Choose a tablature guide to keep handy as you work on reading and writing your tabs. You can find a basic book at a music store or online at no cost. You can also pick up some of your favorite music in tablature sheet music form at a music store. Pick up a book or two and put your tab-reading abilities to work. There's no better way to learn than by doing it.
Use standard, unlined paper to draw a graph that represents your instrument. If you want to work on reading guitar tablature, draw six lines that look like a standard sheet music staff. Those six lines represent the strings on your guitar. The lines represent, from bottom to top, the strings of your guitar from thickest to thinnest. The lines are numbered 1 to 6 from the thinnest to thickest, just like on a guitar.
Draw as many of these as you can on the sheet of paper. You can purchase tab music paper at a music store, but this works just as well and it's free. You can also find free blank tab paper for guitar, bass and banjo online.
Get familiar with the open tab fingering. A small circle placed on one of the lines indicates you will play the indicated string open, without putting a finger on any fret. If there is a small x on one of the lines, you will not play the string. You may have to mute it with the palm of your hand to keep it quiet if it falls in the middle of notes you'll be playing. A number on one of the lines indicates you will be playing that particular fret on the indicated string. The number 3 with a circle around it, placed on the sixth line, tells you to play the third fret on the sixth string.
Familiarize yourself with traditional guitar ornaments such as slide markings and note bends. Tablature uses the same ornamental markings as traditional music notation. A short, curved line with a number indication beside it tells you to bend the string the indicated measurement. There are many such markings, and learning them all will take time. That is why it is important to keep a tab guide handy as you learn.