Basic computer skills must include basic keyboard skills.This computer basics tutorial includes where your fingers should be placed, what keys have special uses and what a key combination is. The picture below is of a typical computer keyboard.



This key board may look like yours and maybe not they come in many different styles and looks. The correct way to place your hands on a keyboard is with your thumbs on the space bar, your left index finger on the letter "F" and your right index finger on the letter "J" now with that done let your remaining fingers rest on the remaining keys in the same row so that it is comfortable. Or you can use the two finger picking method that millions of people use.  I myself am a three finger picker.

One of the basic keyboard skills you need to remember, is that when you type be sure to press the key and release it immediately if you do not release the key immediately you may find a lot of double or more characters in what you type.
Click on the picture below to see a full size picture of it.


On the far right is your number pad the keys will not work unless the NUM LOCK key has been depressed this is a one time thing you must do, the computer remembers this setting. Use the keypad whenever you entering numbers it is much easier. The Enter key is used as a carriage return, in a word processor it will start a new line of text in other programs it is your ok key.

The SHIFT key on the keyboard when held down creates capital letters when a letter key is depressed. When held down the SHIFT key enables the upper character on keys that have more than one character or symbol on them. For example the 1 key in the upper left hand corner of the keyboard has an ! above it when the shift key is not held down a 1 is made when the key is depressed and when the SHIFT key is held down and the 1 key is depressed an ! is made.

The CAPS LOCK works much like the NUM LOCK IF IT IS DEPRESSED IT STAYS ON UNTIL THE NUM LOCK KEY is depressed again to turn it off.

The TAB key on a keyboard in a word processor creates your indents and in a form it moves you from field to field.

Basic keyboard skills require the use of Key Combinations. Key Combinations or computer keyboard shortcuts are a series of keys on the keyboard that you depress together to send a message to the computer. One example of this would be CTRL +  P  That would mean that you press the CTRL key and press the P key at the same time or one after the other without letting any of the keys up. CTRL + P in a lot of programs is the command to print the current page.

When you see the "+" it does not mean to press the "+" key. Another key combination would be CTRL + ALT + DEL which is telling you to depress the CTRL, ALT and the DELETE key all together, you want to do this as a last resort, that key stroke combination ends the current program and you loose all your work up till the last time you saved your work. It is sometimes necessary to use this combo when programs freeze.

Here is a list of windows computer keyboard shortcuts if you are interested in knowing more of them just click the link and then save the file to your computer or do a right click and then "Save As".


That ends the basic keyboard skills lesson. If you have a question please feel free to ask me using the contact form I will try to answer your question.