This lesson covers the characters at the edges of the keyboard: the ones that rarely appear in prose but constantly appear in email addresses, file paths, code and forms.
The number row's second level
Every number key carries a symbol on its shifted level. They are typed with the same finger as the digit beneath them, with the opposite hand on Shift:
| Shifted | Key | Hand |
|---|
! | 1 | Left little finger |
@ | 2 | Left ring finger |
# | 3 | Left middle finger |
$ | 4 | Left index finger |
% | 5 | Left index finger |
& | 7 | Right index finger |
* | 8 | Right middle finger |
( | 9 | Right ring finger |
) | 0 | Right little finger |
The bracket cluster
To the right of P sit [ and ], with { and } on their shifted level. Both are reached by the right little finger, and both are long reaches from ;.
Further right still is the backslash. On the far top-left, above Tab, sits the backtick and its shifted tilde — a left little finger reach that most typists never learn, and then need the moment they touch a terminal or write Markdown.
Hyphen, underscore, equals and plus
- and _ — right little finger, right of 0.= and + — right little finger, right of the hyphen.
The right little finger owns most of this lesson. That is the price of the outer columns, and it is why the reaches should be practised slowly: a tired little finger drags the whole hand out of position.
Why bother with rare characters
Because they are rare in prose but dense everywhere else. An email address uses @ and .; a file path uses / or \; a phone number uses (, ) and -. These appear in the moments when you are least able to stop and look down — filling a form, typing a URL, entering data.
Practice notes
Drill realistic strings rather than isolated symbols: an email address, a URL, a price with a currency symbol, a date with slashes. Each combines several of these reaches in the order you will actually need them.