How to type faster

Every mistake costs time: you notice it, go back, fix it and find your place again. A typist who makes few mistakes at a steady pace usually beats one who rushes and corrects. So when you practise, slow down until almost every word is clean, and let the speed come as the movements get automatic.

Watch both numbers. The typing test shows your speed and how many of your letters were right. If your speed climbs while your accuracy drops, you have gone past the pace your fingers can control, and the sensible step is to ease off a little.

Touch typing means that each finger has its own keys and you type without looking at them. Rest your fingers on the middle row of letters, the home row, and reach out from there and return. At the start it feels slower than your own two-finger style. For most people it is the habit that has the largest effect later, because it lets your eyes stay on the text.

• Keep your eyes on the screen or the text you are copying, not on your hands.
• Use the finger that belongs to each key, even when another one would reach.
• Read a word or two ahead of the one you are typing, so that your fingers never wait for your eyes.
• Keep a steady rhythm and avoid bursts followed by pauses: an even pace is both faster and cleaner.
• Use whatever keyboard layout you know. The test accepts any layout and counts the letters you type.

1. Practise for a short time on most days. A few minutes of focused typing works better than one long session in which you get tired and sloppy.
2. Take a quick run of the typing test of 15 sec to warm up, and then a run of 60 sec to see your pace.
3. Type a little slower than your usual pace and aim for a clean run. Notice which letters or letter pairs trip you up.
4. Type those trouble words on purpose a few times, slowly, until the movement feels smooth.
5. Look at your results once a week, with the same run length each time, and compare them with your own earlier ones.

Progress is usually uneven. You get quicker, then you sit at the same speed for a while, and then you move again. A flat week does not mean the practice is not working.

• Looking down at the keys, which breaks the link between reading and typing.
• Tensing your hands and shoulders. A tight hand is slow, so keep your wrists loose and your touch light.
• Stopping to fix every slip at once. If you are copying a text, a quick fix is fine, but sinking time into small errors makes the pace choppy.
• Typing in a hurry with a tired mind. The same words come out slower and messier when you are worn out.
• Practising only the easy words. Your own weak spots are where the gain is.

Sit with your feet on the floor, your forearms roughly level with the keyboard and your wrists straight, not bent up or resting hard on the desk edge. Pause now and then to shake your hands loose. If your hands or wrists start to hurt, stop and rest, and see a doctor if it keeps happening. No typing speed is worth a sore hand.

Typing on a phone uses thumbs and a small screen, and it often leans on autocorrect and word suggestions. A study of phone typing found an average of 36.2 words per minute^[2], which is lower than the keyboard average even though autocorrect was allowed. Practise on the device you will really use, and compare yourself with the figure for that device on the page about the average typing speed.

The typing test keeps a run in which your keyboard corrected or predicted words for you out of its comparisons, because then the speed is not only yours.

A test shows your speed on one passage on one day, with one keyboard. Words from the test, sentences from a book and your own writing are three different jobs, and your speed on them differs. In the keyboard study, most volunteers had taken a typing course, but the study cannot tell us whether the course made them faster. The honest use of a test is to watch your own trend.