This lesson mirrors the previous one on the opposite hand. With L and ; in place, all eight home-row keys are under your control and home position is genuinely complete.
The new keys
- L — right ring finger, resting at home.
- ; — right little finger, resting at home.
The semicolon you will rarely type
Beginners often wonder why a punctuation mark they almost never use occupies prime home-row real estate. The answer is that ; is not really the point — the position is. The right little finger needs a home, and everything that finger does later is measured from it: P, the apostrophe, Enter, right Shift, Backspace and the bracket keys all sit within one reach of ;.
Skip this key and the right little finger has no reference, which is why so many self-taught typists hit Enter by feel and miss.
Keeping the pinky honest
The right little finger is the weakest digit you have, and it is assigned some of the most-used non-letter keys on the board. Two habits protect it:
- Anchor, do not hover. The finger rests on
;, taking no weight but staying in contact. - Move the finger, not the hand. When you reach Enter, the little finger extends; the other three fingers stay put.
A note on posture
Now that both hands are fully placed, check the geometry once. Your elbows should sit at roughly a right angle, forearms level, and the keyboard directly in front of you rather than off to one side. If you are typing on a laptop with the screen close to the keys, you will tend to hunch — raising the screen or using an external keyboard makes a bigger difference to long-session comfort than any amount of technique.
Practice notes
ll and l; feel clumsy at first because adjacent weak fingers are doing consecutive work. Slow the drill until each press is distinct. If the two fingers are moving together as a pair, you are going too fast.