Fast touch typing exercise - lesson 12

The part of the touch typing course that addresses the letters comes to an end. Some languages ​​are mapped to the keyboard in such a way that letters appear in the row of numeric keys, but this is rare.

If you have mastered the typing of the characters that are produced by pressing the bottom row of the keyboard, you can say that you have achieved a success. Now you will only need to get acquainted with the top row of the keyboard. Keys of that row are used much less often when typing than letter keys and basic punctuation.

In this lesson, I would like to mention diacritical marks that occur in many languages ​​and about which those who speak a language that does not have diacritical marks have little or no knowledge of their existence.

Well, diacritical marks are characters written above, below or inside a letter. They change the way a given letter of the alphabet is read. Letters created using diacritics are new letters, mainly because of this, some alphabets have more letters than others. In some languages diacritical marks are called accents.

Typing letters created using diacritical marks is not as easy as typing other letters. To create a letter with a diacritical mark, depending on the language, press "Alt" (for PC keyboards) or "Option" (keyboard for Mac) and simultaneously press the letter. For other languages, it may be pressing the accent mark and then pressing the letter In this way you create a new letter in two steps. Personally, I find it easier to use the "Alt" key than to use two-step letter creation. The matter gets a bit complicated with the Apple keyboard. The "Option" key can be placed quite far from the middle of a keyboard, so using it is quite inconvenient when you want to press "Option" and the special character at the same time. I have the impression that the Mac keyboard was created with the American market in mind, forgetting that to type effectively on the keyboard representatives of non-English countries have a difficult task.

Therefore, if you are a person who does not type the keyboard natively in English, or you want to master another language, remember that the touch typing course will be a bit more difficult for you than for an English-speaking person.