FoundationsLesson 27 of 30 · Whole hands, whole words
Double letters and common endings
Two of the same key in a row, and the word endings that English reuses everywhere: ing, tion, ed, ly.
- New keys
- No new keys
- To pass
- Done when the check reaches 92% accuracy and 20 words a minute.
Lesson 27 is locked
It opens when you pass the check in lesson 26 (Same-finger reaches). Lessons open one at a time, in order.
A double letter is the simplest same-finger pair there is: the finger does not travel at all, it just presses twice. That sounds easy, and it is, but it has its own error: pressing three times, or once. At speed a double letter is a rhythm problem, not a position problem. The two presses need to be distinct and even, like two taps on a table, and the drills here give you enough of them to find that rhythm.
The second half of the lesson is about endings. English builds thousands of words from a small set of suffixes, and if your hands know ing, tion, ed and ly as single shapes, every word that ends in one of them gets its last few letters for free. Typing is the same with reading: a fluent reader does not spell out reading letter by letter, and neither should a fluent typist.
From this lesson on the speed targets rise a little faster, because with the whole keyboard and these shapes in hand there is nothing left that should be slow for positional reasons. Twenty words a minute is the target here; twenty-five is the target for graduating from Foundations.
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