If you are used to slouching in your chair or working from the couch, try moving to a straight-backed chair or working at your desk. Sitting in an upright position is going to make it easier to type faster. You’ll also begin to memorize the placement of the keys, so you’ll be able to type more quickly as you practice. However, looking at the screen will help improve your accuracy because you will be able to catch your typos as they occur. This can be difficult at first, especially if you have not yet mastered the exact placement of the keys. Instead of looking down at your hands, focus on your screen. As you become more experienced, you can experiment with different variations of this starting position to find the placement that is most comfortable and natural for you. These conventions are meant to help you familiarize yourself with the keyboard. Your hands should always return this starting position. From here, you can move your fingers slightly to reach neighboring keys. To start, keep your fingers positioned over the home row keys (left hand over the A, S, D, and F keys, and the right hand over the J, K, L, and keys), with your thumbs hovering over the space bar. When practicing your typing skills, it’s important to use proper hand placement. This is much more efficient than hunt-and-peck the average person types at an average of 40 words per minute, but a person who relies on the touch-type method can exceed 75 words per minute, allowing them to complete their work much more quickly and with minimal errors.Īs you prepare to enter the workforce, here are some pointers to improve your own typing skills: 1.) Use the correct starting position

The preferred typing method is known as touch-type, or typing without looking at the screen. Mobile technology, such as tablets and smartphones, have also increased reliance on hunt-and-peck strategies. However, without proper training and practice, many individuals resort to hunt-and-peck typing, or looking down at the keyboard to select the right keys one-by-one.

Some schools have stopped teaching typing altogether, assuming students already possess the skills necessary to be successful in the modern workplace, according to an article in MIT’s Technology Review.

In today’s technology-driven world, students and young adults become familiar with computers at an early age. Accuracy is equally as important as speed, as a simple typo could result in a system-wide error. Information technology professionals, for example, must be efficient typists in order to write code for computer and software programs. Most, if not all, careers involve some computer-based work and require strong typing skills.

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