While in the first page I try to be generic I must also give you this information.

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Focusing will make and break a capture, usually break it to be truthful.  The reason is that there is no set formula to give anyone other than: Your subject and intent determine where to focus.  Using auto focus is convenient but more often than not a bad idea if you do not know how it works.

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In the case of a portrait the points of focus are either at the base of the nose or the inner corner of the eye.  This assumes you want a shallow DOF.  If you shoot in front of a screen in order to use the capture for a composite you must have the hair in focus meaning that your DOF needs to be deep and include the front of the nose to the last hair in the back.  Focusing on the base of the nose then is inadequate.

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The same goes for everything else.

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Ah, oh, you cannot easily focus on infinity* despite the camera symbol at the end the focusing scale.  Go ahead, use it and enter a world of pain.  You need to do some research on that and will stumble onto hyper-focus before long...  Good luck.

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Another thing you need to keep in mind.  When you select a point of focus you really are selecting a parabolic plane of focus.  Aspherical lenses lenses flatten the capture with less than more success.  They create a distortion whose amplitude is proportional to the lens lengh.  I am well aware that this is too much information but if you know of your lens and camera limitations you can prepare for it. 

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With focusing comes the Depth Of Field (DOF).   DOF is important for your overall exposure but more so in order to capture your subject correctly.  Aperture is in my opinion the most important setting to learn.  Your success depends on it.

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* Older lenses could.  Newer and especially auto-focus lenses are simply useless.