Typing tips, how to make type faster and master the keyboard

1) Accuracy

I had been trying to improve my speed for months and I was not seeing much improvement. Once I slowed down and started being more accurate instead of trying to type faster I started seeing an increase in my typing speed. I feel more in control as well. I still have a way to go for my personal goal but am pleased to see that I am now improving and relaxing more.
Learn to be accurate first then improve speed. Because if you make mistakes all the time the longer it will take you to type. Every time you backspace takes longer than if you slow down just a tad so you can type accurately. I still makes a lot of mistakes but I realize when I slow down to be accurate I actually tend to type slightly faster.

2) Practice

For new typists: Practice. Get used to the home keys work to the point where you do not need to look at both what you are typing, or your fingers on the keyboard.

For advanced typists: Practice. Develop muscle memory for typing certain types of commonly used letter parings. Identify the combinations of letters for certain words that give you trouble and practice typing them in particular to the point where you no longer need to think when doing so.
My tip to improve your typing speed is to not only practice often, but practice correctly. Try to get rid of bad typing habits and replace them with good ones. For example, you should use every single finger when typing instead of relying on the use of fingers with which you're most comfortable. Full utilization of both hands is necessary to achieve your highest typing potential.

3) Stretching

When my wrists get stiff from typing, I grab my fingers with one hand and stretch out my arm to full length and pull on my fingers back slowly. I then, stretch my fingers by opening and closing them, bend my hands back and forth, and rotate my wrists.
if you feel a little sore on the fingers or knuckles, just put your arms up high, and wriggle your fingers (only do this if your fingers feel sore. ) and if your knuckles hurt just put your left hand into a fist and do the same with the right. With the bottom of your left fist, tap the knuckles on your right hand and vice versa.

4) Know your keyboard

My tip to improve your typing speed is to feel for the "F" and the "J". As most know, those are the letters you feel for first on the keyboard. As time goes by, and you learn how to type without looking, you will not even really have to "feel" for the "F" and the "J" you will just learn the keyboard.
It is also important to familiarize yourself with the keyboard you are using. - This is essential as, if you can map the keyboard out in your mind, you wont need to look away from the screen to locate the key you need. This would also minimize time spent between getting your many thoughts onto the screen before loosing them (again).
If you are typing 60 wpm or higher, and want to get better, and not get carpal tunnel: buy a mechanical keyboard. I use red switch that I bought for both gaming/typing, and after an hour of typing, my fingers still feel fine. I wouldn't recommend red for most typists--It doesn't have the feedback that other switch types have, and takes a while to get used to not bottoming out the keys all the time.

5) Rhythm

What is important is developing a rhythm, not to hurry, but to be accurate, first-priority. Speed comes naturally with practice and time. Further, one must push one's self to perform better, but acknowledging that efficiency only is established, along with effectiveness. In closing, one must learn to type only what one sees/reads; never change the words, unless, of course, it is an editing ... exercise/test. One only types what one sees or reads!

Start training

Touch typing

Touch typing is typing without looking at the keyboard. The idea is to teach your fingers the location of each keys. The F and J keys have a raised bar or a dot allowing your finger to identify them. Once you have placed your two indexes on those keys, the other fingers are placed on the keys next to them.

In order to type fast you have to be careful about which finger to use to press a key. Take a look at the drawing below. Each color match a finger. For example the left index is light green and has to type only the light green keys.

typing test tips

Certain keys are special. ASDF and JKL; are the base positions for your fingers.Your fingers go from the base position to the key that you want to press.

A good first thing to do when your learn touch typing is to memorize the keyboard and create a mental map of the associated fingers. You have to be able to press any key without even thinking. For example if I say C you have to think move the middle finger down and press C instantly. You can only achieve this through practice. You have to build up the muscle memory of each fingers.

Key ideas

* Place your indexes on F and J
* A key has to pressed by the same finger all the time
* Don't look at the keyboard, your eyes should always look at the screen
* Go practice!

Take a typing test

User tips



gianttoenail99 3 years ago
When my fingers hurt after too much time on the keyboard, I... Slather myself in butter and bask in the cholesterol until I've the strength to go on typing.

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clonedcow 3 years ago
Many of the tips for typing are also applicable to playing the piano. My biggest tips are to keep your fingers low so that the distance they need to travel is shorter. Use your wrist to slightly rotate your hands for many letter combinations and think of creating one motion rather than individual key strokes. Keep your whole body relaxed. Stiff fingers will not have smooth or efficient movements.

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user551793 3 years, 1 month ago
My tip to improve your typing speed is to...

Practice!
Honestly, it's just about repeating, repeating, and repeating something over and over again until you get it right... that's at least how I learned to type.

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weiahe 3 years, 1 month ago
Ok, good idea to edit quotes. I do prefer dvorak over qwerty, not because I can type faster (80 wpm with qwerty 90 wpm with dvorak), but because it's much more comfortable and I get less hand strain. Search up dvorak on google. And on most operating systems it's easy to switch back and forth between qwerty and dvorak.

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fiddledy_rick 3 years, 1 month ago
What really helped me improve my typing speed is good posture, a vast amount of focus on accuracy and finally I cannot stress this enough: cocaine.

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v3suvius 3 years, 1 month ago
What really helped me improve my typing speed is not focusing on the content of the quote. No matter what you do, do not think about what you are writing, it will distract you. It's happening right now isn't it? you are messing up aren't you? Well try not to let it happen again and you should be fine.

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user93567 3 years, 1 month ago
i am doing good at keyhero.com (average 60 wpm) but when i go to mastertyping software which is used in our exam skill tests there my speed get down as 45 to 50

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user97001 3 years, 1 month ago
When my fingers hurt after too much time on the keyboard, I... take a break so that not only my hands can be rested and so my eyes too

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kyledes 3 years, 1 month ago
In order to make a change, besides the inevitable risks involved in every type of change (that is, you don't know whether it'd be better or worse after the change), two things, two old habits need to break also. Firstly, I never buy a new thing unless the old thing is totally and unmistakeably broken. Secondly... oops I forgot what is the second bad habit.

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kyledes 3 years, 1 month ago
But then... this is not a scientific study. It is only my experience, some thought, and perception, not enough even to convince myself to scrap the old keyboard and buy a new one of a new type. After all, the one I am using right now, the bad one, is more expensive than all the other keyboards I ever touched in my whole life, combined.

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kyledes 3 years, 1 month ago
Reevaluation and correction: when you "feel but not hit" a key, you are not so much looking for a reference for key locations as much as you are looking for a height reference! You want to find out how high your fingers are hanging, in order to calculate (subconsciously) how high (how deep) you need to dive (to hit).

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kyledes 3 years, 1 month ago
On top of the original "press distance," you also need to bounce extra-high, for insurance! which is tiring... And bigger bouncing height means the need for greater velocity to compensate to maintain typing speed, and greater velocity means heavier hit, and a heavier hit defeats the original purpose of the design of the blue-switches -- its lightness, its delicacy!

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kyledes 3 years, 1 month ago
Moreover, you cannot type those "frequent combinations of keys" with a smooth "slide" move as you would be able to with a rubber film keyboard. This is difficult to explain... but let me try to tell "what is a slide?" -- it means after you press one key, you do not hurry to release it, but rather use it as an anchor to locate the next key depending on the location-relation between the two. So, you press the next key and release the current key at the same time; and your finger "slides" half-height as you would normally hang, from one key to another, which would be a smooth action, and "smooth is fast"! But wait, with the blue switches, you cannot do that! You would trigger all the other keys between the above-said two in the sliding path! Therefore, you cannot slide. You must bounce all the time! The original "press distance" is already long and on top of that distance, you also have to

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kyledes 3 years, 1 month ago
When the switch is too light, it also means you cannot rest any finger on a key (for example a home key) during fast typing in order to find a benchmark (reference) of key locations. The ramification of this is that at first, you would type faster because you start from the home rows and you know the relative locations of keys. From there on, your whole hands have to suspend above in the air all the time and the overall hand position relative to the board would change. Because you cannot "feel but not hit" a key in order to reposition. You cannot be sure whether or not that "feel" action would trigger the sensitive switch!

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kyledes 3 years, 1 month ago
Mechanical keyboards... The blue-switch ones really suck, guys! After so many frustrations, I carefully pressed to feel the key. Among other things, I found that if you press fast enough, the spring mechanism that results in the click sound (and feel) will fail to catch up. Obviously, there is very bad for fast typing! It means there is a threshold of typing speed, and your fingers get different feedback depending on whether you are above or below that threshold, which means the feedback is inconsistent! Every key is like a trap! With a sensitive trigger! This means you are prone to mistype: you need to hit heavy, and hit bottom, in order to type one key, because the click is not reliable feedback; but at the same time, you also need to hit lightly, and absolutely accurately, because a slight skew would trigger the neighbor key of which you intended to type.

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meat 3 years, 2 months ago
Practice, practice, practice, and don't shortcut your hard keys. If you hate apostrophes, capital "I's", or quotation marks, try to do them with out looking at your keyboard no matter how long it takes you to get it down, without shortcutting it. Just take the time on your wpm to get them solidly down and then they will become like any other key.

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