The number row is the row most people never really learn. Free drills that teach which finger reaches each digit, then build the reach into muscle memory the same way the letters were built.
🔢 Start the number lessons ⚡ Test your speed
Three things make it harder than the letters, and none of them are about effort.
First, the reach is long. Every digit pulls a finger a full row further from home position than any letter does, so the hand loses its anchor and has to find it again afterwards. Second, the feedback is weak: you type thousands of words a day and comparatively few numbers, so the same practice that fixes letters by sheer repetition never arrives. Third, most typing courses treat numbers as an afterthought, tacked on at the end after interest has faded.
The result is that plenty of people who touch type fluently still drop their eyes for a phone number or a date. It is the single most common gap in an otherwise good typist.
The number row follows the same column logic as the letters: each finger owns the keys directly above its home key, and stretches up rather than sideways.
This mapping is identical on QWERTY, QWERTZ, AZERTY and Dvorak, because all four share the same number row. That is why the number lessons are the one part of the course that does not change when you switch keyboard layout.
Above each digit sits a symbol reached with shift, and the rule is the same one that governs capital letters: the shift key is pressed by the hand opposite the one typing the character. A left hand digit takes the right shift, and a right hand digit takes the left shift.
Using the same-hand shift is the usual reason a symbol comes out wrong or slow. It twists the hand out of home position, and the finger that has to make the reach is also the one holding the modifier.
Comma, full stop, apostrophe and the question mark sit on the bottom and home rows and are worth drilling separately, because they appear in ordinary prose far more often than any digit does.
Numbers respond badly to random practice and well to grouped practice. Three approaches, in the order they work best:
Accuracy first, always. A mistyped digit is worse than a mistyped letter, because a reader can correct "teh" from context and cannot correct a wrong amount or a wrong year.
Our progress page keeps a per-key heatmap scored on accuracy and speed, so a digit you always get right but visibly hunt for still shows up. A key you never miss but always pause on is the one capping your words per minute, and a hits-and-misses count alone can never see it.
Weak-key practice then builds drills from your own worst keys rather than a fixed list, which is the fastest way to close a number row gap.