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Dirt and hairs accumulate under the keys and will eventually cause problems. To clean it, turn your keyboard over and lay it on a piece of paper. Lift the keyboard a little way off the paper, shake it and tap it several times. When you think that all the debris has fallen out, stand the key board upright on the paper and brush between the keys to remove any remaining dirt. I use a clean pastry brush kept specially for this purpose. To reduce the accumulation of dust, cover the keyboard when not in use, or alternatively, always turn the keyboard over after you close down the computer.

The Caps Lock key: When you accidentally touch the Caps lock key, the result is dEAR sIR instead of Dear Sir. I removed the Caps lock key from my keyboard. Try this less drastic solution in MS Word, if you have typed a row of capitals by mistake: Select (i.e. highlight) the faulty text, then hold down the Shift key and tap the key labelled F3 . Repeat Shift + F3 several times and watch the text cycle through various formats.

Basic Knowledge: When instructing some people over the telephone I have been surprised to be asked "which is the Shift key" or "which is the Enter Key"  If these keys are not labelled on your keyboard then make a diagram showing their names and prop it up against your screen until you know the names and their functions instinctively .

This is the Shift key used in many of my tips for functions other than just creating capital letters. Note there are two shift keys.

The top key here is the Left delete key for deleting to the left.
This L shaped key is the Enter key, used to confirm entries as well as for moving down one row, or putting a space between two lines of text. It is the equivalent of the carriage return key on a typewriter.

These are the Arrow keys, use these to move around your text without deleting anything.

The Del (Delete) key deletes letters or spaces to the right . This key is also used to delete words, lines of text, emails, pictures, or whole paragraphs. Select what you wish to delete then press the delete key.
The Home key moves your cursor to the start of a line.
The End key moves your cursor to the end of a line

The Tab key is used to line up columns. Press the Tab key to move to the right 8 spaces at a time. Press Shift and Tab to move to the left 8 spaces. Never use the space bar to line up columns of text, it just doesn't work.

Space Bar: this is the very wide key nearest to you. Never use key this to line up columns, use the tab key.

Basic Exercise. Type a block of text and practise on it using all these important keys until you are completely familiar with their usage.

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