How To Type Faster

How to type faster – Master the 10 finger system. 8 Typing tips.

Typing is communication; the better your keyboard skills, the more accurately you can deliver your message. However, learning how to type faster can be a training intense task. Even if you know all about touch typing, there is still this thing called practicing.

Furthermore, good posture or ergonomics also influence how fast you will be able to type. In the beginning, it may seem plausible to not pay too much attention to all these little things. We just want to hit the keyboard and speed things up.

However, I wish I had read some of the following tips before I started improving my typing speed. It would have saved me weeks of practice. This tutorial aims to help you learn how to type faster by curating essential techniques and advice in one place.

Typing Tips at a Glance

• Set a goal: Which skills do you want to develop or improve on?
• Methods: Are you familiar with the basic typing techniques?
• Posture & Ergonomics: How to maintain a healthy posture?
• Progress: How to improve skills with patience and persistence?
• Relaxation: When to take regular breaks from tasks and activities?
• Courses: Consider typing software to track your learning progress.
• Training: Practice daily or on a regular basis.
• Testing: Know your score, strengths and weaknesses.

1. How To Type Faster – Basic Techniques, Tips

Learning the basic concepts of touch typing will ease your learning process as an increased speed goes along with improved coordination of body (fingers, muscles) and mind (keyboard recognition).

The principles of learning how to type faster on the keyboard relate to mastering the home, top and bottom row as well as the numpad. You can teach these methods to yourself easily by reading articles and books or more effectively by using software that will guide you through customized exercises and will also track your progress.

Practicing – Therefore, one of the most important habits to implement would be to sit down and run regular exercises. You can do this online for free, or practice with a premium tutor such as KAZ or Typesy. Both will teach you the 10-finger systems and good typing habits. As an example, the virtual keyboard below shows how each finger is assigned to a specific area or letter keys.

Keys – Learning how to type faster on a keyboard usually starts by practicing letter sequences, whereas the F, D, S, A, and J, K, L, ; letter keys represent the home row position. A typical sequence is ASDF or JKL.

Home Base – The middle or home row is the base where your fingers will return after each keystroke. Some virtual keyboards offer colored keys to facilitate building the muscle memory for each finger. Remember each finger serves only specific keys. The letter F has a small bump to locate the base more easily.

Rollovers – You may try this from the beginning and practice rollovers. For successive letter keys, keep using a different finger instead of the same one. This will save time as you hit that key immediately after the previous one and so on. Fast typers (from 60 wpm) use rollovers more commonly. Speed and coordination hack!

Eyes off the keyboard – It is tempting to look at the keyboard while pressing the keys. Learn how to type faster without watching your hands to strengthen the connection between finger muscles and the brain. You will also spot errors more easily.

Use shortcuts – Shortcuts help to process commands faster and save time. See more shortcuts for Windows and Mac here.

Shortcuts	Descriptions
Ctrl + C	Copy
Ctrl + X	Cut
Ctrl + V	Paste
Ctrl + Z	Undo
Ctrl + S	Save

2. Set Your Own Goals

What is your long-term goal? What is your daily target? Practicing to type faster daily will enable you to progress quickly. However, how do you know how far you have progressed after a week of training? How do you know when you are ready to move on from the home to the bottom row? Set realistic but challenging goals!

Session goals – Before each training session, set a primary goal, and several secondary goals. You could set a primary goal of being able to hit any key on the home row, 20 times in a row, without looking at the keyboard. Suitable secondary goals would be learning the keys for the left and/or the right hand, and so on.

Strong goals – By reaching your goals, you will be able to judge your progress each week properly. As a final piece of advice: be creative when setting your goals, and try to set them as difficult as possible, even if it requires extra work. You wouldn’t be happy reaching a goal that was too easy, would you? If you don’t know your goals, don’t worry, there are some great books on this topic.

Anthony Robbins is pretty good at teaching how to set goals. Please look here.

3. Type Faster vs Accuracy vs Errors

When learning a new skill, we will often experience some instant success. Most of us will quickly master the keyboard and be able to increase their speed. However, accuracy is key to success and should not be neglected when learning to type.

Errors – Increased speed often provokes sloppy typing errors with beginners. There are a few tips on how you can avoid this trap. First of all, make sure you will regularly include accuracy exercises in your training. It is more important to do a technique slow and the right way than fast but inaccurately. Speed comes with routine.

Habits – Secondly, develop the habits to ensure you deliver content that is free of mistakes. For example, you may use a spell checker, do proofreading or read your thoughts out loud to yourself. Furthermore, practice rollovers. Interestingly, those who know how to type faster also have the lowest error rates as the brain knows exactly where, when, and how to press the keys.

4. Focus on Posture and Lighting

You’re probably all hyped up and ready to start typing until your fingers ache, but there are several things to consider first, such as maintaining good posture and ergonomics. Developing a good posture is essential because you don’t want to ruin your back when you type and sit in a bad position. Furthermore, you want to avoid health issues such as RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury) or computer vision syndrome.

Some basic tips to follow include:

• Taking regular breaks
• Performing finger exercises during breaks
• Keeping the spine straight, shoulders stay relaxed
• Keeping your feet flat on the ground
• Considering a typing chair for long hours
• Keeping elbows at your sides while typing
• Avoiding resting wrists on the desk.

Remember, you’re probably going to be doing this for hours each day, so you want a comfortable and correct posture! Second of all, the room you’re going to work in or be doing your training in needs as much light as possible.

You need to be able to see the keys at first, without squinting, and it is good for your eyes to have as much light around the computer screen as possible.

5. Fast Typing Requires Good Hardware

Finally, you’ll have to consider a good keyboard. There are several types of keyboards, each with its own advantages and disadvantages and you should consider the one you’re going to start training on.

A regular keyboard is good because it’s the most common one around, and once you get used to the key positioning on that one, you’re going to have no problems moving on to more advanced keyboards. However, regular boards are not very ergonomic, and you may encounter wrist pain if typing for several hours each day on those.

Ergonomic keyboards come in several shapes and sizes, but the most notable one is the divided keyboard. Those are divided into two parts, at around a 45-degree angle. The position of your hands on such a keyboard is much more relaxed, and these are very good for learning how to type faster on a keyboard because the letters for each hand are clearly divided. It would be too difficult to try to reach a key on the left side of the keyboard, with your right hand, because of all the extra space between the keys.

There are also ergonomic keyboards that are not divided into two. They usually have the keys placed at a different angle than a regular board, allowing you to change the position of your hands slightly while still being able to hit all the keys easily.

Before buying – The force required to press each key is also different for each keyboard, so play with it a little before purchasing it. For example, laptop keyboards require very little force to press, and fast typists prefer them. On the other side, you will have a mechanical one which is recognized as the most advanced keyboard to type faster. They are also relevant in gaming.

Bottom line – If you don’t want your fingers or wrists to hurt a lot after long hours, consider hardware that is best suited for you. Here is a guide to choosing one.

6. Be Patient with Progressing

What sort of a tip is patience, you may be asking? Well, it’s the best advice I can give you, and this is the single most important piece of advice when it comes to saving weeks or maybe even months of practice time!

Take time – If you take everything slowly, and don’t rush through exercises, you will see that your fingers will develop near-perfect muscle memory, and you will be able to type faster and write almost error-free.

Evaluate – You may not be as fast as you would like, but sometimes it is better to be able to write without making any errors than to type a huge number of words per minute, with some errors. Just remember that going back to delete a wrong key can take longer than typing each word at the speed at which you are most comfortable.

Accuracy – When I first started learning, I was all about speed, and I didn’t care about the mistakes I was making, as long as I was getting the highest speed possible. However, I have come to realize that speed is not everything and that accuracy plays an important part as well.

Over time, my fingers have almost completely forgotten where the Backspace key is, and hopefully, so will yours, if you have patience when you’re practicing!

7. Relax and Rest

Have some background music playing while you learn how to type faster, to relax you as much as possible. I know how frustrating it can be to make the same mistakes over and over again, but getting mad about it is not the solution.

You’ll simply lose focus, and you’ll start making even more mistakes, and the worst part is that you will start confusing your fingers with all the mistakes you’re making.

Get your fingers used to type the wrong word, and you will see that the next time they will unconsciously type it that way, even if you intended to type it correctly. Don’t confuse your fingers, and just listen to some soothing music while you learn!

Finger relaxation – After long training sessions, your fingers become achy or tired. Whether in the office or at home, apply these simple finger exercises, stretches and spreads to relax your muscles and refuel your batteries.

8. Prepare in Advance

After you’ve mastered everything, and you’re working with large chunks of text, there is still a tip that can help you: prepare in advance!

When you type, allow your fingers to work alone while you browse through the text in advance. You will help your fingers prepare for the upcoming words, and you will see if there are any special portions of texts that require your attention.

This is usually the case with uncommon words or numerous special characters. By preparing a little, even if you lower your actual typing speed while reading, you will be saving time that you would have wasted deleting wrong keystrokes or time spent looking at the keyboard for special characters when you got to them in the text.

How To Type Faster on iPhone, Android and Tablets

While learning how to type faster on keyboards is a straightforward process, doing the same on mobile devices is tricky due to the lack of a physical keyboard. However, there are tips and tricks to apply to take notes or type words faster.

Thumbs or index finger? – There is no correct answer to this question. Thumbs are great if the device is rather smallish. You can use two fingers, thus you become faster as you can reach individual keys quicker. The index finger is more practical when you need to hold a larger phone in the other hand. It is also less prone to mistakes.

Voice typing – Voice dictation software is developing fast and physical typing as the main input method might be obsolete at some stage in the future. Simply activate it on your smartphone or tablet and your spoken words will be converted into text. What will slow you down though is the need to spell check and thus edit the text.

Swipe-to-type – This technology recognizes your finger movements, predicts and converts them into words. If you consider installing third-party keyboard apps be aware of security risks in the form of keyboard loggers.

Shortcuts – Common acronyms such as OMG or LOL do not need to be spelled out. However, you can set shortcuts for phrases you need to type often. This may be suitable for writing emails or fast business communication.

Other tips

• Enable autocorrect to have errors corrected automatically
• Use prediction mode to have words suggested as you type.
• Split the keyboard into two sections with a gap in the center.
• Ignore apostrophes, capital letters as autocorrection should fix it.
• To get special characters, tildes and accents hold down individual keys.
• Use an external keyboard for tablets and writing projects.

How to Type Faster – Summary, FAQ

Typing can be a lot of fun, as long as you do everything correctly! Have a correct posture, a nice room with a lot of light, some ambient music, and a nice keyboard, plus patience, and you have all the conditions for a successful learning experience.

It may sometimes still look like a chore, especially in the beginning, but hang in there and practice as much as you can, and you will certainly notice how much fun it can be! Learn the correct way to touch type, and have some fun while doing it, because this will probably be a skill that you will use daily, so why not have fun while doing it?

Thanks for reading. Have you got further tips to share on how to type faster on a keyboard or tablet? I would love to hear about it. Feel free to comment or contact me. Below is are also the answers to some common questions I receive regularly.

What is the average typing speed?

41 words per minute (wpm), whereas men achieve an average speed of 44 wpm and women 37 wpm. However, these are simply average numbers and do not prove anything, see records below. In comparison, average handwriting reaches approximately 68 letters per minute or 13 wpm.

Who is the fastest typer in the world?

Stella Pajunas set the world record on a traditional QWERTY typewriter in 1946, achieving 216 words per minute. Barbara Blackburn reached the same speed on a Dvorak computer layout in 2005 typing in the English language. Not officially recognized is Sean Wrona’s record achieving a top speed of 256 wpm on a computer QWERTY layout.

What is the average communication speed?

Above I said ‘typing is communication.’ Humans can speak an average of 300 wpm; the world’s fastest speakers may even top 600 wpm. However, no matter how hard we try we seem not to be able to type faster than speech.

The fastest English language typists reach something between 210-250 wpm, while steno can be as quick as 370 wpm. This is why knowing how to type faster is essential to effectively convert your thoughts and words into written communication.

Interestingly, when it comes to improving reading skills the speed limitations of our vocal communication set the barrier to becoming a faster reader as we often pronounce the words in our head.

What is the average typing accuracy?

Average accuracy is above 90%, 92% to be exactly according to research. That means we will still produce 8 typos per 100 words. See above to learn how to avoid those errors.

Where do people learn how to type faster? What is the age group?

These days, schools and universities have set up whole classrooms to allow students to take lessons and increase their speed and accuracy. Businesses and organizations also encourage their employees to improve their skills with in-house solutions. However, the majority of learners are younger than 18 years old. Apparently, there is an increased interest to learn faster typing skills above the age of 45 again.

How often should students practice to see results?

People who type fast also practice more. According to many products out there, 3 times a week for an average of 10-15 minutes will be enough to see first results. On the other side, to reach speeds clocking in above 60wpm you will need to make typing a well-structured habit by applying a proven system.

Job chances for those who learn how to type faster

With many freelance content platforms available these days, it is quite easy to find a job as a writer online. You don’t necessarily need super-fast typing skills here but excellent accuracy and spelling. Speed is more relevant for jobs such as transcriptionists, transcribers, data entry or court writers.

Image credits; Common license: flickR Joe Loong | flickR Kullez | flickR Horia Varlan