Posture and the keyboard

Touch typing is a motor skill. Like every motor skill, it works better when the body is in a good position to perform it. The position is straightforward.

Feet flat, back straight

Sit with your feet flat on the floor. If the chair is too tall, get a footrest -- a stack of books works. If the chair is too short, raise it.

Sit upright. The back of the chair should support your lower back. Your shoulders should not hunch forward. If they are, the screen is too low or the keyboard is too far.

The most common typing-related injury is not from the keyboard. It is from a slumped posture held for hours, with the head tilted forward to read the screen. Fix the screen height first.

Screen at eye level

The top of the screen should be roughly at eye level when you are sitting up straight. If the screen is a laptop, this almost always means raising it on books and using an external keyboard. Laptop typing for more than an hour at a stretch is hard on the neck.

Hands above the keys

The forearms should be parallel to the floor, or angled slightly downward. The wrists should be straight, not bent up or down. The hands hover -- they do not rest on the keyboard or on a wrist pad while typing. (Wrist pads are for between sessions, not during them.)

If the keyboard is too high, your shoulders shrug. If it is too low, your wrists bend up. Neither is sustainable.

Fingers on F and J

Left index on F. Right index on J. Both keys have a small bump. Find the bumps without looking and your hands are in position.

The other six fingers fall onto D-S-A and K-L-semicolon. Thumbs rest on the spacebar but do not press it unless you are typing a space.

When something hurts

Pain in the wrists, forearms, or fingers is a signal. The signal almost always means one of:

• The hands are bent at the wrist instead of straight
• The shoulders are pulled up toward the ears
• You have been typing for too long without a break

Stop. Stretch. Walk around. Adjust the chair or the screen. Then come back.

Pain that returns the next day, or pain that lasts more than a few hours, is worth a doctor's visit. Repetitive strain injuries are real and they get worse if ignored.

Breaks

A simple rule: every twenty minutes, look at something twenty feet away for twenty seconds. This is for the eyes, not the hands.

Every hour, stand up and walk around for at least a minute. This is for everything else. Most people who type all day for years do this without thinking. Most people who develop typing-related pain do not.