How to improve your typing speed

Measure a baseline you can trust

Before changing anything, type a passage you have never seen for sixty seconds and write down two numbers: your speed and your accuracy. A number produced from a passage you have already memorised measures recall, not typing, and it will always be flattering.

Repeat the test the same way — same keyboard, same posture, same time of day — so the numbers are comparable. Progress in typing is slow and uneven, and a baseline you retest inconsistently will convince you that you are stuck when you are not.

Accuracy is the skill; speed is the result

Fast typists are not people who move their fingers faster. They are people who make fewer corrections. Every wrong key costs you three times over: the wrong character, the time to notice it, and the time to fix it. A typist who never backspaces is effectively faster than a quicker typist who corrects twice a sentence, even if the second one's fingers are moving faster.

So drill accuracy first. Type slowly enough that you can finish a passage with no errors at all, then let the speed arrive on its own. If you are making more than roughly one mistake per twenty words, you are practising your mistakes.

Use the home row and stop watching your hands

Touch typing — keeping your fingers anchored on the home row and trusting them — is the single biggest structural improvement available to most players. Looking down at the keyboard forces a visual check between every keystroke, and that check is where beginners lose most of their time.

If you cannot yet type without looking, practise short, easy passages with the screen dimmed or your hands covered. It is slower for a week and faster forever.

Drill the things a random passage will not teach you

Random text samples every letter equally, which is not how real text is distributed. Spend part of each session on the transitions you actually fumble — letter pairs like `th`, `in`, `er`, `ou` and the capitals and punctuation that break your rhythm. A drill can be boring and still be useful; the point is repetition, not novelty.

Then rehearse the thing you are actually training: a match. Type whole sentences at race pace, not isolated words, because the skill you need is holding accuracy while reading ahead.

• Warm up for two minutes before a session — cold hands fumble more than tired ones.
• Read one word ahead of the word you are typing; your hands will follow your eyes.
• Never look at the keyboard to check a mistake. Look at the screen.
• Stop a drill when accuracy drops. Grinding out sloppy repetitions teaches sloppiness.

How this plays out in Speed Typing

In Speed Typing, both seats receive the same server-selected passage and the first player to type it correctly wins. There is no partial credit for getting most of the way there, and no benefit to finishing a sentence you typed wrong — which makes it a pure test of the accuracy-first approach this guide describes.

Because the passage is identical for both players, you cannot win by getting lucky with an easy text. The race is decided by who makes fewer corrections under a clock, so the drills above are the whole training plan: read ahead, hold accuracy, and let speed follow.