How to type percent sign (%)
Also called percentage symbol, modulo sign.
Hold Shift with your left little finger and press the 5 key with your left index finger. Both hands are involved even though the key sits on the left half of the board.
Which finger types %
- Finger
- Left index
- Resting position
- F on the home row
- Shift
- Required, held by the other hand
- Hand
- left
No website can detect which finger you actually used — a browser reports the character, not the hand that produced it. The finger above is the one the standard touch typing layout assigns, and it is the one the lessons here train.
What % is used for
- Expresses a proportion out of a hundred.
- Means the remainder after division in most programming languages, so 7 % 3 is 1.
- Marks a placeholder in string formatting, as in %s and %d.
- Encodes unusual characters in a web address, where a space becomes %20.
Where it comes from
It is a worn-down abbreviation. Italian clerks wrote “per cento” and shortened it over centuries to p100, then to a c above a bar, and finally to the two circles and stroke we use now — a fraction that lost its numbers.
The mistake people make
Stretching the left index finger to 5 while the left little finger holds Shift. That is a wide span for one hand and it drags the whole hand off the home row. Anchor the little finger and reach, rather than moving the hand.
If the key is missing or gives the wrong character
- Windows: hold Alt and type 37 on the numeric keypad.
Practise it properly
Knowing which finger owns a key is not the same as using it without thinking. The Typometer course blocks on the wrong key and names the finger for every one, so the habit forms rather than the knowledge.
Other keys
Related guides
Free, and no account needed.
- Start at level 1: the home rowFind F and J without looking, one key at a time.
- How to learn touch typingWhat actually works, what to ignore, and how long it takes.
- The full typing course415 levels from the home row to code and professional documents.
- Untimed typing practicePractise without a clock and focus on the keys you keep missing.