The home row is A S D F on the left, J K L ; on the right, thumbs on the space bar. Every finger has a home key, every other key is a short reach from one of them, and learning that map is the whole difference between looking at the keyboard and not.
Left hand: pinky on A, ring finger on S, middle finger on D, index finger on F. Right hand: index on J, middle on K, ring on L, pinky on the semicolon. Both thumbs rest lightly on the space bar; in practice most people use one thumb for space and it does not matter which. The two index fingers each also cover the key inward of their home key — G for the left, H for the right — which is why they are the busiest fingers.
Every other key on the keyboard belongs to the finger whose home key is in the same column: Q, A and Z to the left pinky; W, S and X to the left ring; and so on across. Once the home position is automatic, the rest is learning which finger reaches where.
The small raised bars on the F and J keys are there for the index fingers to find without looking. Rest the index fingers on them and the other fingers fall onto their home keys by themselves. This is the mechanism that lets a touch typist return to the home row after every reach without glancing down — and the habit of returning is the one to build first, before speed.
Good courses start with F and J alone: two keys, two index fingers, a few minutes. Then D and K, then S and L, then A and the semicolon, until the whole home row can be typed without looking. Only then do the rows above and below come in, one pair of keys at a time. The first lesson here is exactly that — F and J — and it takes about three minutes.
It will feel slower than however you type now. That is expected and temporary; most adults are back to their old speed with the new technique inside two weeks, and past it soon after.
On a French AZERTY keyboard the home row is Q S D F and J K L M; on German QWERTZ it is the same as QWERTY except that the semicolon key carries Ö. Dvorak puts the vowels under the left hand — A O E U — and D H T N under the right, on the theory that the most common letters should never require a reach. Colemak keeps QWERTY's Z X C V shortcuts and moves the common letters home: A R S T on the left, N E I O on the right. The principle is the same on all of them: fingers rest, eyes stay up.
Start the free course