How dry before watering ?

Uve read of a couple inches into the medium should be dry or a little damp .

Which is it , should it be dry or a little damp ?

From my experience so far top soil is dry as bone but there is still some but very little moisture a couple inches In . Is this a good time to water or maybe I need to let it dry more

Depends on your growing medium. You mentioned "soil". You're probably okay to water as long as it's mostly dry. If your plant goes into drought wilt, then you've waited too long. If you catch it when wilt first begins, the plant typically recovers fine and very quickly.

I've found that scheduled watering -- number of days since last watering -- to be reasonably accurate. As the plant grows more leaves and transpires more, then the interval between waterings decreases.

Once your leaves just begin to wilt, stick your finger in and check. Go from there.

Moisture meters are cheap.

Go by pot weight, wait until the pot gets light. You want to give plants in soil a wet/dry cycle. Don't bother sticking your finger in it. You'll figure out how to water properly soon, but until then, you can always fill up an identical pot with the same media, then compare the weight of your planted pot to the weight of the dry pot of media. Good luck!

Stick your finger in a pot with dry medium and then squeeze with thumb and lift pot
Then stick that finger in a watered pot and grab it with your thumb and lift that pot
That is how the finger method works

All good info don’t forget to pay attention to what the plant looks like when it’s time to water. Before you know it you can keep your finger clean

Dry
Free from moisture or liquid; not wet or moist.

I don't let the plants wilt/droop. You can find the place to water where the soil is light but you're not torturing your plants by letting them droop. For me with ProMix in 5g bags, that's every 4 days for most of my grow.