FoundationsLesson 18 of 30 · Reaching down

Three rows: the whole alphabet

Every letter, the comma, the full stop and the slash, in sentences. Then a Weak Spot Drill across the whole keyboard.

New keys: No new keys
To pass: Done when the check reaches 92% accuracy and 15 words a minute.

Lesson 18 is locked

It opens when you pass the check in lesson 17 (Z and slash: little fingers down). Lessons open one at a time, in order.

This is the first lesson in which you can type any English word, and it is a good moment to stop and notice how far the hands have come. Three units ago you had two keys. Now every letter has a finger, every finger has a home, and every reach has a path back. What remains on the letter block is the Shift key, which is the whole of the next unit, and a few marks of punctuation that live on shifted keys.

The bottom row is the one most typists neglect, because its letters are less common and the downward reach is less natural than the upward one. So before the drills, do the same check as before: hands at rest, then touch each bottom-row key and return without looking. Z, X, C, V, B on the left; N, M, comma, full stop, slash on the right. Any hesitation is a key to revisit.

The bottom row. Curl down, press, come home.

Index fingers: V and B below F; N and M below J.
Middle fingers: C below D; comma below K.
Ring fingers: X below S; full stop below L.
Little fingers: Z below A; slash below the semicolon.

The check here asks for fifteen words a minute, which is the pace at which a careful typist reads a sentence and types it without pausing between words. If you pass it, you are typing, not hunting. If you do not, the lesson to revisit is whichever one your Weak Spot Drill points at.