Bottom Row Movement

The bottom row consists of keys like Z, X, C, V, B, N, and M, along with punctuation marks like the comma and period. For many typists, this row is the hardest to learn. This is because reaching "down" feels less natural than reaching "up."

When you move your fingers to the top row, your hand naturally opens. However, when moving to the bottom row, your fingers must curl inward toward your palm. If you do not use the correct technique, you might lose your place on the keyboard or cause strain in your wrists. Our goal today is to learn how to make these downward reaches smoothly while keeping your hands in the correct position.

Before we move our fingers down, we must ensure our home base is solid. As a reminder from your previous training, your fingers should always rest lightly on the home row: A S D F for the left hand and J K L ; for the right hand.

In this course, we treat the home row as an anchor. When one finger reaches down to hit a key on the bottom row, the other fingers should stay as close to their home row keys as possible. This prevents your entire hand from floating away. If your hand moves too far, you will find it difficult to find your way back, which leads to typing mistakes.

To reach the bottom row, do not move your whole hand down. Instead, curl your finger at the knuckle. Imagine your finger is like a small hook reaching under your hand. By curling the finger rather than shifting the hand, you keep your anchor on the home row, making it much easier to stay organized.

Before we move to practicing full bottom row, let's try only V and M to get familiar with the idea.