Why learn to touch type

What touch typing means

In touch typing, every finger is responsible for its own set of keys. Your hands rest on the middle row and your fingers return to their place after every keystroke. On a standard US keyboard there are eight home keys: A, S, D and F for the left hand and J, K, L and ; for the right. Your thumbs take care of the space bar.

The method grew up with the typewriter. Researchers at Aalto University date touch typing to the 1890s, and it got a famous boost in 1888, when Frank McGurrin, typing without looking at the keys, won a much-publicized speed contest in Cincinnati against a rival who looked down as he typed. For decades it was the technique taught in typing classes. Today you don't need a classroom or a typewriter. You can learn it on your own computer, at your own pace.

The goal is simple: your hands know where every key is, so your eyes don't have to help. It is not a talent. It is a habit, and habits are built through repetition, much like riding a bike or playing an instrument.

Every key has its finger. Once your hands know that on their own, your eyes can stay on the text.

What research really says about speed

One of the largest typing datasets ever collected comes from researchers at Aalto University in Finland and the University of Cambridge. In 2018 they published an analysis of 136 million keystrokes from more than 168,000 volunteers who copied sentences online, most of them from the United States. The average speed was 52 words per minute. The fastest 10% typed above about 78 WPM, and the slowest 10% below about 26 WPM.

People who used more fingers tended to type faster. The fastest typists reported using 8.4 fingers on average, the slowest 5.3. A typing course on its own, however, made only a small difference: participants who had taken one typed on average about 5 WPM faster than those who hadn't.

A smaller 2016 study by the same group recorded 30 people with motion capture cameras. Self-taught typists, who used about six fingers on average, were roughly as fast as people trained in touch typing. What the fast typists had in common was something else: they pressed each key with the same finger every time, kept their hands in one place and prepared the next keystroke in advance.

The honest conclusion: ten fingers are not a magic shortcut. But the very habits that make people fast are the ones touch typing builds from the first lesson. A fixed finger for every key, hands in the home position, and eyes on the screen.

A course won't make you faster by itself. Regular typing with the right habits will.

Your eyes belong on the screen

In the 2016 study, participants wore eye-tracking glasses that recorded where they were looking. Touch typists looked at the keyboard about a fifth of the time. Self-taught typists looked down 41% of the time, roughly twice as much.

The authors summed it up this way: touch typing is not necessarily faster, but it lets you keep your attention on the display. Self-taught typists, they noted, may fall behind in tasks where you need to follow what is happening on screen.

In practice, that means you see a typo the moment it happens, not at the end of the sentence. When you copy from a paper or from another window, you don't have to shift your eyes between three places. And when you take notes during a video call, you can look at the person, not at your hands.

It is also about posture. For computer work, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration recommends keeping your head level, facing forward and generally in line with your torso. If you keep looking down at the keys, you keep leaving that position. We did not find a study that directly compares neck pain across typing styles, so we won't promise you a healthier back. Tilting your head down less is still a sensible goal.

If you don't look at the keys, you see the typo the moment you make it.

Accuracy first, speed follows

The data from 136 million keystrokes showed that faster typists make fewer errors, while slower typists make more and take longer to notice and fix them. Every typo has to be spotted, located, deleted and typed again, so even a small drop in errors can pay off in speed.

The most common error was hitting one letter instead of another. Missing or extra letters were less frequent. That is why Touchtypely records which keys you mix up in every exercise, so you can see exactly which pairs trip you up.

The fastest typists have one more habit: they press the next key before they release the previous one. Most of them typed 40 to 70% of their keystrokes this way. It is not a trick for your first lesson, more a sign of fluency, which is why Touchtypely also tracks the rhythm of your typing.

After every exercise you see your WPM, error rate and accuracy, corrected and uncorrected errors, rhythm, reaction time for each key and your most frequent mix-ups. Not so you can agonize over charts, but so you know what to practice tomorrow.

Slow and accurate is a better start than fast with constant backspacing.

How much typing fills your day

Typing takes up more of the day than it seems. In 2023, Microsoft found in activity data from its Microsoft 365 apps that the average employee spends 57% of their time there communicating: in meetings, email and chat. Documents, spreadsheets and forms come on top of that.

Raw keyboard speed isn't everything, though. When you write your own text, you think, search for words and revise. In a 1999 study by Karat and colleagues, people averaged 33 words per minute when transcribing text and only 19 words per minute when composing. The keyboard is not the only thing slowing you down. It is, however, the one you can improve with practice.

Email, chat, reports, school papers, forms and search boxes: if you sit at a computer every day, you type every day. Even a small improvement in fluency gets repeated hundreds of times a week.

If you type every day, even a small gain adds up over a year.

How the course works

Touchtypely teaches the standard US QWERTY keyboard on Windows and Mac. It runs in a current browser and is designed for a physical keyboard, not for phones. A colored on-screen keyboard and hands show you which key comes next and which finger should press it, so you don't need to look down.

The course has 26 lessons in 6 modules, plus a final exam. You start on the home row and work your way across the whole keyboard. The last module covers numbers and symbols: the digit row, punctuation, @, $ and the numeric keypad. The keypad lesson is optional, so skip it if your laptop doesn't have one.

When you pass the final exam, you get a certificate with a public verification link. It is not an official credential, but anyone you share the link with can confirm your result.

Look up at the screen for the next key, not down at your hands.

Short, but regular

A lesson takes 5 to 8 minutes, so the whole course is about 2 to 3.5 hours of practice. At one lesson a day, that is about a month. You can spread it over as many days as suits you.

The basics come fairly quickly. Reaching high speeds, however, takes hundreds of hours of practice, according to the Aalto University researchers. That is why Touchtypely doesn't end with the course.

Daily training takes 5, 10, 15 or 20 minutes. Each session is built automatically from your weak keys, keys that are starting to slip, and a practice text from a genre you pick. If you like, you can choose specific keys and drill only those.

Short, frequent practice has research behind it. In a classic 1978 study, British postal workers were trained to type for a new mail sorting system. The group that trained one hour a day learned most efficiently, while the group with two two-hour sessions a day needed more total hours to reach the same level.

Often and short beats rarely and long. That is exactly how daily training is built.

A bit of game, for adults and teens

Every exercise earns you XP points, and your streak shows how many days in a row you have practiced. It isn't a toy. It is feedback that helps you keep going on the days you don't feel like it.

Typing tests of 30 seconds, 1, 3 or 5 minutes show where you stand, no signup needed. On the public leaderboard you can compare yourself with others. It shows only your first name or a nickname and, if you choose, your city and state, and you can turn it off anytime in settings.

Practice texts aren't random words. You pick from genres on topics such as business, science and history. After each text comes one short comprehension question, so you learn something while you type.

Touchtypely is for ages 13 and up, and only people 13 or older can create an account. We recommend that teens use a nickname rather than their full name.

Who Touchtypely is for

Touchtypely is for anyone who types on a computer and wants to do it with confidence. Different people get different things out of it, because their days look different:

• Students: papers, notes and online tests without hunting for keys.
• Job seekers: a measurable skill in WPM for resumes and typing tests.
• Developers: brackets, symbols and shortcuts without looking down, and eyes on the code.
• Office workers and small business owners: email, documents and notes during calls.
• Teens and parents: short daily lessons and a safe way to start.

If you don't see yourself in any of these groups, that's fine. Just start with the first lesson.