Typing Games
Typing quickly is a skill most people practised once and have been improvising ever since. These measure where you actually are and give you a reason to keep going.
What does words per minute actually measure?
Not words. A typing speed counts every five characters as one word, spaces included, which is why a test full of short common words and one full of long rare ones give comparable numbers. That convention is the only reason two different tests can be compared at all.
Rough bearings for where a result sits: around forty words per minute is a normal comfortable speed for somebody who types every day, sixty is genuinely quick, and eighty and above is fast by any ordinary standard. Accuracy is reported separately and matters more than it looks, because a mistake costs the keystroke that made it plus the two that fix it.
Which of these is a test and which is a game?
- Speed Typing Test is the straight measurement. Type the passage, get a number.
- Zombie Typing puts the same skill under pressure by making words arrive whether you are ready or not.
- Daily Quote gives you one passage a day, which is the gentlest way to build a habit out of this.
- Word Master sits in this category and is not a typing game. It is a word guessing game, and it is here because you type your guesses. Worth saying rather than letting you find out.
How people actually get faster
- Keep your fingers on the home row and let each one own its own keys. Every method that works starts here.
- Stop looking at the keyboard, even though it slows you down for a week. Looking sets a ceiling you cannot raise later.
- Aim at accuracy first. Speed follows from not correcting, and it never follows from typing faster than you can read.
- Short and often beats long and rare. Ten minutes a day moves the number in a fortnight.
- Notice which keys you miss. It is nearly always the same handful, and they are usually reached by the ring and little fingers.
What this shelf does not have
No structured lesson course, and no layouts other than the standard one. If you want the practice without the clock, the word games are typing practice by another route, and Daily Quote is the closest thing here to a lesson.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good typing speed?
Around forty words per minute is a normal working speed, sixty is quick, and eighty or more is fast. Where you start matters less than whether the number moves, and it moves for almost everybody who practises for a fortnight.
Does one word really mean five characters?
Yes, spaces included. It is a convention rather than a measurement of words, and it exists so that two tests using different passages produce numbers that can be compared.
Do typing games actually help?
They help with the part that needs repetition, which is the muscle memory of where the keys are. What they do not give you is technique. If you are typing with two fingers, a game will make you a faster two finger typist rather than a touch typist.
Can I practise on a phone?
You can play these on a phone, but a touchscreen is measuring something else entirely. A typing speed only means what it usually means on a physical keyboard.
Is accuracy or speed more important?
Accuracy, and it is not close. Every error costs three keystrokes rather than one, and typing that has to be reread is slower than typing that took longer.