Hey!

I have a few friends that struggle a lot with typing, but here are my three rules of typing:

1. Don't look down at the keyboard. If you are attempting to type fast, or even faster, you should already have the layout of all the important letters if not all the letters memorized. This includes: semi-colons and colons, period, vowels and commonly used consonants such as d, m, n, t, s, r, etc. If you're really looking to get faster you should memorize the entire keyboard layout.
2. Be focused, but not that focused. When I'm typing, I like to have a little music playing, too keep me from focusing TOO much. If you focus too much, you start to hone in on each letter, while you should be looking at the bigger picture, the quote. Focusing in too much will cause you to trip up. Also, you should keep your eyes on the quote at ALL TIMES. Looking to the right to see your WPM will 90% of the time cause you to trip up and have to pause, but don't be afraid to pause.
3. Don't skip the long quotes. I know I sound cliché but it is very important, especially as a slow typer to utilize the long quotes. These will help your consistency and in the long run make you a faster typer. That's how I got from typer 70WPM to 130WPM.

I hope these tips help and if you ever need more help you can e-mail me because I rarely ever check back on this forum.

Thanks for your answer.
1. I'm already touch typing, so I know the layout (QWERTY).
2. Hm yes, sometimes I am able to "fly" over words without really looking at every letter, but this only works with easy words and if I'm in some kind of "flow". I try to read the next words while I'm typing but the biggest problem with this is, I often type the letters I'm just reading atm instead of the word I'm currently am.
3. I dont, I try to type slower now, and do less mistakes.

I decided long ago, after a lot of practice, that I was more interested in accuracy than speed (I also usually am in the mid-60s though by best was about 92). Here's my reasoning:

Most people aren't typing for business where extreme speed matters. I looked up stuff that said that even for most jobs, 70 wpm at 97% accuracy was acceptable. I was actually surprised at the 97% figure because that's one error every 33 characters, which seemed pretty high if you are a good typist (just my opinion). So, if could get just 1% better, it would be one mistake every 50 characters. And 99% would be one every 100 characters! So now I'm usually 99% or better.

Another thing I realized is that typing tests don't represent what most people do when typing. That is, they aren't copying something they are reading! Mostly they are writing text while thinking of it at the same time - like letters (or this post!).

So I started doing some checking and found that when doing my normal typing, I was typing more like 42-45 wpm - because I'd naturally be doing little pauses as I'd think what I wanted to write and mentally make changes before hitting keys. So, does it really matter if my typing speed improved to 100 wpm on a test? I don't know if that would make an appreciable improvement in my real-world typing.

I'd certainly like to take those tests faster, but I have serious doubts that it would change much for me normally. But better accuracy does.

Two words: Muscle Memory

I've noticed that whenever I type a text with simple, familiar words, I can easily get 130+ WPM with 99-100% accuracy. If the words are simple enough, I actually don't have to look at what I'm typing and I can just look at my WPM meter because I've memorized the words in my mind.

If the text uses a lot of uncommon vocabulary, I have to think about each letter, so my speed drops to around 100. I tried typing in Indonesian (still using Latin letters) and my typing speed unsurprisingly dropped to 80 with a terrible accuracy.

Zipf's Law states that the top 20% most used words make up 80% of the words in a text. So muscle-memorizing these top common words can drastically improve your speed.

Hi liquidvel,

You say you've been typing for about two months now and can hit 65 words consistently, where do you practice? I see that you only have 71 games so far on keyhero, so how many times a day are you practicing using the tests on the site? Nothing beats practice, if you wanna type faster you have to spend time practicing, do about 20 minutes of tests a day, no skipping on the longer quotes, and that should slowly but surely increase your speed.

Hi,
I've learned everything from the ground up on typingclub.com.
Now I can only improve speed/accuracy so I switch between keyhero, 10fastfingers etc.

On typeracer I cannot get over 65 to 70. Im kind of stuck.
As I said I'm trying to read a bit in advance so I know which words are next but it's pretty hard not to make a mistake at the current word then. Sometimes a get faster if I don't try so hard in being fast^^
Maybe I just need more practice.

When you type, are you thinking of whole words or the letters in the word? I know when I first started working on the skill, I was thinking of letters which will always be relatively slow. Just typing a lot changed that. My fastest speeds come on rare cases where I seem able to be typing one word while reading the next, but that is not my norm! I also have found that when I just try to take it easy - not push my limits or really take my time - I end up with scores that are just as good and sometimes better. I assume my max efforts run into more tiny pause as my brain tries to keep up!

The thing about both typingclub and 10fastfingers is that they don't really train you on entire sentences, ones that have the logical flow of a properly constructed sentence. That is the big advantage of keyhero, the sentences you type are what you would type if you were writing a story, and article or an essay. I recommend focusing on keyhero for practice, many tests a day, and less so on typingclub and 10fastfingers, they teach individual words and take away from the flow of natural speech. If you want to practice only speed and punctuation I would recommend keybr.

That's my advice.

Ok i will that's fine.

Here is a little update about 3 weeks later.
My average is still under 70, but I can hit > 65 WPM very often also on long texts.
On good runs I get between 75 - 85 WPM. I guess the difference now is, that I more fly over the words. After finishing I can barely tell want the text was about because I just copy what I see. I will keep going, next goal is to hit 100 :)

100 words is quite hard to hit. I only get 100+ WPM occasionally. For me it's all about accuracy and I've got 900+ races on typeracer (here only about 150 games), but I got from 60 to about a 90 WPM average within a few weeks. The higher the accuracy is, the better the WPM (for me) because I type very fast. A few tips that helped me alot:
- try to memorize(muscle memory) some words like "people" that are very hard to type for me (not anymore)
- lay your hands (or your palms) flat on the keyboard, because you will type alot faster.
- improve accuracy

What do you mean by flat? Do your wrists touch your desk?
I have a wrist wrest so my wrists are somehow parallel to the desk/keyboard even so my keyboard has a slight angle.

Yeah, that's what I meant. Initally I was typing like from "top down". But if your hand/fingers is/are closer to the keyboard you can touch much faster and more precisely.

So your wrist is in the air while typing?

Before, not anymore. If it is on the keyboard/table you can type much faster. Another tip would try the sites like "https://typing-spee…" - where you can train only words, not sentences.

Very helpful! Thanks for the advice!