Some trainees focus mostly, or even only, on letters when doing Stage 7 (and even Stage 8) reps.
It’s important to remember the StarTouch Action Story also includes some punctuation, as does written English.
Of course some punctuation is not easily typed on screen (…yet!) because it involves use of the Shift key.
But a few punctuation marks can by typed by a finger doing just a single press on a key.
Namely:
,
(comma)
.
(full stop)
;
(“dit-dah”)
/
(“slashed”)
‘
(apostrophe)
And three of these ( comma, full stop & apostrophe ) are particularly common and useful in written English.
So you might want to include more of at least these three ( , . ‘ ) in your practice reps – especially if you haven’t practised them much so far. And of course you can also include a few examples of the less common, but still useful, semi-colon ( ; ) and forward slash ( / ).
Here are some ideas you can base your practice on:
If you’re doing mostly Stage 7 practice at the moment…
Turn your random, themed or ‘common-letter-sequence’ word reps into lists by separating them with commas and ending them with a full stop:
red, green, blue.
rent, tent, sent, lent.
price, lice, price, twice.
Website domains are a very appropriate way to practice full stops (though we call them ‘dot’ in this context):
aol.com bbc.co.uk
bt.com ucl.ac.uk
zoom.us ebay.com
Include more contractions (words combined with missing letters replaced by an apostrophe):
can’t won’t isn’t didn’t
i’ve we’ve you’ve
she’s he’s it’s
mum’s dad’s
Try using apostrophes in their other ‘role’ as single inverted commas:
‘now’ ‘then’ ‘later’
‘cart’ ‘part’ ‘start’
‘wet’ ‘bet’ ‘pet’ ‘net’
You can use forward slashes in ‘either/or’ phrases.
You can use semi-colons instead of commas in a list.
in/out up/down
boy/girl go/no go
now; then; later;
cart; part; start;
If you’re doing mostly Stage 8 practice at the moment…
Start to include commas, apostrophes and full stops – to create more realistically punctuated phrases or sentences:
red, white and blue.
hey, that isn’t fair.
rover’s my wife’s dog.
If/when you are using the Shift key in your practice, you can start sentences (& proper names) with Capital Initial Letters.
And you can experiment with the odd semi-colon ( : ) and the (perhaps more useful) ? and @ signs.
This is the rather exciting point at which your touch typing practice starts to look like “real” typing!!
I am Welsh.
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