TypeHive

Every key

One page per key: which finger owns it, which row it sits on, how often you really press it, and the letter pairs it lives in. Frequencies counted over 51,993,314 letters of published prose.

1234567890-=
q0.1w2.4e12.5r5.7t9.1y2.0u2.8i6.9o7.6p1.6[]
a8.1s6.2d4.5f2.2g2.0h6.5j0.1k0.8l4.0;'
z0.1x0.2c2.4v1.0b1.5n6.9m2.6,./
space

The number on a letter is its share of all the letters in the corpus. Colour = the finger that owns the key.

Letters, commonest first

  1. 1E12.50%
  2. 2T9.07%
  3. 3A8.11%
  4. 4O7.61%
  5. 5N6.90%
  6. 6I6.87%
  7. 7H6.49%
  8. 8S6.23%
  9. 9R5.74%
  10. 10D4.53%
  11. 11L4.03%
  12. 12U2.83%
  13. 13M2.61%
  14. 14W2.42%
  15. 15C2.39%
  16. 16F2.20%
  17. 17G2.05%
  18. 18Y2.04%
  19. 19P1.64%
  20. 20B1.50%
  21. 21V0.98%
  22. 22K0.82%
  23. 23X0.16%
  24. 24J0.13%
  25. 25Q0.10%
  26. 26Z0.06%

Punctuation keys

comma ,period .apostrophe 'semicolon ;hyphen -slash /

Questions

Which finger types which key?

Each colour on the map above is one finger. Left hand: little finger Q A Z, ring W S X, middle E D C, index R T F G V B. Right hand: index Y U H J N M, middle I K and comma, ring O L and period, little finger P, semicolon, slash and everything to the right of them. Both thumbs share the space bar.

What are the bumps on F and J for?

They mark the home keys for the two index fingers, so you can put your hands back on the keyboard without looking. Find them with your fingertips and the other six home keys fall into place.

Which letters are worth practising first?

The ones you press most. In the 111 books behind the practice texts here the order is E, T, A, O, N, I, H, S — and the nine keys of the home row account for 35% of every letter pressed, which is why touch typing starts there.

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