How to type faster: what the research says

Speed rarely comes from forcing your fingers to move faster. Studies of real typists point elsewhere: fast typists make few errors and plan ahead, and speed grows with practice just above your comfortable pace. This article assumes that you already know where the keys are. If not, start with our guide to the home row.

Fewer errors, more speed

Dhakal and colleagues ran a large online study of typing. About 168,000 volunteers took a typing test, 168,960 to be exact. On average, they typed 51.56 words per minute (WPM), with an uncorrected error rate of 1.167%. According to the researchers, even a slight drop in errors can make a big difference to speed.

The arithmetic behind this is simple. A corrected mistake costs at least two extra keystrokes, the wrong one and Backspace, and usually a moment of hesitation as well. The sample has limits: people signed up voluntarily, and most of them were young and from the US. What the average means for your own numbers is explained in What is a good typing speed?

One question remains open. No training experiment has tested directly whether putting accuracy before speed makes you faster in the long run. The findings on errors point in that direction, though.

So slow down a little whenever your accuracy falls below 97%.

Rollover: the next key before the last one is up

In the same study, one habit was closely tied to speed: pressing the next key before releasing the previous one. This overlap is called rollover. Its correlation with speed was r = 0.73, on a scale where 1 would mean a perfect relationship.

A correlation does not prove that rollover causes speed. It could also be a result of it. It does show what fluent typing looks like: the fingers move in overlapping motions, not strictly one after another.

Don’t try to force rollover. In our view, it is best built indirectly, by typing common words and letter pairs until each one feels like a single movement. Words such as “the”, “and” or “with” are good candidates, since you type them all the time.

Read ahead while you type

Feit, Weir and Oulasvirta studied how people type in everyday use. One of the habits they link to good performance is preparing upcoming keystrokes before they are due. The eyes run ahead of the fingers, so the next word is already planned when the current one ends. The other two habits they describe, a fixed finger for each key and little movement of the whole hand, are what the home row technique trains.

In practice, this means reading in words rather than letters. Take a sentence like “the decision was made last night”: while your fingers type “decision”, your eyes are already on “was made”. A glance at your hands interrupts this.

Keep your eyes on the text ahead, not on the letter you are typing.

Practice just above your comfortable pace

Everyday typing at a comfortable pace gives you routine, but little push. According to Ericsson, deliberate practice for typists means typing on purpose at about 10 to 20% above your normal speed, with full concentration.

Keith and Ericsson studied everyday typists and looked at how their training related to their speed. A typing course combined with deliberate speed practice was much more strongly linked to typing speed (β = 0.73) than a course alone (β = 0.15). This was a correlational study, not an experiment, so it shows a link rather than proof. It does suggest that a course pays off more when you also train speed on purpose.

Add short, focused bursts at 10 to 20% above your usual speed, then return to your normal pace. If your accuracy collapses, the step was too big.

Getting past a plateau

Many learners reach a point where their speed stops rising for a while. That is normal. One likely reason is that typing has become automatic at the current pace, and automatic typing does not push you any further. If you are still in your first weeks, the dip may simply be the slow phase described in How long does it take to learn touch typing?

Short speed sprints are a way out: a minute at a deliberately higher pace, then a short pause. In phase 2, typando adds a personal speed goal, the average of your last five exercises plus 5%. A unit counts as passed once you reach 97% accuracy and that goal. Phase 3 adds dedicated speed sprints: six 30-second rounds at 10 to 20% above your comfortable pace, where 90% accuracy is enough to pass.

When you are stuck, raise the pace in short sprints instead of practicing longer at the same speed.

A 15-minute speed session

Our suggestion for a daily session once you know all the keys:

1. Warm up for three minutes at a relaxed pace and focus on accuracy.
2. Type common words for five minutes and read ahead as you go.
3. Do three one-minute sprints at 10 to 20% above your usual pace, with a short pause after each.
4. Finish with a few minutes on your weakest keys, always inside real words.

Stop early if your hands get tired or your accuracy keeps slipping. A short session done well is worth more than a long one done badly.

After the key lessons, the phase 2 units in the trainer follow a similar pattern: about 15 minutes with a warm-up, new material and a review of your weakest keys, plus a speed goal based on your own results.