How to Type Faster
Typing faster is mostly a matter of typing more accurately. A wrong character costs a whole word of net WPM here, so 95% accuracy over a 300-character minute gives back 15 of your 60 words — a quarter of the run. Learn the home row, keep your eyes on the words rather than on your hands, and push your speed only as far as your accuracy will follow.
The rules, step by step
- 1Choose a lengthFour clocks — 15, 30, 60 and 120 seconds — and a 50-word run with no clock at all. Each keeps its own personal best, because they are not the same test.
- 2Start typingThe clock starts on your first keystroke, not when the page loads, so reading the first line before you begin is free. Nothing is timed until you type.
- 3Space ends a wordPress space to move to the next word. A space with nothing typed does nothing at all, so a leaning space bar cannot file a run of empty words.
- 4Backspace fixes the word you are onBackspace deletes within the current word, and steps back into the previous one only if that word was wrong. A word you typed correctly is closed and cannot be unpicked.
- 5The run ends itselfA timed run stops when the clock does, mid-word if that is where you are. A 50-word run ends as you finish the fiftieth word — no trailing space required.
- 6Read the scoreNet WPM is the headline, gross WPM is your raw speed, and accuracy is the share of keystrokes that landed right. A run at 95% accuracy or better counts as clean.
Try it — the rules above, running
Loading the word list…
The word list is still loading.
New test deals a fresh stream of words, and Again replays the stream you just typed — the only way to tell whether you got faster or the words got easier. Backspace fixes the word you are on and steps back into the one before it only if that word was wrong. The three-dot menu holds today’s shared test, the five lengths and a switch that announces each word aloud.
Your statistics · 60s
- Played
- 0
- Won
- 0
- Win rate
- 0%
- Streak
- 0
- Best streak
- 0
- Best time
- —
- Best net WPM
- —
A run counts as clean, and as a win, at 95% accuracy or better. Only clean runs set a personal best, so the figure above is your best honest speed rather than your fastest mess.
This length
One minute, the length almost every published WPM figure refers to. If you quote one number, quote this one.
Net WPM is (keystrokes ÷ 5) ÷ minutes, minus one word for every error. Accuracy is correct keystrokes ÷ keystrokes, counted on what is standing at the end — a mistake you backspace costs you the time and nothing more.
Keyboard
- A – Z
- Type the word under the caret
- Space
- Finish the word and move on
- Backspace
- Fix the word you are on
- Ctrl + Backspace
- Clear the whole word
- Shift + Enter
- Run the same words again
- Shift + F
- Full screen (from outside the typing box)
- ?
- Show the shortcuts
Where do your fingers go?
- 1Find the two bumpsAlmost every keyboard has a raised ridge on F and J. Rest your left index finger on F and your right on J and your hands are placed without looking — that ridge exists for exactly this and most people never notice it.
- 2Drop the other fingers onto the home rowLeft hand on A, S, D, F; right hand on J, K, L and the semicolon. Thumbs on the space bar. This is the position your hands return to after every key, and returning is the habit, not the position.
- 3Give every key one fingerEach key belongs to the finger nearest it on the home row — the left index takes R, T, G, V and B as well as F. Reaching with the wrong finger works and it caps you, because the hand has to reset before the next key instead of already being there.
- 4Stop looking downYou will get slower for a few days and then faster than you were. Looking at the keyboard costs a glance back up to the screen after every difficult word, and those glances are most of the gap between 40 and 70 WPM.
Why does accuracy matter more than speed?
Because of the arithmetic, not as a piece of encouragement. On a one-minute run, net WPM is gross WPM minus the number of characters you got wrong. Type 300 characters with 30 of them wrong and a gross 60 becomes a net 30: the same run at 100% accuracy would have scored double without a single extra keystroke.
This is why deliberately typing at 90% of your fastest is the fastest way to get faster. Errors are not a small tax on speed, they are the single largest term in the score, and the habit of hitting the right key is what a practice run is for.
What should you practise first?
- The home row, then the top row, then the bottom. Adding a row before the previous one is automatic just gives you two rows you have to think about.
- Your own worst letters. Everyone has three or four keys they consistently miss — very often the ones under the weak ring and little fingers. Watch which words go red here and you will find them quickly.
- Short common words as whole units. `the`, `and`, `that`, `with`. These are the words that make up most of any text, and turning them into single motions is the biggest single win available.
- The space bar, with alternating thumbs or one consistent thumb. Whichever you choose, choose it. An inconsistent space is a stall between every single word.
How long does it take to type faster?
Longer than a week and much less than you fear. Touch typing is motor learning, so it responds to short frequent sessions far better than to long rare ones — ten minutes most days will move the number, and an hour every fortnight will not. The 30-second test exists for that: it is short enough to run six of them in five minutes.
Expect the curve to be steep and then flat. The jump from hunting keys to touch typing is large and fairly quick; the climb from a comfortable 60 to a comfortable 90 is slow, and it is almost entirely made of removing the pauses rather than of moving the fingers faster.
How do you win more often?
- Correct inside the word, never after itOne wrong character costs one word of net WPM on a 60-second run; a backspace and a retype costs two keystrokes, which is 0.4 of a word. Catch it before the space and you are two and a half times better off. After the space it stops paying: stepping back into a six-letter word and retyping it from the first letter is fourteen keystrokes, or eight if you clear it with Ctrl + Backspace — against the five that one wrong character costs you.
- Type the word, not the lettersFluent typists fire common words as single motor patterns rather than as sequences of individual keys, which is why short familiar words come out faster than their letter count suggests. The stream is drawn from common words for exactly this reason: it rewards the pattern you are actually trying to build.
- Read one word ahead of your handsYour eyes should already be on the next word while your fingers finish this one. Most of the pause between words is not finger speed, it is the moment spent finding the next word — and that moment disappears entirely once your gaze is running ahead of the caret.
- Practise slightly below your top speedRunning flat out trains the mistakes as well as the speed, and the mistakes are what is capping you: at 90% accuracy you are giving back half of a 60 WPM run. Pull back until accuracy holds above 97%, let it settle there, and the speed follows without being chased.
- Quote the 60-second test, practise on the 30Fifteen seconds is too short to be representative and two minutes is an endurance test rather than a speed one. One minute is the length almost every published WPM figure means, and 30 seconds is short enough that you can run ten of them between other things.
Common questions about typing test
- Is it worth learning to touch type as an adult?
- Yes, and the cost is smaller than it looks: the awkward phase is measured in days, not months, and the difference between hunting for keys and touch typing is roughly the difference between 30 and 60 words a minute for the rest of your life.
- Does a mechanical keyboard make you type faster?
- Mostly no. A keyboard you find comfortable helps you keep going for longer, and a shorter key travel can shave a little off very high speeds, but at ordinary speeds the limit is where your fingers are going, not how the switch feels underneath them.
- Should I learn Dvorak or Colemak?
- Only if you enjoy the project. Alternative layouts do reduce finger travel, and the typing record was set on Dvorak, but the gain for a competent QWERTY typist is small next to the weeks of being slow again — and every computer you borrow will be QWERTY.
- Why do I type slower when someone is watching?
- Because typing fast is automatic and attention interrupts automatic movement. It is the same reason a familiar word suddenly looks misspelled. Run the test once to get it out of your system and the second run will be closer to your real speed.
Ready to stop reading? Play typing test on the full board, with controls and statistics tailored to that game.