Hold Shift with the opposite hand
A typing test with symbols is mostly a test of Shift. Most of the symbols on a US keyboard are shifted characters, and the most useful habit for typing them is to hold Shift with the hand that is not striking the key. For @, which the left ring finger types on the 2 key, the right little finger holds the right Shift. For an opening parenthesis, typed by the right ring finger on the 9, the left little finger holds the left Shift.
Using one hand for both twists it: the little finger stretches down to Shift while another finger on the same hand reaches up, and the whole hand comes off the home row. With the opposite hand on Shift, both hands stay close to home and the press becomes a short chord of Shift down, key, release.
Where the symbols sit on a US QWERTY keyboard
Every symbol on the number row shares a key with a digit: ! on 1, @ on 2, # on 3, $ on 4, % on 5, ^ on 6, & on 7, * on 8, and the parentheses on 9 and 0. The finger that types the digit also types its symbol, with Shift held by the other hand.
Nearly all the rest gather on the right. Square brackets and braces share the two keys right of P, with the backslash and vertical bar beyond them. The semicolon and colon share the key right of L, with the apostrophe and double quote next to it. Comma, period and slash sit at the right end of the bottom letter row, giving the angle brackets and question mark when shifted, while hyphen, underscore, equals and plus sit to the right of 0.
Layouts in other countries move many of these keys. In their 2018 study of typing, Dhakal and colleagues limited their sentences to simple punctuation for this reason, noting that keyboard standards differ mainly in where special characters are placed. This page assumes US QWERTY, which is also what the on-screen keyboard draws.
Your right little finger carries the load
Read that list again and notice how much of it lands on one finger. On a US layout, the right little finger types the semicolon, apostrophe, slash, hyphen, equals, both square brackets and the backslash, plus all their shifted forms, as well as 0, Enter and Backspace. It is your smallest finger, and it has the farthest reaches.
Those reaches deserve slow, deliberate practice. Keep the right index finger anchored on J while the little finger stretches, and bring the little finger back to the semicolon key after every reach. If brackets keep landing one key off, check that anchor first.
Who needs symbol speed
Programmers meet brackets, braces, quotes and operators on almost every line. Writers lean on quotation marks, apostrophes, colons and dashes. And nearly everyone types email addresses, prices, percentages and passwords, where a missed Shift produces a different character that looks perfectly plausible.
A password is the clearest case. You can't see what you typed, the characters are meant to be random, and a single wrong symbol locks you out. Finding # or & without looking pays off there more than anywhere.
A way to practice symbols
Go for accuracy first, and slower than feels natural. Pick one or two symbols that make you hesitate, check which finger types each and which hand holds Shift, and run the 30-second length several times with only those in mind. Then use one or two minutes to see whether the new reach survives among everything else.
Watch for two slips that come from rushing the chord. Let go of Shift too late and the next character comes out shifted too; let go too early and you get 2 where you wanted @. Keep the rhythm even, and release Shift only once the key has gone down.
Questions
- Which hand should hold Shift?
- The hand that is not typing the key. For a symbol on the left side, such as @ or $, hold the right Shift with your right little finger. For one on the right, such as a parenthesis or a question mark, hold the left Shift. Both hands then stay near the home row and every reach stays short.
- Where are the bracket keys on a US keyboard?
- Square brackets are the two keys to the right of P, typed with the right little finger, and braces are the same keys with Shift. Parentheses are Shift with 9 and 0, typed by the right ring and little fingers while the left hand holds Shift. Angle brackets are Shift with the comma and period keys.
- Why are symbols slower to type than letters?
- Most need two keys at once, one of them Shift, and many sit at the edges of the keyboard where only a little finger reaches. They are also rarer in everyday writing, so those reaches get less practice. Learning which finger and which Shift each symbol takes removes most of the hesitation.
- Does this punctuation typing test include commas and periods?
- Yes. Commas, periods, semicolons, colons, question marks and exclamation marks appear alongside brackets, quotes and the symbols above the digits. If you want to measure plain letter speed with none of it, try the test without punctuation instead, then come back here to see how much the symbols cost you.
- Will this help me type passwords?
- It trains the part a test can train: finding each symbol without looking and holding the correct Shift. Passwords add the difficulty that you can't see what you typed, so accuracy counts for more than speed. A clean, slower run here is better preparation than a fast one full of slips.