Home / Guides / Learn / Home row
Home row
Home row is where your hands live. Every other lesson on this site is a reach away from these eight keys and a return to them. If the rest position is solid, the top and bottom rows are short trips. If it is vague, every word becomes a search. This lesson is slow on purpose. It is the one to get right before anything else.
Where your fingers go
- Left hand: pinky on A, ring on S, middle on D, index on F.
- Right hand: index on J, middle on K, ring on L, pinky on semicolon (;).
- Thumbs: resting lightly over the space bar. Use whichever thumb feels natural, and keep it the same.
F and J have a small raised bump. Those bumps are how you find home without looking. Before each line, touch both bumps with your index fingers and let the other fingers fall into place beside them.
Technique
Curve, don’t flatten
Let your fingers curve as if you were resting them on a ball. Strike with the pad just behind the fingertip. Flat fingers drag across neighbouring keys and make the pinkies work harder than they need to.
Light, even pressure
A key only has to register. Pressing to the bottom of the travel every time tires your hands and slows the release. Aim for a quick tap and an immediate lift, with the same weight on every key, pinkies included.
Float your wrists
Keep your wrists level with or slightly above the keyboard, not resting on the desk edge while you type. A wrist that is pinned down forces the fingers to stretch sideways instead of moving from the hand.
Say it, then type it
Early on it helps to say each letter under your breath as you press it. It sounds silly, but it ties the key to the finger faster than silent guessing does.
The home-row drill
The drill builds a short line, about 120 characters, from repeated letters (aaa, jjj), key groups (asdf, jkl), and real words that only use these keys: sad, flask, flags, glad, hall. You will also see G and H in words such as glad and dash. They are index-finger reaches, one key inward from F and J, and you should return to the bumps after each one.
There is no backspace in the drill. A wrong key is marked in red and the cursor moves on, so the error count tells you honestly how the line went. The screen shows WPM, accuracy, progress and errors as you type. Finishing the line unlocks the top-row lesson in this browser.
Common mistakes
- Resting on G and H. Index fingers drift inward because G and H are in the middle. Those are reaches, not home. If your left index is on G, every key on that hand is off by one.
- Glancing down “just to check”. Each glance teaches your hands that the eyes will fix it. Cover the keyboard with a cloth or a sheet of paper if you have to.
- Letting the pinkies sit out. Pressing A with the ring finger feels easier today and costs you on every A for years. Give the pinky the key, even if it is slow.
- Racing the line. Speed on home row is not useful yet. A slow line with two errors teaches more than a fast line with twelve.
Practice drills
Do these in any text editor, or in the lesson itself by repeating it. Five to ten minutes a day works better than one long session a week.
- Bump check (1 minute). Lift both hands, put them back on the bumps without looking, and type asdf jkl; five times. Repeat until you land on the first try every time.
- Finger pairs (2 minutes). Type fj dk sl a; slowly, then reverse it: ;a ls kd jf. The mirror order makes each finger work on its own.
- Word ladder (3 minutes). a, as, ask, asks, then fa, fad, fads, then la, lad, lads. Short words that grow by one letter build rhythm without new reaches.
- Inward reach (2 minutes). fgf jhj fgf jhj, then glad dash hall half. Reach, press, and come back to the bump each time.
- Eyes-closed line (1 minute). Type a sad lad asks a lass with your eyes closed, then open them and check. It shows quickly whether your hands know where they are.
How to know you’re ready to move on
- You can find home from a lifted position without looking, every time.
- Accuracy on the drill stays at about 95 percent or better over three runs in a row.
- You never need to glance down for A or semicolon.
Speed does not matter yet. Most people finish home row somewhere between 10 and 25 WPM, and that is fine. The WPM figure on the drill is described in What is WPM. Accuracy is the number to watch here.
Next: top row, the first reach up. The whole sequence is laid out in the learn hub, and How to improve typing speed covers what to do once the lessons are behind you.