Why You Can't Touch-Type and How to Fix It — After Months of Practice

If you feel “I've practiced for months,” multiply your daily practice time by the number of days to get total hours.

If your total has not reached this yardstick, you may not be failing; you may simply be partway. There are cautions. The participants were British postal workers with an instructor, trained on postal-code material. It is not a figure measured on Japanese romaji, and “learned” does not mean a practical speed. Individuals varied widely too, from about 26 to 54 hours.

How days relate to hours, and how to spend the first week, is in How to Learn Touch Typing.

As the table shows, if your total has not reached the group average of 35–50 hours, you may still be partway through learning. This is not about talent; it is arithmetic.

For the same number of practice hours, the group with shorter daily practice learned faster. The group that trained once a day for one hour needed fewer hours than the group that trained twice a day for two hours (averages of about 35 and about 50 hours). So I think a little every day beats one long stretch. The experiment compared the length and number of daily sessions; it did not compare practicing daily with practicing less often. How to split practice is in How Much Daily Practice?.

People who always press the same key with the same finger tend to be faster. A study that measured the movements of 30 people (Feit et al. 2016) lists it as one of three factors related to speed. It is a relationship the researchers observed.

The same paper notes that of 13 people who said they had learned touch typing, only 3 typed exactly as that system teaches. Having learned it and having consistent assignments are separate things.

The fix is to reset your assignments. Starting with the home row (A S D F and J K L), check each finger's keys and return to home after each press. The assignments are in the table in Home Row Position Diagram.

If only your ring finger or pinky will not move, see Why Your Ring & Pinky Fingers Won't Move. In a study of 10 people who moved one finger at a time, the ring finger was the least independent (Häger-Ross & Schieber 2000).

Touch typing means typing without looking at the keys (the dictionary's definition). If the habit of looking remains, you cannot type with your eyes on the screen. In research too, people who had not learned touch typing tended to spend more time looking at the keyboard than those who had (about 40% versus about 20% of typing time, Feit et al. 2016).

The fix is to touch the bumps on F and J with your index fingers before you start and whenever you feel lost. Looking is fine at first. On the dojo's first stage, the master also says, “For now, you may look at your hands.” Cut down on glances little by little.

If you still cannot stop looking, you can cover your hands with paper or a towel. Rather than trying every key at first, try only the keys whose positions you have learned. How to find F and J when your keyboard has no bumps is in Home Row Position Diagram.

Sometimes people push for speed and their mistakes rise. In an online survey of about 170,000 people (Dhakal et al. 2018), faster typists tended to make fewer mistakes. But the participants were self-selected, and 68% were from the US. It is a relationship that was observed; it does not prove that cutting mistakes makes you faster.

The fix is to set speed aside for now and check accuracy. The Accuracy Drill asks for 10 words with no mistakes and ends at the first missed key. Slow is fine. How to sort out the causes of mistakes is in How to Reduce Typing Mistakes.

If your posture does not fit, practice becomes hard to keep up. The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare guideline suggests roughly 40 cm or more to the screen and an angle of 90 degrees or more between upper arm and forearm. Keep your hands, wrists, and forearms straight and roughly in line (OSHA). Details in Typing Posture and Wrist Position.

For long practice on a small laptop, an external keyboard is preferable (Ministry guideline).

If pain or numbness continues, stop practicing and consult a doctor. This guide does not diagnose anything. For rest guidance, see When Typing Tires or Hurts Your Wrists and Arms.

Fix whichever applies first. If several apply, go from the top.

• Your total practice has not reached 35 hours → Cause 1

  Work out your total in the table. Spread practice out and keep it daily.

• You press the same key with different fingers on different days → Cause 2

  Reset your assignments and return to home after each key.

• You look at your hands with every key → Cause 3

  Touch the bumps to check your position. Cut down on glances little by little.

• You push for speed and mistakes increase → Cause 4

  Set speed aside and practice with no mistakes.

• Your wrists or shoulders hurt, or typing feels awkward → Cause 5

  Review chair height, screen distance, and the keyboard. If pain continues, rest and consult a doctor.

Research is split. A lab study of 30 people (Feit et al. 2016) found no speed difference between people who had learned touch typing and those who had not (averages of about 58 and about 59 WPM), and some people using only one or two fingers per hand passed 70 WPM. An online survey of about 170,000 people (Dhakal et al. 2018), on the other hand, found that people who had been trained were about 5 WPM faster on average (a small difference), and that people who used more fingers tended to be faster. Neither represents the general public (the first chose participants to span a wide range of speeds; the second used self-selected online volunteers). Dhakal et al. note that differences in method and sample may explain why the results differed.

So you cannot say that self-taught typing always hits a ceiling. Fixing it is worth it if you want to type with your eyes on the screen. If you are not bothered by your current speed, you do not have to fix it. If you are unsure, read Is Touch Typing Necessary? and Should Adults Fix Self-Taught Typing?.

The five steps below are the developer's suggestion, not something tested in research. Go from the top. If you cannot find the bumps on F and J, see Home Row Position Diagram.

1. 01.1. Set your posture: an upper-arm-to-forearm angle of 90 degrees or more, and the screen roughly 40 cm or more away
2. 02.2. Place your hands in home position: index fingers on the bumps of F and J, thumbs near the Space bar
3. 03.3. Practice only the home row: A S D F G H J K L with the assigned fingers, the same range as Chapter 1 of the dojo (Stages 1–10)
4. 04.4. Widen one column at a time: add the vowels (Chapter 2), T R W (Chapter 3), and N M (Chapter 4), checking after each addition that you still return to home
5. 05.5. Check accuracy before raising speed: get 10 words with no mistakes in the Accuracy Drill, then chase speed

It may look like a detour, but I think rebuilding from a form where you can return to home without looking leaves less room for confusion.

This section introduces the dojo (written by the developer). The Home Position Dojo is free, needs no login, and adds keys a few at a time starting from the home row. The on-screen keyboard is color-coded by finger; the next key glows and the finger's name appears. You need a computer (or a tablet with a physical keyboard); it does not run on phones.

Before teaching the ring fingers (S and L) in Chapter 1, the master says, “The ring finger is hard to move for anyone.”

The result screens of the Speed Trial and of battles show the keys you missed most (weak keys). Knowing which keys trip you up tells you where to work.

• Q. How many months does it take to learn touch typing?

  It cannot be measured in months. In research, learning the whole keyboard took roughly 35 to 50 hours of practice on average per group. At 15 minutes a day that is 140–200 days; at one hour a day, 35–50 days. Whether a different session length works the same has not been tested. See How to Learn Touch Typing.

• Q. My self-taught habits have set. Should I fix them?

  It depends on your goal. Some self-taught typists pass 70 WPM, while a large survey found that trained typists were slightly faster on average. If you want to type with your eyes on the screen, fixing it is worth it. If you are fine with your current speed, you do not have to.

• Q. My ring finger or pinky will not move. Am I just not suited to this?

  It is not a matter of suitability. In a study of 10 people who moved one finger at a time, the ring finger was the least independent. Gradual exercises are in Why Your Ring & Pinky Fingers Won't Move.

• Q. Can I fix it as an adult?

  We could not find research on how well adults relearn at different ages. One study of skilled typists aged 19 to 72 (Salthouse 1984) found that older typists' speed did not drop much, but that is not about adults learning from scratch. See Should Adults Fix Self-Taught Typing?.

• Q. I practice but do not feel I'm improving. What should I do?

  First count your total practice hours. Then keep records you can compare with the same yardstick, such as your Speed Trial personal best and the weak keys on the result screen. Causes of plateaus are also covered in Why Your Typing Isn't Getting Faster.

When you cannot touch-type, first check your total hours of practice. In research, learning the whole keyboard took roughly 35 to 50 hours on average per group. Then check four things: finger assignments, the habit of looking, whether you are chasing speed, and posture.

Some self-taught typists are fast, so whether to fix it depends on your goal. If you do, rebuild from the home row one column at a time. Start with today's session: F and J.

I checked the figures and wording in this article against the sources below on October 18, 2026. The MHLW guideline is in Japanese.

1. Baddeley AD, Longman DJA. (1978) The influence of length and frequency of training session on the rate of learning to type. Ergonomics 21(8), 627–635. — 72 postal workers; hours to learn the whole keyboard: Table 1
2. Feit AM, Weir D, Oulasvirta A. (2016) How We Type: Movement Strategies and Performance in Everyday Typing. CHI ’16. — 30 people. Speed, gaze, and finger assignment: Results; the three factors linked to speed: Discussion
3. Dhakal V, Feit AM, Kristensson PO, Oulasvirta A. (2018) Observations on Typing from 136 Million Keystrokes. CHI ’18. — 168,960 people. Speed and course experience: Table 3; link with mistakes: “Typing speed versus errors”
4. Häger-Ross C, Schieber MH. Quantifying the independence of human finger movements: comparisons of digits, hands, and movement frequencies. Journal of Neuroscience 20(22): 8542–8550, 2000.
5. Salthouse TA. Effects of age and skill in typing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 113(3): 345–371, 1984. — checked against the abstract
6. Kotobank, entry “ブラインドタッチ” (Seisenban Nihon Kokugo Daijiten)
7. Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (Japan), Guideline for Occupational Health Management in Information Device Work (Notification 0712-3, July 12, 2019; partly revised by Notification 1201-7, December 1, 2021), text and commentary — laptops: text p. 6
8. US Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Computer Workstations eTool: Working Positions — position of hands, wrists, and forearms
9. The dojo stages and lines, and the weak keys on result screens, come from Typing Musou's screens and code (as of October 18, 2026)