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How to Type Faster: 7 Practical Tips

Getting faster at typing is mostly a matter of removing what slows you down. These tips start with the habits that research links to fast typing, followed by practical advice on how to practise.

1. Fix your errors at the source

It’s tempting to push for speed, but mistakes are expensive. Each one means stopping, going back, and retyping. In a study of 168,000 typists, faster typists made fewer errors, and the researchers’ advice was to pay attention to errors because they are costly to correct.

If your accuracy is low, slow down until it improves. Speed tends to come more easily once your typing is clean.

2. Keep your hands in one place

Researchers at Aalto University used motion capture to watch people type, and the quickest people in the study barely shifted their hands across the keyboard. Every shift costs time, and then you have to find your place again.

3. Use the same finger for each letter

Those quick typists also tended to press each letter with one regular finger. Repeating a movement the same way is what makes it automatic. Notice which finger you use for each key, and try not to switch.

Your result on our typing test names the letters you mistype most, which is a good place to start.

4. Look at the screen, not your hands

In the Aalto study, untrained typists spent about twice as much time looking at their fingers as at the screen. Each glance down means you can’t spot errors or read ahead.

If you can’t help looking, try covering your hands with a light cloth for short practice sessions. It’s frustrating at first, but it quickly shows you which keys you don’t know yet.

5. Let your fingers overlap

The fastest typists often press the next key before releasing the previous one, a technique called rollover. In the Cambridge and Aalto study, the fastest typists used it for 40 to 70 percent of their keystrokes.

You don’t need to practise this directly. It tends to appear as common letter patterns become automatic, so overlapping fingers are a good sign as you get faster.

6. Read ahead

Try to look at the next word while your fingers finish the current one. This gives you time to prepare the movement, and helps you avoid the small pause that comes between words.

7. Practise little and often

Short, regular sessions are easier to keep up than occasional long ones. Try this simple routine:

  1. Warm up with a short test, such as 30 seconds.
  2. Take a 1 minute test and focus only on accuracy.
  3. Take another, and push your speed a little.
  4. Once a week, try a 5 minute test to check your stamina.

Your stats page keeps your personal bests and recent results, so you can see whether it’s working.

Don’t expect a straight line

Most people’s scores go up and down from day to day, and some days will feel worse than others. Look at your trend over a few weeks, not at any single result.