Glossary
Hunt and peck
Hunt 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.
Updated October 16, 20264 cited facts, each traced to its source
Also called two-finger typing, visual typing.
Hunt and peck, also called two-finger typing, is a way of typing in which the typist presses each key individually. The typist finds each key by sight and uses only one or two fingers, typically the index fingers. It is common among people who were never taught to touch type.
Hunt and peck finds each key by sight
The Wikipedia article on typing describes the method in its purest form: "the typist finds each key by sight on the fly, and uses only one or two fingers (typically the index fingers)" 1. The eyes move between the screen, the keyboard and back, and each finger travels to the key it has located.
The method works, but it changes where your attention goes. Typists who hunt and peck often look away from the screen to find keys, and the search for each key is the time cost that touch typing avoids.
Hunt and peck can be accurate but hides errors
Hunt and peck is not always inaccurate. The same article says "Although good accuracy may be achieved, the use of this method may also prevent the typist from being able to see what has been typed without glancing away from the keys" 2. That is the trade-off: a careful typist can be accurate, but errors are harder to see as they happen, so they may not be noticed until later.
Hunt and peck is slower than touch typing, but the gap is disputed
Touch typing puts the fingers on the home row and reaches other keys from memory. The How We Type study found that the best performers keep the same finger on each letter and keep hand movement small 3, which hunt and peck does not do. Those are the habits that make touch typing faster over time.
The research is less clear-cut than many guides suggest. One study of 30 typists of varying styles and expertise found minimal difference in typing speed between touch typists and self-taught hybrid typists 4. Hybrid typists do not look at the keys but do not use the home row, which makes the result a useful caution against assuming that touch typing is always faster. A sample of 30 is small, though, so treat it as a caution rather than a proof.
How to tell if you hunt and peck
If you look at the keyboard to find most keys, and you use one or two fingers, you are hunting and pecking. If your eyes stay on the screen while your fingers find the keys from memory, you are touch typing or close to it. Many people are in between, and that is common rather than a failing.
Why it matters for dictation
Hunt and peck is most costly when you type long text. Dictation avoids the keyboard for drafting, which removes the search for keys, and typing is then needed only for corrections. That makes dictation most useful to hunt-and-peck typists when the text is long, while the keyboard is used for short edits.
Related terms
- Home row: the middle row of keys where the fingers rest in touch typing.
- Keyboard layouts compared: how the layout of the keys affects where each finger must travel.
- Dictation: speaking so that software writes the words as you say them.
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.
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- 3.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
- 4.
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.
- Home rowThe 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.
- 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
- At what age should kids learn touch typing?Question
- Can you type fast without touch typing?Question
- How do you stop looking at the keyboard when you type?Question
- Home rowGlossary