It is never too late to start thinking about learning to use a computer keyboard professionally. However, there are differences between an average and a professional keyboard user with excellent techniques and tricks up their sleeves.
You might be wondering what kind of tools, techniques, tips, and tricks are used to develop your keyboarding skills? Well, if that’s what you’re here to learn, then that’s what you’re going to know.
This article will talk about what truly makes a professional keyboarder and the 11 best techniques and tips for developing your keyboarding. So, without wasting any further time, let’s get on with it.
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What Makes a Person a Keyboarding Specialist?
What is a professional keyboarding specialist? Who gets that title? Which jobs require you to be proficient at the art of using keyboards to perfection without error? These must be the questions circulating in your mind right now.
Usually, desk jobs that involve writing like article and blog writing, digital data entry, secretarial jobs, and other computer-oriented fields require the correct usage and understanding of keyboarding techniques.
A professional keyboarding specialist must have many impressive skills and capabilities that define their specialty. Let’s look at some of the essential professional keyboarding skills you must have to be considered a specialist.
- Fast Typing – Typing efficiently is a skill that not many people possess. Being capable of writing using a keyboard very fast at a pace above 80 words per minute is really incredible. Not only will you be able to write much quicker, but you’ll also be able to get work done way before any due time or deadlines arrive.
- Effective Typing Techniques – Some proper techniques and tricks make writing and typing much more efficient and effective for a professional compared to the average keyboard user. Professional keyboardists can use effective typing techniques to perform their activities and work on their projects.
- No Errors or Imperfections – A typical keyboard user makes many mistakes, grammatical errors, and typing errors whenever they use a keyboard. That’s a no-go area for professional typists. Yet, they’re capable of writing and typing with pinpoint accuracy without making any errors or imperfections in their work and projects, which is just amazing.
11 Techniques and Tips to Develop Your Keyboarding Skills
So, you also want to become a professional typist and learn the art of typing effectively. Well, I’ve made a list just for you keyboard enthusiasts that cover all the steps of becoming a professional typist. But, first, let’s look at the top 11 techniques and tips to develop the keyboarding skills you need to utilize.
1. Fix Your Posture
The first step and probably the most essential step that will make all the following techniques and tips much easier to follow is fixing your posture. Typically, when we type, we don’t care about how far apart our shoulders are or how comfortable our arms and fingers are while typing on the keyboards.
But this is something we need to focus on. First, fixing your posture is quite important. You need to make sure whenever you’re using the computer, you keep the monitor head level aligned with your eyes, your shoulders in a rested position, and your wrists and fingers straightened so that you don’t feel stressed or uncomfortable after a few moments or a tiny amount of time. These minor changes will massively make your keyboarding experience better.
2. Maintain Your Selected Posture
Now that you know how to fix your posture while using a computer keyboard, you are going to have a better keyboarding experience for sure. But how long that better keyboarding experience will last depends on your persistence and observance.
The ideal thing would be to watch your posture to see if you’re slowly retracting back into the same uncomfortable posture or maintaining your comfortable posture. Suppose you don’t keep an ergonomic posture for as long as it becomes your everyday posture. In that case, you won’t be able to move forward and succeed in becoming a proper keyboarding professional.
It will be difficult, but if you’re persistent about it and keep working on your posture, you’re going to sit right when you’re using the keyboard.
3. Enhance Your Computer Setup
Ergonomics is key. You need to apply ergonomics to everything in your computer setup. From the keyboard you’re going to use to the desk you’re going to place your computer on, and even the chair you’re going to sit on, everything can have a few ergonomics added to it.
Enhancing your computer setup is the next step in developing your keyboarding skills. Again, you will use the best quality components and peripherals to make your keyboarding experience better.
Once the keyboarding experience gets better, you’re going to be able to use the keyboard better. As a result, the overall experience will improve, which is the main focus of becoming a professional keyboard user.
4. Use a Wrist Rest for Longer Periods of Keyboard Usage
A piece of keyboard equipment that you might or might not know about is a wrist rest. It is also known as a palm rest. The primary purpose of a wrist rest is to provide a cushion to your wrists as you’re typing on a keyboard.
Since the keyboard doesn’t naturally have a large bottom design, your wrists either remain in the air or simply sit on the hard desk surface, which can be uncomfortable. Still, we regular keyboard users usually don’t think a lot about that.
If you want to become a keyboarding professional and learn the art of longevity in keyboard typing, you’re going to want to use a wrist rest with your keyboard. With a wrist rest, you’ll be able to work and game for more extended periods because your wrists won’t feel too stiff or uncomfortable while you’re typing with your fingers on the keyboard.
5. Memorize the Positions of Excessively Used Keys
This is one of the essential tricks that a professional keyboard user utilizes to make their keyboarding efficient and effective. Memorizing the positions of excessively used keys can help you learn keyboarding quite a lot.
The trick is to learn and understand which keys work the best for your particular field of interest and how you can memorize them depending upon their everyday use and their importance for your projects.
Once you’ve established priority for the keys on the keyboard, you can learn their position and place them on the keyboard to type on the keyboard at a faster pace than a regular keyboard user. Again, this is a convenient step to become better at professional keyboarding.
6. Practice with Touch Typing
Touch-typing is the art of typing letters and keys on the keyboard without using the sense of sight. It means that you can type characters without looking at where they are.
This skill can only be learned with time and to become a professional keyboarding enthusiast, you’re going to want to know how to touch-type. Your typing speed and accuracy matter a lot when you’re touch-typing.
You’re going to start by memorizing the letters and keys on the keyboard and then slowly start to call back where they were and close your eyes or not look at the keyboard to try and type what you want to type. With time, you’ll be able to type entirely without having to look at the keyboard, saving time and being more efficient and accurate.
7. Try out Typing Tests and Games
An essential part of developing your keyboarding skill is to test it against different keyboarding challenges and typing games available quite easily all over the internet.
You can take typing tests and learn how fast and accurately you can type. These are the most common skill tests, and they’re very effective if you want to get an idea of how you’re doing and how well you could be doing.
The average typing speed is around 60 words per minute. Anywhere above 80 words per minute are great from the perspective of a professional keyboarding typist. So, your aim should be to go above that mark, and then you’ll be able to type faster, more accurately, and hone your typing and keyboarding skills.
8. Keep Practicing with Different Techniques
Practice makes perfect. No matter what kind of activity you’re taking part in, if you practice with different techniques, you’re going to become better at the craft you’ve undertaken.
If you want to become a professional keyboardist, you’re going to have to keep practicing. You can’t simply fix your posture for one day or take typing tests for a week and then stop and lose hope because you’re not able to learn with time.
You need to make sure you try out different techniques and methods to finally figure out which method fits you right and then continue practicing with it so that you can become better at keyboarding and even think of taking it up professionally.
9. Take Courses for Keyboarding
Whenever you’re thinking of learning a new skill or developing a craft and becoming better at it, you first think of taking a course on YouTube or some other website.
That’s one of the better ways of learning how to become better at keyboarding. There are several online courses with professional keyboard enthusiasts teaching their craft to the public and helping them become better at the skill.
You’ll be taken from the beginning to the professional bit of keyboarding techniques. They’ll teach you different tips and tricks that you can use to make sure you can use a computer keyboard to express yourself and get your work done fast and effectively. So, think about taking a good course on keyboarding.
10. Learn Vocabulary and Dictation
This might come off as a surprise to you. Still, it is quite important if you’re considering becoming a keyboardist and getting a job for data entry or any other computer-based activities.
It is quite an essential step for you to learn new words, spell them, enhance your vocabulary, and work on dictation to be able to type words and letters much easier and faster than a regular keyboard user.
By learning to type difficult words faster, you’ll be able to do work more quickly, type content faster, and be more accurate with your approach, which is very important if you want to enhance your words per minute (WPM) count and become a professional at keyboarding.
11. Keep Track of Your Progress
The final and most important step is keeping track of your progress as you learn to type better. You’re going to feel motivated and focused when you keep track of your progress.
Note down your capabilities and list down what you’re learning every day to document how much far you’ve come and what you’re able to do better than others now.
By looking at your progress, if you ever feel demotivated, you’ll be able to see how far you’ve come as a keyboarding professional and continue your journey. It will be amazing for you, and, it is the right step to becoming a professional in any field. So, do keep an eye out for any progress.
Conclusion
Becoming a keyboarding specialist is not everyone’s cup of tea. But, if you’re a keyboard enthusiast who loves gaming and working on the computer as well as experimenting with different keyboard layouts, then you can reach that level.
We have discussed in this article some of the most useful tips to take your keyboarding experience to the next level. These tips will help determine if you are using your keyboard the right way or if you need to make a few adjustments.
With the help of the aforementioned keyboarding tips and techniques, you’ll be able to reach the level of a specialist with relative ease. I hope that you learned a lot from this article and that you’re going to have an excellent keyboarding experience. May you have a great day ahead of you!