10-key typing

The number pad is built for one hand and no looking. Here is how to learn it by touch, and what employers expect.

Work out your KPH

Watch someone who has done accounts payable for a few years and you'll notice how little their right hand moves. It sits on the number pad with three fingers resting on 4, 5 and 6, their eyes stay on the invoice, and the figures go in with a steady patter and a tap of Enter after each one.

That's 10-key typing (also written ten-key): entering numbers by touch on the keypad at the right of a full-size keyboard. It's named after the ten digit keys, it turns up in a surprising number of job adverts, and it's a far smaller skill to learn than letter typing. There are only 17 keys, one hand does all the work, and the whole finger map fits on a sticky note.

What 10-key is, and who needs it

The number pad on a standard PC keyboard has 17 keys: the digits 0 to 9, the decimal point, the four arithmetic keys (+, −, * and /), Enter and Num Lock. The digits are laid out like a calculator, with 7 8 9 across the top and 1 2 3 along the bottom. That arrangement comes from adding machines and cash registers. Phone keypads do it the other way round, with 1 2 3 on top, which is why your fingers sometimes go to the wrong row when you switch between the two.

The keypad exists because typing long runs of figures on the number row above the letters is slow. The number row is spread over ten columns and both hands, and every digit is a stretch up from the home row. On the keypad, every digit is at most one key away from a resting finger.

The jobs that ask for 10-key are the ones where numbers are the work: accounts payable and receivable, payroll, bookkeeping, banking and cash handling, medical billing and insurance claims, stock counts in warehouses and shops, and general data entry. If an advert mentions "10-key" or "KPH", this is what it means.

Which finger presses which key

On a standard keyboard, 10-key is a right-hand skill. The three middle fingers each look after one column, the thumb takes 0, and the little finger handles the tall keys on the right.

The home keys are 4, 5 and 6, the keypad's own home row. Rest your index finger on 4, your middle finger on 5 and your ring finger on 6, with your thumb hovering over 0 and your little finger near +. Many keypads have a small raised bump or bar on the 5, just like the ones on F and J, so your middle finger can find home without you looking. If the idea of a home position is new to you, home row keys explains why it matters so much.

Not every course agrees on every key. Some teach 0 with the index finger instead of the thumb, for example. Either way works. What matters is picking one and sticking to it, because speed comes from your fingers never having to decide.

Left-handed? The keypad sits on the right of a full-size keyboard, so most people learn it right-handed, whatever hand they write with. A separate keypad is the alternative: you can put it on the left of the keyboard and keep your right hand on the mouse.

Num Lock, Macs and laptops without a keypad

If you press 4 and the cursor jumps left instead of typing a number, Num Lock is off. With it off, the keypad turns into a second set of navigation keys: 8, 4, 6 and 2 are the arrows, 7 is Home, 1 is End, 9 and 3 are Page Up and Page Down, 0 is Insert and the decimal point is Delete. Press Num Lock once and the digits come back; many keyboards have a small light that shows when it's on. Macs have no Num Lock at all. There's a Clear key in its place, and the keypad always types numbers.

Many laptops have no number pad. Some hide one inside the letter keys on the right-hand side, switched on with Num Lock or a function key, but it's cramped and nothing is where 10-key habits expect it. If you need 10-key for work or for a test, buy a separate USB or Bluetooth keypad. They're small, inexpensive and laid out like the keypad on a desktop keyboard, so what you learn on one carries straight over. Employer 10-key tests are designed for a full-size keypad, so practise on one.

How 10-key speed is measured

Letter typing is measured in words per minute. 10-key is measured in keystrokes per hour, written KPH and sometimes KSPH. The sum is simple: count the keys you pressed, divide by the minutes you typed, multiply by 60.

A real test lasts minutes, not an hour. Criteria, a pre-employment testing company, describes its Ten Key Test as 20 entries that typically take under five minutes including the instructions, with a speed score in keystrokes per hour and an accuracy score in correct fields. TestGorilla's numbers-only 10-key test runs for two minutes and shows random whole numbers of two to five digits, with Enter pressed after each one. Tests differ on details, such as whether Enter counts as a keystroke and how mistakes are treated, so read the instructions.

Here's the arithmetic. Say you type for two minutes and press 340 keys. That's 340 ÷ 2 × 60 = 10,200 KPH. It sounds enormous until you divide it back down: 10,200 an hour is fewer than three keys a second. Good 10-key is about rhythm, not frantic fingers.

If KPH looks familiar, it's the same idea as the key depressions per hour that some typing exams use, applied to numbers. One "word" is five keystrokes, so dividing KPH by 300 gives a words-per-minute equivalent: 10,000 KPH is about 33 WPM. WPM vs KDPH explains the conversion, and the KDPH calculator will work out an hourly rate for you: enter the number of keys you pressed and the minutes, with zero mistakes.

Accuracy is reported separately, and on a number test it matters more than speed. A typo in an email is a typo. A typo in a payment run is a wrong amount, and a wrong amount is something somebody has to track down later.

What employers ask for

There's no official standard, and adverts vary, but the numbers cluster. Use this as a rough guide, not a rule:

Typical figures from job adverts and test providers' guidance, not a published standard.

Accuracy targets are high, often 98% or more, and some employers look at accuracy before they look at speed at all. A clean 9,000 KPH is a better result than a messy 12,000, because every error in the faster run becomes somebody else's afternoon.

The advert for your job is the only number that really counts. If it says "10-key 8,000 KPH", practise until you're comfortably above it, at 9,000 to 10,000, so that nerves and an unfamiliar keyboard on the day don't push you under. Typing tests for jobs covers what else employers test and how to prepare for the day itself.

A two-week practice plan

Ten minutes a day is plenty. Practise in a spreadsheet: type each entry into a cell and press Enter, which moves you down to the next one, just as most data entry software does. Keep your eyes on the numbers you're copying, not on your hand, from the very first session. Slow and correct beats fast and wrong at this stage, because you're teaching your fingers distances, and they learn whatever you repeat.

Days 1 to 3: the home keys and the columns

Start with the home keys only, then add the reaches up and down. Type each group, press Enter, and move on:

• Home keys: 456 654 465 546 564 645 445 556 664
• Reaching up: 474 585 696 789 987 798 879 747 858
• Reaching down: 414 525 636 123 321 132 213 141 252
• Whole columns: 741 852 963 147 258 369 471 582 693

Say the finger in your head if it helps: index, middle, ring. Come back to 4 5 6 after every key.

Days 4 to 7: zero, the decimal point and Enter

• Thumb on 0: 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 101 202 303 1000
• Decimals with the ring finger: 0.5 1.5 2.25 3.75 6.06 9.09 4.5 7.25 12.99
• Mixed amounts: 1284.5 70.09 315 46.82 9031.47 250.75 6.4 18.36

There are no thousands separators in those amounts, and that's deliberate. Spreadsheets and accounting software add them for you, so on the keypad you type 1284.5, not 1,284.50. Press Enter with your little finger every single time, even when your thumb feels closer.

Week 2: real numbers, timed

Copy real figures: a page of a bank statement, prices from a receipt, invoice numbers, phone numbers, postcodes or ZIP codes, dates typed with the / key. Real data has repeated digits, zeros in odd places and long numbers next to short ones, which is exactly what tests use.

Then make yourself a timed practice sheet, once. In column A of a spreadsheet, type =RANDBETWEEN(100,999999)/100 and fill it down 50 rows. Copy the column and paste it back as values only, so the numbers stop changing. You now have 50 amounts between 1 and 9,999.99. In a spare cell, =SUMPRODUCT(LEN(A1:A50))+50 tells you how many keystrokes the list takes, one Enter per entry included.

Now time yourself typing the list into column B. Keystrokes ÷ seconds × 3,600 is your KPH: a 380-keystroke list typed in 2 minutes 30 seconds is 380 ÷ 150 × 3,600 = 9,120 KPH. Finally, check your work the way bookkeepers check a column of figures. =SUM(A1:A50)=SUM(B1:B50) says TRUE if your totals match, and =A1=B1, filled down, shows exactly which entry went wrong. Find the bad entry before you go again, because the mistake you never notice is the habit you're building.

Mistakes that slow people down

Looking down. Every glance at the keypad means finding your place on the page again. If you can't stop, lay a sheet of paper over your hand for a few sessions. It feels silly, and it works fast.

Moving the whole hand. Your wrist should stay more or less still while your fingers reach up and down a row. If your hand drifts, the bump on 5 brings you back.

Enter with the wrong finger. People who learned on a calculator or a phone often stab Enter with the index finger, which means lifting off the home keys after every entry. Little finger on Enter, thumb on 0.

The number row out of habit. If you sometimes reach for the numbers above the letters, you pay for the stretch twice: once going up and once coming back. For columns of figures, keep your right hand on the keypad and your left on the paper or the mouse.

Checking every entry as you go. Looking up at the screen after each number breaks your rhythm. Type a run, then check it, ideally with a total as above.

A setup that fights you. A mouse and a keypad both on the right push your arm out to the side for hours. Put the source document where you can read it without turning your head, and if your shoulder starts to ache, look at your chair and desk height before you blame your speed. Typing posture covers the setup.

Where to start

Tonight, find the bump on 5, rest three fingers on 4 5 6 and type the home-key groups above ten times each without looking down. Tomorrow, add the reaches. At the end of the week, time a run through your practice sheet and work out your KPH, then do it again a week later. Most of the improvement will come from accuracy and rhythm rather than faster fingers.

CamelKeys has no number pad test, but its touch typing lessons cover the number row in lessons 19 to 21, and a one-minute typing test will show where your letter typing stands if the job asks for both.

Sources

• Criteria Corp, “Ten Key Test: test description”, criteriacorp.com.
• TestGorilla, “10-Key Typing (Numbers Only)” test description, testgorilla.com.
• eSkill, “Find Your Next Typing Wizard with eSkill Online Typing Tests”, 2019 (keystrokes per hour in employer tests).
• “Numeric keypad” and “Num Lock”, Wikipedia (key layout, Num Lock functions, calculator and telephone layouts).