FoundationsLesson 5 of 30 · Resting position
G and H: the first reach
The index fingers stretch inward to G and H and come straight back. Your first reach, and the habit of returning home.
- New keys
- GH
- To pass
- Done when the check reaches 92% accuracy and 8 words a minute.
Lesson 5 is locked
It opens when you pass the check in lesson 4 (A and semicolon: the little fingers). Lessons open one at a time, in order.
Between F and J sit two keys nobody rests on: G and H. They belong to the index fingers, which are the strongest and most independent fingers you have, so they get the extra work. To type G, the left index finger slides one key to the right, presses, and slides back to F. To type H, the right index finger does the mirror: one key left, press, back to J. The word to remember is back. A reach is not finished until the finger is on its bump again.
This is the first time in the course that a finger leaves its home key, and it is where the two most common beginner faults appear. The first is moving the whole hand across instead of just the finger, which drags every other finger off its key. The second is not returning, so the finger hovers over G and the next F is typed as a G. Both are cured the same way: slow down, and make the return an actual movement you can feel.
You now have ten keys, and the number of real words has grown a lot. Words like glad, half, flag and shall are good practice because they mix a reach with home keys on both sides of it, which is exactly the pattern that later rows will ask for over and over.
glad hash half shall gas flag flash slash has had hall