How to type faster

Faster typing doesn't come from moving your fingers harder. It comes from making fewer mistakes, keeping your eyes off your hands, and letting your fingers learn common patterns until they happen on their own.

These tips come from what researchers have found about fast typists and from what works in practice. You don't need to do all nine. Pick the two or three that fit you best.

First, measure where you are

Take a 1-minute typing test three times and write down the middle score and your accuracy. That's your starting point. Checking again once a week is plenty. Testing every day just measures how tired you are.

1. Stop looking at your hands

This one matters most. When you look down, you lose your place on the screen, miss your own typos, and have to find your spot again every few words.

In a study of 168,000 people, Aalto University researchers found that fast typists press the next key before lifting the previous one, which they call "rollover", for 40–70% of keystrokes. They add that this "is only possible for highly practiced letter combinations and when performance does not rely on visual attention" (Aalto University, 2018). Put simply, you can't get really fast while watching your fingers.

Try this: drape a light cloth over your hands for five minutes of practice. It feels awful at first. After a few days it doesn't.

2. Slow down to cut mistakes

It sounds backwards, but slowing down is often the quickest way to speed up. Each typo costs you the wrong keystroke, the time to notice it, the Backspace, and the retype. The same study found that slower typists "make more errors and require a long time to identify and correct them."

Try this: for one week, type at a pace where you hit 97% accuracy or better, even if your WPM drops. Then let the speed creep back up.

3. Use the right finger for every key

If you hunt and peck, or if two fingers do all the work, you hit a speed ceiling. Learning which finger owns each key gives every finger a short, predictable job. Our keyboard finger placement chart shows the full map, and RiteType's lessons teach it one row at a time.

A typing course seems to pay off for years. In a 2022 study of 2,690 hospital staff, people who had taken a typing course typed more than 20% faster, about 12 WPM, than those who hadn't. More than nine in ten of them had taken that course over a decade earlier (Schuurman et al., The BMJ, 2022).

There's a fair caveat here. The Aalto team also found that some self-taught typists who use fewer than ten fingers can be just as fast as touch typists. If you already type without looking, you don't have to start over. Focus on tips 2, 4 and 5 instead.

4. Return to the home row

Every reach should end with the finger sliding back to its home key (A S D F, J K L ;). If your hands drift, you start missing keys by one and looking down to check. Feel for the bumps on F and J whenever you lose your place. Our home row guide has a five-minute daily drill.

5. Practice the most common words and letter pairs

English leans on a small set of words: the, and, of, to, in, is, that, it, for, you. It also leans on common letter pairs like th, he, in, er, an, re. The more often your fingers type a pattern, the more it turns into a single quick motion instead of separate keystrokes.

Try this: spend two minutes typing the then there these other mother until it feels smooth. Then do the same with and hand land stand. Our 60-Second Frenzy game uses common words, so it's good for this kind of drill.

6. Keep a steady rhythm

Many people type in bursts: fast on easy words, then a long pause on a hard one. A steady, even beat is faster overall and leads to fewer errors. Think of it like walking at a steady pace instead of sprinting and stopping.

Try this: type a sentence at a pace you could keep up forever. If one word always trips you up, practice that word on its own five times, then put it back in the sentence.

7. Practice a little every day

Fifteen minutes a day beats two hours on Sunday. Short sessions keep your focus high, and your hands learn the patterns between sessions. The Aalto researchers put it plainly: "Dedicate time to practice deliberately. People may forget the good habits and relapse to detrimental ways of typing."

Here's a simple four-week plan:

8. Fix your setup

A comfortable setup lets you practice longer without strain. Sit back with your feet flat, put the screen around eye level, keep your wrists straight and floating, and press keys lightly. The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration's computer workstations eTool covers chair, desk and screen height in detail.

You don't need a fancy keyboard. Any keyboard with a full-size layout works. If you mostly type on a laptop, practice on the laptop.

9. Test on fresh text

Take tests on new text, not the same paragraph you've already typed twenty times. Practiced text gives you a nice number that doesn't hold up when you write a real email. The Aalto team makes the same point: "Make sure that the test requires you to type new sentences so you do not overpractice the same text." RiteType's typing test serves fresh sentences each time and avoids ones you've typed recently.

Getting past a plateau

Almost everyone gets stuck at some point, often somewhere between 40 and 60 WPM. When that happens:

• Check your accuracy. If it's below 95%, slow down. That's usually the problem.
• Find your slow keys. Watch which keys you miss in lessons. Practice them on their own.
• Try a longer test. A 3-minute test shows whether you're losing speed as you tire.
• Push in short bursts. Type one sentence slightly faster than is comfortable, then relax. Repeat.
• Take a day off. Sometimes a short break is all it takes.

Speed comes last, after the right finger, eyes on the screen and clean, accurate typing. Get those three right and your WPM will keep going up. Curious how your number compares? See the data on average typing speed. For speed practice that feels like play, try the typing games for adults. Writing code? The typing practice for programmers drills brackets, operators and naming styles.