It is extremely helpful to learn essential keyboarding and mouse skills to improve your overall computing efficiency. If you can keyboard without looking at the keys you will achieve the speed and accuracy it takes to get down your thoughts on an email or a document or just to fill in a form.

Using the Keyboard (Basic Typing)

Keyboard Vocabulary

Although keyboards differ, they all follow the same basic layout which looks something like this:

• Shift Key: Press shift at the same time you are pressing any other key and you will get a new character. For instance, press shift at the same time you press a letter and it will capitalize the letter. Press shift at the same time you press a number and you will get a “%” or “$.”
• Tab Key: The tab key helps you indent your text.
• Function Keys: (Sometimes referred to as “F keys,”) -F1 key - will most often bring up a help menu, no matter what program you’re in. -Enter key - might be marked as a “Return” key or with only a large arrow. It’s used to go down to a new line when typing text. It also can be pressed any time a button or choice is highlighted (within a software program or on the Internet) to select that particular item.
• CTRL key - used in conjunction with another key to initiate a certain action. In most programs, holding down the CTRL key while pressing the S key will save a file, or CTRL+P will print a file, etc.
• ALT Key - Also used in combination with other keys to perform an action. For instance, ALT+F usually opens the File menu.
• Caps Lock - Press once and the letters they will all be capitalized. Press again and the letters will go back to lower case.
• Num Lock and Numeric Keypad - The Num Lock key toggles the numeric keypad on and off. When off, the keys perform other functions (i.e., directional arrows) instead of typing numbers.
• Space Bar - used to enter a blank space between sentences when typing text.
• Backspace - will remove the character to the left of the cursor (the small blinking vertical line that shows you where you are on a page of text).
• Shift Key - allows you to create a capital letter or, if you hold down Shift key and press one of the number keys (on the top row of keyboard), you get a punctuation symbol (!, @, #, $, etc).
• Tab Key - moves the cursor to the next “tab stop.” In a form it is used to move from one field or table cell to the next. Pressing Tab and Shift simultaneously will usually “tab” you back to the previous field. Delete - will remove the character to the right of the cursor when pressed. Print Screen - This key will send a copy of your monitor’s screen to the “clipboard” ready to be pasted into another program.

The Keyboard Layout

When you’re starting out, using the proper finger to type each letter is extremely important even though it may seem tedious at times. Learning the layout by feeling your way around soon becomes second nature.

The Home Row