Glossary
Home row
The home row is the middle row of keys on a keyboard, where the fingers rest when you touch type. On a QWERTY keyboard it holds A, S, D, F for the left hand and J, K, L and semicolon for the right, and every other key is reached by moving a finger away from it and back.
Updated October 16, 20263 cited facts, each traced to its source
Also called home keys, home row keys.
The home row is the middle row of keys on a keyboard, where the fingers rest when you type without looking. On a standard QWERTY keyboard it holds A, S, D and F for the left hand and J, K, L and semicolon for the right. It is the reference point for touch typing, the method in which each key is reached from memory.
Touch typing starts every finger on the home row
The How We Type study, which recorded how people move their fingers while typing, describes the touch typing system in its FAQ. It says that "All fingers are placed on their home position in the middle row and only move up or down towards their respective keys" 1. The hands stay in one place, and each finger moves only a short distance to reach its keys.
The FAQ adds that learning to type efficiently with all ten fingers takes deliberate practice, so the home row is a skill to train rather than a setting on the keyboard.
Why the home row makes typing faster and steadier
The same study found three predictors of high performance in everyday typing: a letter is always pressed by the same finger, upcoming keystrokes are prepared in advance, and hand movement is kept small 2. The home row supports all three. Each finger has a fixed home key and a fixed set of neighbors, so the finger for a letter is always the same, and small moves from home keep the hands from travelling.
A typist who uses the home row can keep their eyes on the screen rather than the keys, which is the habit that lets errors show up as they happen.
What a typist does without the home row
Typists who skip the home row but still type without looking at the keys are called hybrid typists. That differs from hunt and peck, where each key is found by sight. A single study of 30 typists found minimal difference in typing speed between touch typists and self-taught hybrid typists 3, so the home row is not the only route to a fast score. Its value is in consistency and in typing for long stretches without looking down.
Reading the home row on a real keyboard
Most keyboards mark the home row for the touch typist. The F and J keys carry a small raised bump, which lets a typist find the home position by feel. The other home keys sit beside them in the same row, so once the index fingers are on F and J, the other fingers are in place.
Where the home row fits in dictation
Speaking avoids the keyboard altogether, so the home row matters less when you dictate. It still matters when you type, for example to correct or edit a dictated draft, and that editing is where a steady typing position saves the most time.
Related terms
- Hunt and peck: typing by finding each key by sight with one or two fingers.
- QWERTY: the standard keyboard layout that puts the home keys on the middle row.
- Keyboard layouts compared: how QWERTY, Dvorak and Colemak place the home row.
Guides and questions that cover it
Evidence
Every number on this page, with where it comes from. Open a fact to see the exact words in its source.
- 1.
- 2.The motion capture study found three predictors of high performance: a letter is always pressed by the same finger, upcoming keystrokes are actively prepared, and hand movement is kept small.
Anna Maria Feit et al., Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2016 · Original
- 3.
Related terms
- Typing Speed: Average WPM and How to Type FasterThe topic this term belongs to
- Articulation rateArticulation rate is the number of syllables a speaker produces per second, leaving out pauses. It measures how fast the speech itself comes out, so it is usually faster than the overall speaking rate that counts every pause.
- Characters per minute (CPM)Characters per minute (CPM) is the number of characters typed in one minute, counting spaces and punctuation. Words per minute is the same count divided by five, so a typist at 50 WPM enters 250 characters per minute.
- ColemakColemak is an alternative English keyboard layout, introduced in 2006 and designed for efficient, comfortable touch typing. Its supporters describe it as the third most popular layout for English touch typing, after QWERTY and Dvorak, but that ranking has no stated method.
- Dvorak Simplified KeyboardThe Dvorak Simplified Keyboard is an alternative English keyboard layout that places the most common letters on the home row. Dvorak and Dealey applied for a patent on it in 1932, but the studies that claimed it was faster than QWERTY have been criticized, and the evidence for a speed gain is weak.
- Hunt and peckHunt and peck is a typing method in which the typist finds each key by sight and presses it with one or two fingers, usually the index fingers. It is also called two-finger typing, and it differs from touch typing, which relies on memorized key positions and the home row.
- Keystroke dynamicsKeystroke dynamics is the identification of a person from the rhythm of their typing, using the timing between key presses as a pattern much like a handwritten signature. It is a behavioral biometric, so it supports identity checks through statistical matching rather than proving who typed.
- Keystrokes per character (KSPC)Keystrokes per character (KSPC) is the average number of keystrokes a text entry method needs to produce one character of text. A basic QWERTY keyboard scores 1, methods that need more presses score above 1, and word prediction can score below 1.
- Keystrokes per hour (KPH)Keystrokes per hour (KPH) is the number of key presses made in one hour. It is the standard unit for numeric data entry, where many jobs require 8,000 or 10,000 keystrokes per hour, and it counts keys rather than words.
- Oral reading fluency (ORF)Oral reading fluency (ORF) measures how many words a reader gets right in one minute of reading a passage aloud. Schools record the result as words correct per minute (WCPM), which subtracts the words read wrongly from the total.
- QWERTYQWERTY is the standard letter arrangement on English keyboards, named for the first six letters of the top row. Christopher Latham Sholes devised it in the early 1870s for typewriters, and it is still the layout most people type on, even though faster layouts have been proposed.
- Rollover typingRollover, or key rollover, is the number of key presses a keyboard can detect when they overlap. Two-key rollover reliably detects only two keys at once, and a matrix keyboard without diodes can register a ghost key when three keys are pressed together.
- StenotypeA stenotype, also called a steno machine, is a chorded keyboard that stenographers use for shorthand, pressing several keys together to produce a syllable or word. The NCRA's court reporter skills test sets a speed of 225 words per minute, and voice writing is a newer method that uses speech recognition instead.
Pages that use this term
- Typing Speed: Average WPM and How to Type FasterTopic
- Touch Typing: What It Is and How to Learn ItGuide
- How to Type Faster: What Actually Raises Your WPMGuide
- Keyboard Layouts Compared: QWERTY, Dvorak and ColemakGuide
- At what age should kids learn touch typing?Question
- How do blind people type on a computer?Question
- How do you learn touch typing in Arabic?Question
- How do you learn touch typing in Russian?Question
- How do you stop looking at the keyboard when you type?Question
- How do you type faster without making mistakes?Question
- Is Colemak worth learning?Question
- Is touch typing hard to learn?Question
- What is the best free way to learn touch typing?Question
- Which fingers go on which keys in touch typing?Question
- ColemakGlossary
- Dvorak Simplified KeyboardGlossary
- Hunt and peckGlossary
- QWERTYGlossary