There are a wide range of typing tutors out there that will educate you in the glorious skill of touch-typing. Many just focus on the basics, ranking you on accuracy and speed. However, there’s a nifty little online tutor that can help you with one skill specifically—it’s aim is to teach you to use the Shift keys “properly.”
The tutor is the work of [KaarelP2rtel]. The unnamed tool is intended to guide you into instinctively using both the left and right Shift keys as you type. Many typers default to using one or the other. This can lead to fumbles and slowdown when one hand is trying to hit both the Shift key and a letter.
[KaarelP2rtel]’s belief is that the “correct” method is to press the Shift key with the opposite hand to the one typing the letter, and this typing tutor enforces that practice. You must type repeated capitalized words one after the other, and you’ll only progress quickly if you’re hitting the opposite Shift key each time. Unconventional keyboardists fear not—you can convert the tool to work with Dvorak or Colemak layouts if necessary.
Is this a crucial tool for the fast typist? The jury’s out on that one. It’s entirely possible to hit in excess of 120 wpm without this technique for most normal passages of text, using dynamic finger reassignments when hitting Shift with the same hand. Still, the diligent may find it a useful upgrade to their existing typing abilities.
Source code is on GitHub for the curious. Notably, it’s a very small website that weighs in at just a few kilobytes; it would be a rather fitting part of the Small Web, which we’ve explored before!
So after 40 years I’ve been using the wrong shift key for B (kept hammering the left one lol), its in no-mans land on the (computer) keyboard, need to check an old school typewriter. Maybe I evolved after learning with the hammer typewriters and moving to computer keyboards since
Think of all the malformed Bs that you have unleashed upon the world… Learning how to properly use shift keys should be required for high school graduation!
Actually, I was very disappointed when I opened this article, because I’d hoped it would be about a tool that would help people learn to not type English as if it were German, one of the most common and distressing errors for a long, long time now. One wrong capitalization could bring down an empire!
Weird — I’m terribly inconsistent with my shift usage on some characters…left hand home row ones in particular. There were several S words in a row and I hit each shift about 50% of the time.
I’ll use my shift keys as I dang well please thank you very much ;)
Today I was surprised to find out that my keyboard has a right shift button. I’m sure that I will continue to ignore it. I’ve managed to consistently hit 120WPM while keeping my left hand anchored where it can always hit the shift button, and allowing my right hand to travel slightly passed the normal “middle line” for anything out of reach. Yes, this means that ergonomic keyboards are painful to use, but I prefer a standard keyboard anyway.
Pretty much the same. Oh hey the right Shift exists. I never use it, but the key goes pretty well unused. Then again, actively thinking about how I’m typing is in of itself a head trip. Like … why am I hitting those keys? Then suddenly mistakes happen, then more mistakes.
And so forth.
Up until just now I would have told you that I use the shift keys about evenly.. Turns out I almost always only use the left one. Not sure it slows me down any though.
This is consistent with how I was taught in middle school and high school. But the programs we used (Apple II and IBM PC compatible /w DOS) didn’t enforce shift key usage.
The typing teacher in the high school class sat in the back off the classroom on a tall stool and could see when we were making mistakes during the lesson.
I was mostly a self-taught typist from K-4, but those typing lessons I got in school really helped me unlearn some bad habits.
Now that I’m a software developer, I’ve relearned new bad habits and I don’t need to type quickly. Most of my job is about cutting and paste bug numbers into emails.
A solution looking for a problem…
Interesting to run through it, after about 35 years I seem to have developed some kinda bastard style. Do use both opposite shift keys most of the time, but for some like H or B I will use shift with the same hand – though weirdly I will type those with EITHER hand depending on the next expected key. It’s all automatic at this point.
I would have to credit Mavis Beacon Types Typing on the Amiga (and for my parents for forcing us to do 15 mins of that before we could play games) for any good habits that I do still have.
If you’re asking about CTRL key combos well anything goes there.
I always thought this was the only way to do it. That’s how Mavis Beacon taught it in 6th grade “keyboarding.”
Naw. Learned on a mechanical typewriter and my left shift game is strong. Literally. Left hand also slaps the carriage etc.
anyone who had seen a guitar knows that left and right hands have different jobs and that is OK.
Just ran the experiment here, and it looks like I hit the right shift key much more than I “should”. But this is on an ergo keyboard layout that has the shift under my thumbs, which makes it less difficult to do the one-hand combo. I learned the old-school opposite-shift style, though, so I wonder when I switched over?
Which makes me think about the ergonomics again. I wonder if this rule was more relevant when you had to shift up the entire carriage? Now that it’s just a metaphor, I feel like the cost of wrong-hand-shifting has gone way down.
What’s next, enforcing alternating thumbs on the spacebar? I try to do that but for my own amusement not ergonomics. A lot of my typing is in Chinese where the shift key is irrelevant. You Westerners and your special Westerner keys, I dunno sometimes. And the human filth who insist on only one space after a period!
Kerning exists in digital typography now, the only reason to double space after a period is for monospace text. The future is now old man!
Screw you, don’t hate old chinks, don’t care shift7nbsp;shift7nbsp;shift7nbsp;shift7nbsp;shift7nbsp; . shift7nbsp;shift7nbsp;shift7nbsp; .