part but make it more efficient and save you from mistakes that will hold you back.

Where could you find such things? Where can you find the knowledge of a person who already has this skill?

Here I am to save the day! I’ve created an amazing touch typing course that will help you in no time!

I’m kidding. Not about the course part. I was kidding about the almighty-remedy-to-everything course. I did create one and I’ve put in my whole experience with touch typing all along those years and my knowledge of what works best. It will help you but won’t do your work for you. You can check it out here – MY TOUCH TYPING COURSE

How many hours a day should I practice typing?

How much time a day should you practice touch typing? The more the better, right? At least that’s what we tend to think.

If you practice this principle then yes, you will make a lot of progress early on. But a bit later you will just burn out. All of this beginning fuel and willingness to practice will be gone. You won’t make it and you won’t learn the skill.

That’s what happens to most people trying to learn a new skill. They have great motivation in the beginning and then they burn out.

I made a detailed article about the time it takes to learn touch typing. You can get a general idea of how long it will take you to learn this skill. You can read more about it here – ARTICLE TIME TO LEARN TOUCH TYPING

Some things just take time. It’s hard to tell how long you need to practice a day to make good progress and still not burn out. I talk about it in my touch typing course. I do my best there to make sure that you keep on learning. Until you reach the level of touch typing that you want to reach.

Now I will give you a general rule about practicing touch typing:

Practicing touch typing is very important to learn this skill. You don’t need to spend hours every day learning. Even more – you shouldn’t. It will make you burn out very quickly. Take a different strategy – practice for 15 – 30 minutes every day and be patient. It will take time but you will see the results sooner than you think.

That is a good rule of thumb. Practice just 15 – 30 minutes every day. I’m talking about intentional practice. Time spent on developing your touch typing skill. Working on your muscle memory and creating automatic finger movement.

You don’t need much practice time every day if it’s time well spent.

Can you teach yourself touch typing?

Can one learn by himself to type using the touch typing technique? Or do you need a special course for that?

The short answer is: Yes, you can. You don’t need my course, you don’t need anything more. At the end of the day if you punch the wall enough times it will eventually fall. If you have enough determination to do so.

No course is required to learn touch typing. You can learn it just by yourself. By practicing over and over again. Learning from your mistakes and fighting bad habits that you create along the way. You can do that. I did it that way.

After some time and frustration, I changed my keyboard layout and started all over again. From scratch. I’ve made so many mistakes and created so many bad habits that I decided it will be faster to learn it all over again than to get rid of those bad habits.

Touch typing is a skill that can be learned by yourself. Through trial and error, you can eventually learn this typing skill. But just like any other skill, you can learn it more effectively. By using the proper learning process and the right resources you can make learning touch typing faster and more effective.

You can learn as I did. Through trial and error. Or you can use my experience to never make those mistakes. To learn the best way that you can and avoid all the frustration.

All I’ve learned in years of acquiring and using touch typing is in my course. If you want to use this knowledge you can check out my course here – MY TOUCH TYPING COURSE

How do I get better at touch typing?

What if you already know the basics? What if you can type at a certain level? How can you improve this?

As I said before, touch typing is a muscle memory-based skill. This means that with my intentional repetition you can get better at it.

You know what they say: „Practice makes perfect”. It’s the same principle here. In order to get better at touch typing, you need to spend time practicing this skill. However, this can’t be just any practice. It has to be intentional.

You will improve a bit just by casually typing without thinking about improving touch typing. You will slowly get better at it. But if you want to make real progress you need to practice intentionally.

Touch typing is a muscle memory-based skill. In order to get better at typing using this technique, you need to practice it. Even more, this practice needs to be intentional, well thought and consistent. There are ways to make this practice the best it can be. Especially then – you need to practice to get better.

There’s no way around it. You have to spend your time and put some effort into learning touch typing.

How long does it take to type fast?

How long will it be before you learn touch typing? Well, there are many factors – you could be learning by yourself using trial and error, you could be optimizing your practice time, and you could even not practice at all.

There are many factors that affect how fast you learn touch typing. However, I can give you a rough idea of how long it will take you.

A more detailed analysis of the time it takes to learn touch typing is in my other article. It is all about time for touch typing. You can check it out here – ARTICLE TIME TO LEARN TOUCH TYPING

Here I will only give you a straight answer to this question: How long does it take to learn touch typing?

Learning touch typing is a process and takes time. I’m assuming that you are starting from the complete beginner, practicing regularly (15 – 30 minutes a day) and using free tools. Learning by trial and error will take you 10 months to learn from scratch to 100 WPM. It will happen if you don’t learn major bad habits along the way.

Bad habits are something that can slow you down tremendously. When I was learning touch typing for the first time I made so many bad habits that I had to start all over again. I changed my layout and started learning from the very beginning. It was faster than trying to get rid of those bad habits.

My advice for you is to go slow. Focus on the fundamentals and don’t rush learning touch typing. It is hard to do especially since touch typing is all about going fast. But you need to type fast at the right moment.