Why Your Ring & Pinky Fingers Won't Move When Typing — and Do You Need the Pinky?

No. Häger-Ross and Schieber (2000) asked 10 right-handed adults (aged 24 to 45) to flex and extend one finger at a time. When they measured the other four digits, the fingers that were not being moved moved along too. How much differed by finger: very little for the thumb, noticeably more for the ring finger.

The ring finger had the lowest value in 9 of 10 right hands and 7 of 10 left hands. Right and left hands did not differ systematically. The index means this: taking each finger's range of motion as 1, when the ring finger moved, the other fingers moved along by about 0.1 on average. For the index finger it was about 0.02 to 0.03.

The study has limits. It had 10 people. It measured repeated finger flexion and extension, not key presses. All participants said they had no particular finger skill such as typing, and the study did not test whether practice changes the numbers. It did find that a fast, metronome-paced rhythm (3 per second) made the other fingers move along more than a self-paced rhythm (about 2 per second).

The paper gives three reasons the other fingers move along, and says it happens “in part” because of each. This experiment did not measure how much each one matters. The paper also does not trace the ring finger's low rank to a single cause.

• Connections inside the hand (tendons and tissue)

  The tendons of the muscle that straightens the fingers (extensor digitorum communis) are linked to the neighboring fingers' tendons by bands of connective tissue (juncturae tendinum). The tendons of the deep finger flexor that go to the middle, ring, and little fingers are also connected to each other near where they leave the muscle.

• How the muscles are built

  Some muscles feed the tendons of several fingers at once (multitendoned muscles). The paper says this arrangement plays a part.

• Shared signals from the nervous system

  The groups of nerve cells that drive the finger muscles receive shared input from the brain, the paper says.

You sometimes hear that the ring finger “shares a tendon” with its neighbors. The paper's wording is that the tendons are connected to each other.

In standard ten-finger fingering, they are as below. The finger colors in the Home Position Dojo use the same layout.

Typing Musou accepts only a–z, 0–9, comma, period, and hyphen, so “;” and “/” in the table are not used in the game. The letter Q does not appear in the standard spellings of the word list. When writing ordinary text, Shift, Enter, and Backspace are often taught as pinky jobs too. For the full finger-to-key map, see Home Row Position Diagram.

Some people type fast without it. Feit et al. (2016) had 30 people aged 20 to 55 copy sentences in the language they were most used to (18 chose Finnish, 12 English). Touch typists averaged 57.8 WPM and self-taught typists 58.9 WPM; the difference was not significant. Touch typists used 8.5 fingers on average and self-taught typists 6.2. Some people who used only 1 or 2 fingers per hand reached the level usually attributed to touch typists, and some people exceeded 70 WPM whatever number of fingers they used.

Three things were common among fast typists: the same letter was always pressed by the same finger, the fingers moved toward the next key in advance, and the whole hand moved little. The number of fingers was not among them. On the other hand, the share of time spent looking at the keyboard was 0.2 for touch typists and 0.41 for self-taught typists. On their own web page, the researchers also write that if you want to type above 100 WPM consistently, you should learn touch typing. That is advice from the researchers, not a result of the experiment.

That study's WPM counts English characters. It is counted differently from Typing Musou's romaji-based WPM, so please do not set the numbers side by side (WPM averages and benchmarks).

What about Japanese romaji input? I could not find a study that made the same comparison. Counting every standard spelling in Typing Musou's word list (16,132 words), A makes up 11,853 of 113,213 letters (10.5%), the third most common after U and I. A, Z, and P together make 12.0%, and the ring-finger letters W, S, and O together make 16.5%. These are counts with every word weighted equally, and they change with how often each word is actually asked and with spelling choices such as si versus shi.

The rest is my own guess. If you press A with a finger other than the pinky, that finger has to leave its own keys. I think that works against both “the same letter always with the same finger” and “keep the hand still.” The research did not test this directly.

• If your current way of typing works for you

  You can keep it. That fits the research.

• If you want to type without looking at the keyboard, or you miss A, Z, and P often

  I think it is worth fixing which finger takes which key and practicing in the order of the next section.

• If you want to type above 100 WPM consistently

  The researchers' advice is to learn touch typing.

An article that sorts out whether you need it, by situation: Is Touch Typing Necessary?.

The Home Position Dojo introduces the ring-finger and pinky keys in the order below: it starts on the home row and widens to the top and bottom rows. No study has shown this to be the best order. Read it as one example that follows how the dojo is built.

• Land on the target key first

  Speed comes later. In Stage 5 the master also says to think only about the ring finger landing on the key you aim for.

• Find out which keys you miss

  The results screens of Speed Trial, Accuracy Drill, Mock Combat, and battles show the keys you missed most in that run (up to five). Nothing shows if you made no misses. If ring-finger or pinky keys line up there, go back to the stages in the table.

• Practice finishing with no misses

  Accuracy Drill asks for 10 words with no misses, and a single wrong keystroke ends it.

You do not need to remove it completely. In the study, the other fingers moved along in healthy adults too. Two things can reduce it.

• Accept that they may lift for now

  In Stage 5 the master says: “When you move the ring finger, the pinky will lift along with it. That's fine for now. Just think about the ring finger landing on the key you aim for.”

• Slow down

  In the study too, the fast rhythm (3 per second) made the other fingers move along more than the self-paced rhythm (about 2 per second). That compares two paces and did not test whether practice reduces it. My suggestion is to slow down to a speed where they do not move along and then raise it little by little.

Mistakes do not always come from fingers moving along. See How to Reduce Typing Mistakes for how to sort out the cause.

If your ring finger, pinky, or wrist hurts or goes numb, stop practicing for the day. This article cannot diagnose anything. For when to see a doctor if it does not go away with rest, see When your wrists and arms get tired or hurt from typing.

• Q. What if my pinky is too short to reach?

  You can move the whole hand a little instead of stretching only the finger. In Stage 6 the dojo master says: “The pinky is short. If it doesn't reach, you may tilt your wrist a little. But keep your index finger on F.” Still, avoid typing for long with your wrist bent sharply. See Typing posture and wrist position for wrist guidelines.

• Q. How many days until they move?

  I could not confirm any guideline for the number of days. I have not found a study that measured how much practice changes finger independence. Setting your goal as “land on the key you aim for” rather than “move the finger alone” makes progress easier to check yourself.

• Q. Is one hand harder than the other?

  In the study of 10 right-handed people, the right and left hands did not differ systematically. Individuals do differ, though. You can check how your own hands feel in Stages 5 and 6 of the dojo.

• Q. Can I practice for free?

  Yes. Everything works as a guest, and you do not need to log in. You need a computer, or a tablet with an external keyboard. It does not run on phones.

A ring finger that is hard to move on its own is normal, and a study of 10 people found the same. The pinky ranked third of five and is not as hard.

Some people type fast without the pinky. Because the letter A appears so often in romaji input, I think it helps to decide which finger takes it. The research did not test this.

A workable path: start at Stages 5 and 6 of the dojo and drill the keys together at Stage 68. If it hurts, rest.

I checked the research figures against the full texts below on October 18, 2026.

1. 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. — 10 people. Ranks and individuation indexes: Table 1 in Results; reasons: Discussion
2. Feit AM, Weir D, Oulasvirta A. How We Type: Movement Strategies and Performance in Everyday Typing. CHI 2016. — 30 people. Speed, number of fingers, and gaze: Results; the three factors linked to speed: Discussion
3. The researchers' web page for Feit et al. (FAQ: the advice to learn touch typing to type above 100 WPM consistently)
4. The dojo stages and lines, and the word list (16,132 words, as of October 18, 2026), are Typing Musou's own data