How fast can you type?

Rough bands for English typing on a standard keyboard look like this. Treat them as signposts rather than records, because everyone starts from a different place and the numbers depend on the text, the keyboard and how long you have been at it.

Bands are approximate and assume ordinary English prose on a full-size keyboard. Numbers, code and punctuation runs slower, which is why the number drillexists as a separate exercise.

1. Read ahead of your fingers. Type the next word while you are still finishing the last one. Typing one character at a time keeps your attention exactly one character behind your hands, so every mistake becomes a small interruption in the flow.
2. Start the first ten seconds slowly. Nerves cost most people two or three words per minute and a handful of errors. A deliberately calm opening paragraph usually pays for itself by the end of the minute.
3. Watch the error count, not the speed. Once accuracy drops below about 95 per cent, slowing down is faster than pushing on. A clean 60 is worth more than a messy 75.
4. Use the whole keyboard. Reaching for the top row with a stretched hand is slower than moving your wrist to the number row. Let your hands travel instead of stretching.
5. Practise ten minutes a day. Short, frequent sessions are what turn a slightly better score into a noticeably better one, and they are far easier to keep up with than one long weekly effort.
6. Fix your weak keys on purpose. Every typist has two or three letters they hesitate over. Isolate them with ahome row lessonand they stop costing you time.

Speed is the headline figure, and it is reported two ways. Gross speed counts every character your fingers produced, while net speed removes the ones that did not match the text. Net speed is the honest number, because a page full of typos is not useful text no matter how quickly it was produced.

Accuracy is the second number, and it is reported at three levels. Character accuracy asks how much of what is on screen right now is correct. Word accuracy asks how many whole words match from the first letter to the last, so one wrong letter costs you an entire word. Keystroke accuracy asks how many of your raw key presses were right the first time, and it keeps counting a mistake even after you delete and fix it. That last figure is the closest thing to a measure of your fingers rather than your final text.

The third figure is simply the error count: how many characters in your text are still wrong when the timer runs out. Fixing a mistake with backspace removes it from this count, which is why it is worth watching during the test. A rising error count is a signal to slow down, and slowing down is almost always quicker over a full minute than hurrying.

All of these are available from the main typing test page, where you can switch length and text type without the page reloading. Dedicated pages exist for the one minute,three minute,five minute andten minute runs, plus pages built specifically aroundspeed measurementandaccuracy.