Is touch typing still worth learning?
Often, yes, but not for the reason most people assume. A study of everyday typing found that trained touch typists were no faster than people who had taught themselves. What mattered for speed was how people used their hands, and touch typing is a dependable way to learn exactly that.
What the research found
Feit, Weir and Oulasvirta studied how people type in everyday use. The touch typists in their study averaged 57.8 words per minute (WPM), and the self-taught typists 58.9 WPM. In other words, there was no difference in speed.
Speed depended on other factors. The researchers highlight three: each key is always typed with the same finger, upcoming keystrokes are prepared before they are due, and the whole hand moves as little as possible.
Touch typing is therefore not a shortcut to speed in itself. It is a reliable way to build these habits, but not the only one. Judge any method, including ours, by whether it builds them.
Why the system still makes sense
If you taught yourself, your habits probably formed along the way. Perhaps your right index finger covers half the keyboard, or the letter E gets a different finger depending on the word. Touch typing replaces improvisation with a plan: every key has its finger, the hands return to the home row, and the eyes stay on the text.
A plan can be practiced one key at a time and checked along the way. In our view, that is its main advantage over fixing old habits piece by piece. You always know what the correct movement looks like, and you notice when you drift away from it. How the fingers are assigned is shown in The home row: where every finger belongs.
If you want to change how you type, choose a complete system rather than patching your old one.
Who gains the most
A quick self-check helps. Type a paragraph as you normally would and watch yourself:
- Do your eyes drop to the keyboard more than now and then?
- Does the same key get different fingers from word to word?
- Do your hands travel across the keyboard to reach letters?
If you answer yes to any of these, touch typing is likely to help. The more you write, the more it pays off, whether that means reports or long email threads. Looking down also takes your eyes off the text you are writing. You glance at the keys, look back up and have to find your place in the sentence again. Touch typing removes that back and forth.
If even one answer was yes, give touch typing a serious try.
When the gain is small
Some self-taught typists are fast, keep their eyes on the screen and always use the same finger for the same key. If that describes you, you probably have the habits described above, even if your fingering is unusual. Starting over would cost you weeks for little gain in speed.
For a rough comparison: in a large online study by Dhakal and colleagues, the average was 51.56 WPM. The participants chose to take the test themselves and were mostly young people from the US, so the figure is a reference point, not a norm. How to read your own result is covered in What is a good typing speed?
If you are already comfortable and fast, skip the retraining. Work on speed directly with the methods in How to type faster.
What switching costs
Switching has a price: for a few weeks, the new technique is slower than your old one. Yechiam and colleagues, drawing on earlier research, describe the trap this creates. Each time you type, glancing at the keys is the quicker option, so many learners drift back to it even after a successful course. The title of their paper gives this pull a name: melioration, the tendency to choose whatever pays off right now.
The payoff comes later. In a study by Weigelt Marom and Weintraub, students in higher education typed significantly faster three months after the course than before it. That held for students with and without learning disabilities, even though those without had typed more slowly right after the course.
Stopping early is the real risk. A school report by Ertl, which was not peer reviewed, suggests that children who stayed below about 20 WPM had only about a 50% chance of keeping the skill. The full timeline is in How long does it take to learn touch typing?
If you decide to switch, commit for about three months and type everything the new way.
The bottom line
Touch typing is worth learning if you type regularly and your current habits are inconsistent. It will not make you fast overnight, and it is not the only road to speed. But it is a road you can follow step by step, with a clear idea of what comes next.
To see how it feels, try the first lessons in the trainer. They start with the home row, take a few minutes each and need no account.
Frequently asked questions
- Is touch typing still useful with dictation and text suggestions?
- Yes, as long as you write on a keyboard regularly. Dictation and suggestions can take over parts of the work, but you still correct, edit and write many short texts by hand. Each of those moments uses the skill, and your eyes can stay on the text while you do it.
- Is it too late to learn touch typing as an adult?
- No. The study by Weigelt Marom and Weintraub mentioned above was done with students in higher education, not with children. The main difference for adults is an old habit that competes with the new one. Plan for a slow phase and keep your sessions short and regular.
- What does it cost to learn touch typing?
- Money is rarely the obstacle, since several courses are free, including typando, which needs no account. The real cost is time: short daily sessions over several weeks, plus a phase in which you type more slowly than before. Weigh that against the hours you spend at a keyboard each week.
- Is touch typing worth it if I mostly type on a phone?
- Touch typing is a skill for physical keyboards, so the benefit depends on how often you use one. If you rarely sit at a laptop or desktop computer, the gain is small. If you do so for work or study, the skill applies every time. For practice on typando, you also need a physical keyboard.
- Should I keep my old typing style for work while I learn?
- Switch completely if you can, at least for everyday messages. Each time you go back to the old way, the old habit gets another round of practice. If a deadline calls for your old speed, use it for that task only and return to touch typing afterward.
Sources
- Feit, A. M., Weir, D., & Oulasvirta, A. (2016). How we type: Movement strategies and performance in everyday typing. Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 4262–4273. doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858233
- Dhakal, V., Feit, A. M., Kristensson, P. O., & Oulasvirta, A. (2018). Observations on typing from 136 million keystrokes. Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3174220
- Yechiam, E., Erev, I., Yehene, V., & Gopher, D. (2003). Melioration and the transition from touch-typing training to everyday use. Human Factors, 45(4), 671–684. doi.org/10.1518/hfes.45.4.671.27085
- Weigelt Marom, H., & Weintraub, N. (2015). The effect of a touch-typing program on keyboarding skills of higher education students with and without learning disabilities. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 47, 208–217. doi.org/10.1016/j.ridd.2015.09.014
- Ertl, M. A. (2007). The effects of initial touch keyboarding speed achievement of fifth graders and touch keyboarding skill retention in seventh grade. ERIC Document ED499927. eric.ed.gov/?id=ED499927