How can you type faster?
I think it’s fair to say that a lot of people would have to type something every day, whether it be for work or for a hobby, such as this blog.
Touch typing is the process of typing by which you use all fingers and type incorporating muscle memory, without looking at the keys. I first taught myself this style of typing by transcribing Harry Potter books as a kid (I was a cool kid, I know). Through this process I have been able to maintain a fairly high speed when it comes to typing. Or so I thought until I saw videos on YouTube where people were reaching speeds of 100+ words per minute (WPM). I wanted to try a typing test, feeling pretty confident in my typing skills, and managed about 60 WPM. A little disheartened, I decided to try and work on it to get faster. And let me tell you, it has taken TIME.
Those videos that say ‘Learn to type 140WPM in 30 days!’ are just impossible! Unless you practice all day, every day (in which you case you’d probably get some sort of repetitive strain injury) the chances of reaching a speed that high in 30 days (if you’re not starting at about 130WPM) are pretty low unfortunately!
Since the day of that stark realisation, I have worked on my typing skills for a few minutes, I would venture to say every day. At the moment it is my procrastination method of choice while being at the same time somewhat productive? At least, that’s what I keep telling myself! I’m currently averaging about 90 WPM on TypeRacer (see widget on homepage!) and have hit speeds of over 100 WPM many times now though it is still incredibly difficult.
Some days, I practice and my speeds could be in the 70s WPM bracket while the next day it could be 110. What I’m trying to say here is, progress is never linear and we shouldn’t expect it to be such. I am however, starting to see the benefits and I’m trying to take note of when I change brackets, for example, when I moved from consistently achieving scores in the 80s to now consistently achieving scores in the 90s, if that makes sense.
In the hopes that it may assist someone trying to improve their own typing, I’ll link a few tried-and-tested resources here if you want to try them out!
TypeRacer
TypeRacer is my current favourite as it is the closest to typing ‘real texts’ if that makes sense. It includes quotes from books, songs, films and many other sources while also including a competitive angle by racing against other users!
MonkeyType
MonkeyType is probably the best looking of the typing practice websites. It’s highly customisable so you can choose from a lot of different colour schemes, game types to try to work on different aspects of typing, such as speed versus accuracy, and tons of other different settings!
Nitro Type
Finally, Nitro Type is also based on racing other typists, however this time, you can earn virtual money which can buy flashier cars and also, you can form teams with other racers. Very fun!
These are the three websites that I have used most often but if you are looking to get started with touch typing then I would also recommend using Keybr which can help to give more of an idea of where the keys are situated on the keyboard. I think the important thing is picking a website that works for you, maybe changing it up occasionally if you get bored, and just practice!
