How to Type Faster

A 2018 Aalto University study of 168,960 online typists logged 136 million keystrokes and compared the fastest typists with the slowest. The differences weren't what most typing advice focuses on.

Fast typists use more fingers. The fastest group averaged 8.4 fingers, the slowest 5.3. You don't need perfect textbook form, but every finger you add spreads the work.

Fast typists overlap keys. They press the next key before letting go of the last one on 40 to 70% of keystrokes, against 25% for the average typist. That only happens once common letter pairs are automatic.

A typing course barely helped. Trained typists were only about 5 WPM faster than untrained ones. Practice after the lesson made the difference.

So the recipe is simple and a bit boring: bring more fingers into play, type enough that common patterns become automatic, and keep errors low so you're not paying for them in backspaces.

Take the 1 minute typing test on three separate days and write down the average WPM and accuracy. One run means little; three is a baseline. If you want to know how your number compares, look it up in our good typing speed chart.

Aim for 97% accuracy at whatever speed that takes. For most people it means slowing down 10-20%, and that feels wrong. Do it anyway. Errors are the most expensive thing in typing: every one costs a backspace, a retype and a break in rhythm, and habits you practice at speed stick.

Daily session (10 minutes): three passages of paragraph typing practice in the Everyday set, retyping any passage that comes in under 97%. Finish with one relaxed round of the animal typing game.

If you glance down, this is the week to stop. Rest your fingers on the home row (A S D F and J K L ;), feel the bumps on F and J, and return there after every word. Your speed will drop again for a few days. That's the old habit leaving.

Daily session: five minutes of Keyboard Jump in Home row mode, which only gives you words from the middle row, then switch to Top row and Bottom row modes as they feel easier. Adults who never learned touch typing properly can start with the stages in our Dance Mat typing game instead.

Now push speed, a little. The goal is an even rhythm: no bursts followed by pauses. Common words and letter pairs (th, er, in, ing) should start to come out as a single movement. This is where the overlap that fast typists use starts to happen on its own.

Daily session: two races in Typing Racer. Its rivals hold fixed speeds of 20, 35 and 50 WPM, so pick the one just above your baseline and beat it. Then turn on the ghost car, which replays your own best run, and race yourself. Finish with two minutes of the space typing game, which trains reading the next word while typing the current one.

A one-minute burst flatters you. Real typing is emails, reports and chats that run for minutes, and most people fade 5-15% over five minutes. This week you train holding your speed.

Daily session: one 3 minute typing test on alternate days, one 5 minute typing test on the others, and five minutes of paragraph practice in the Punctuation workout set, which adds the capitals, quotes and numbers that slow people down in real documents.

At the end of the week, repeat your baseline: three one-minute tests on three days. Compare the average, not the best run.

Most people aren't slow everywhere. They're slow on a handful of keys and letter pairs, and fast on the rest. Research on typing has long found that letter pairs typed with the same finger are the slowest of all, and pairs split between the two hands are the fastest. So look for your own bottlenecks: the letter you always hit with the wrong finger, the number row you look down for, the pair like "ce" or "my" that you fumble every time.

Once you know them, work on them directly. Keyboard Jump's Top row and Bottom row modes isolate the rows most people are weakest on, and the number typing game does the same for digits. Five focused minutes on your worst keys beats twenty minutes of general typing where you mostly repeat what you already do well.

Practicing only one-minute tests. Tests measure; they don't train. Taking ten tests in a row mostly teaches you to be nervous.

Backspacing whole words. When you make a mistake, fix the letter, not the word. Deleting and retyping whole words roughly doubles the cost of every error.

Anchoring on your wrists. Resting your wrists on the desk while typing forces your fingers to stretch for the top and bottom rows. Float your hands and let them move.

Watching the numbers instead of the text. Glancing at a live WPM counter breaks your reading rhythm. Look at it after the run, not during.

Switching keyboards constantly. A new layout or key size costs a few days of speed. If you're training for a test, practice on the kind of keyboard you'll be tested on.

Ten minutes daily beats an hour weekly. Motor skills consolidate between sessions. Frequency wins.

Stop while you're still accurate. When errors start climbing, the session is over. Practicing tired teaches sloppy habits.

Sit so your wrists float. Forearms roughly level, wrists not resting on the desk edge while you type. Cramped hands are slow hands.

Don't chase a new record every day. Watch the weekly average. Daily scores bounce around by several WPM and that's normal.

Make practice something you want to do. Games work because your attention is on the game, not on the chore of practicing. That's the whole reason this site exists: all 16 games track WPM and accuracy while you play.

It depends where you start. People below 30 WPM who stop looking at the keys often gain the most, because they're removing a hard limit. People already at 60 gain more slowly, and mostly in endurance and accuracy. What's realistic for almost everyone: move up one band in a month of steady practice, as shown in our typing speed chart, then keep going at a slower pace after that. For context on where you'll end up, see the average typing speed benchmarks.