FluencyLesson 9 of 20 · Awkward reaches at speed
Same-finger pairs at speed
The pairs that live on one finger, in real words, at a pace where they start to go wrong. Learn where your ceiling is and why.
- New keys
- No new keys
- To pass
- Done when the check reaches 94% accuracy and 32 words a minute.
Lesson 9 is locked
It opens when you pass the check in lesson 8 (Carrier words: putting it together). Lessons open one at a time, in order.
Foundations introduced same-finger pairs as a thing to be careful with. At thirty words a minute they become the thing that sets your ceiling. Every other kind of pair can be overlapped: one finger pressing while another moves. A same-finger pair cannot, so it is typed at the speed of a single finger travelling between two keys, and no amount of skill makes that faster than it is. What skill does is stop the pair from breaking your rhythm and stop the finger from hitting a neighbour when it hurries.
The pairs to know by heart: ed and de on the left middle finger; ce and ec on the same finger; un, nu, um, mu, hu, uh and my on the right index finger; lo and ol on the right ring finger; ki and ik on the right middle finger; gr, rg, tr, rt, br, fr and ft on the left index finger; sw and ws on the left ring finger. When one of these is coming, the pace should not change, but the pair should be allowed its extra beat.
The drills push the pace on words dense with these pairs, and they do not block, so you will see exactly which pair fails first. That is useful information. A finger that reliably hits the neighbour on one particular pair is a finger that is rolling the wrist to save time; the fix is to slow that pair down and let the finger travel properly, then build back up.
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