GUIDE
The number row
The number row runs 1 to 0 above the top row, and each digit belongs to the finger below it, with the index fingers taking two each. It is the least-drilled part of the keyboard for almost everyone, which is why typing speed drops sharply on anything containing figures.
Which finger takes which digit?
The assignment continues the same columns upward. The reach is long — two rows from home — and the hand will lift; that is expected. What is not optional is the return.
Above the digits sit the symbols, produced with shift, and they follow the same finger assignment. That is worth knowing because it means learning the digits also places the exclamation mark, the percent sign, the ampersand and the rest.
| Finger | Home key | Digits | Shifted (US layout) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Left little | A | 1 | ! |
| Left ring | S | 2 | @ |
| Left middle | D | 3 | # |
| Left index | F | 4 and 5 | $ and % |
| Right index | J | 6 and 7 | ^ and & |
| Right middle | K | 8 | * |
| Right ring | L | 9 | ( |
| Right little | Semicolon | 0 | ) |
Why your speed collapses on numbers
Almost every typing course treats the number row as an appendix, and almost every typing test leaves numbers off by default. The result is that a great many people who type 70 words a minute of prose drop to half that the moment a date or a price appears, and have never measured it.
It is worth measuring, because the fix is small. The digits are ten keys with a completely regular assignment, and a week of deliberate practice closes most of the gap. Compare that with the months it takes to add ten words a minute to your prose speed.
If your work involves figures at all — invoices, data entry, code, spreadsheets — this is the highest-return drilling available to you, and it is the drilling nobody does.
When should I use the numeric keypad instead?
For continuous figures, the keypad wins and it is not close. It puts all ten digits under one hand in a compact block, with no reaching, and a practised operator is several times faster on it than on the number row.
For figures mixed into text — a date in a sentence, a version number, a price in a paragraph — the number row wins, because moving your right hand to the keypad and back costs more than the reaches you saved.
The rule of thumb: if you are typing more than about five digits in a row, the keypad is worth the hand movement. Below that it is not. Laptop users without a keypad have the decision made for them, which is another reason the number row deserves drilling.
- Keypad home position
- Index on 4, middle on 5, ring on 6 — and 5 has a bump, like F and J.
- Keypad wins
- Data entry, long figures, anything in a column.
- Number row wins
- Digits inside prose, where the hand would have to travel back.
- Num Lock
- The keypad silently becomes arrow keys when it is off, which is the source of a great deal of confusion.
Symbols, and why programmers have it worse
Writing code changes the arithmetic entirely. Brackets, braces, angle brackets, semicolons, equals, asterisks and underscores appear at a density no prose reaches, and most of them are shifted keys on the number row or the right-hand edge of the board.
The practical consequence is that a fast prose typist is often a mediocre code typist, and the gap is almost entirely in the symbols and the little fingers. If you write code, drilling on code rather than on prose is not a refinement — it is a different skill with a different key distribution.
The same is true of any writing with heavy punctuation: dialogue, with its quotation marks; academic text, with its parentheses and brackets. Practise on what you actually type.
Questions
Which finger types 5?
The left index finger, reaching up two rows and slightly inward from F. 6 is the right index finger's, which is the boundary in the middle of the row.
Is the number row or the keypad faster?
The keypad, for anything more than about five digits in a row — it puts all ten under one hand with no reaching. For digits inside a sentence the number row is faster, because the hand does not have to travel and come back.
Do I really need to touch type numbers?
If you never type figures, no. If you do — dates, prices, data, code — it is probably the highest-return practice available, because it is the part of the keyboard almost nobody has drilled and the gap is closed in about a week.
Why do the symbols move between keyboards?
Because the shifted row is where layouts diverge most. UK and US QWERTY disagree about the at sign and the quotation marks; Czech and Hungarian put letters on the unshifted digits entirely. The letters are largely universal; this row is not.
Put it into practice
Reading about typing is the smaller half. The beginner course starts on the home row, the speed test will tell you where you stand, and all of it works in 86 languages without an account.