How to increase typing speed and accuracy: 10 proven tips

Because most of what you produce runs through a computer keyboard, small gains in typing speed and accuracy add up fast, and the gap between a slow, error-prone typist and an efficient typist shows up in every hour of computer-based work.

If you type at 40 WPM and bump it to 60, you save roughly 83 minutes per 10,000 words you produce. Over a year of emails, reports, Slack messages, and documentation, that recovered time adds up quickly.

Speed is only half the equation. Typing accuracy matters just as much because fixing typos costs you momentum and focus.

This guide covers 10 proven tips for increasing typing speed and accuracy, from the correct starting position on the keyboard to tools that let you reuse text instead of retyping it.

How do you increase typing speed?

You increase typing speed by building proper technique first, then adding habits and tools that cut wasted keystrokes. Touch typing is the foundation, so if you never had the chance to learn how to type with all 10 fingers, start there. Most people who feel slow lose time hunting for the right keys, correcting frequent mistakes, or retyping the same phrases many times a day. Here are the 10 methods that deliver the biggest improvements.

Tip 5 covers one of the biggest time savers: text expansion tools like TextExpander that let you reuse the text you type most instead of retyping it. But the fundamentals come first.

1. Learn proper touch typing technique

Touch typing means using all 10 fingers, with each finger assigned to specific keys, without looking at the keyboard. It is the most effective way to increase your typing speed because it removes the visual search that slows most people down. If you learn to type this way, your eyes stay on the screen, where your mistakes are.

Your fingers already know where the keys are. You’re fighting muscle memory from years of looking down.

Start with the home row keys, the correct starting position for touch typing. Place the fingers of your left hand on A, S, D, and F and your right hand on J, K, L, and the semicolon key. Your thumbs rest on the space bar. Most computer keyboards have a small raised bump on the F and J keys, so you can find the starting position by touch. Every other key is reached from this starting position, and your fingers return here after each keystroke.

Research from Aalto University found that self-taught typists who use fewer fingers can reach speeds comparable to trained touch typists. The fastest typists share two traits regardless of method: they keep their hands relatively fixed rather than moving across the keyboard, and they consistently use the same finger for the same key. Those patterns become automatic with practice, which is why proper training in touch typing is the most reliable way to build typing skills that hold up at high speed.

If you never had proper training, it is worth taking two to three weeks to learn touch typing the right way. Your speed will drop temporarily as you build new muscle memory. Push through it. Once the new habits settle in, your speed recovers and keeps climbing.

How to get started with touch typing

• Choose free typing lessons that teach finger placement (TypingClub, Keybr, and Typing.com all offer typing lessons for beginners)
• Begin each session in the correct starting position, with your fingers on the home row
• Commit to 15 to 20 minutes of structured typing practice per day
• Resist the urge to look at the keyboard, even when you make mistakes
• Prioritize accuracy first and let speed follow naturally

2. Break bad typing habits

Most self-taught typists develop habits that are comfortable but limit their speed: hunt-and-peck typing with two to four fingers while watching the keyboard; inconsistent finger assignments, where you use whichever finger is closest to a key; bottoming out keys by pressing harder than necessary; and overusing backspace instead of slowing down to hit the correct keys the first time.

Hunt-and-peck typing limits speed because visual search adds a delay before every keystroke. Even if you feel fast, you lose time on each key transition.

Inconsistent finger assignments create unpredictable motion paths, so your brain cannot build reliable muscle memory, and you hesitate during fast bursts. Bottoming out keys compounds the problem. Modern keyboards register a keypress before the key reaches the bottom of its travel, so a lighter touch allows faster key-to-key movement and less finger fatigue over long sessions.

How to break these habits

Record yourself typing for five minutes and watch the footage. You will spot habits and mistakes you did not know you had. Pay attention to which fingers you use, whether your eyes drift from the screen to the keyboard, and how hard you strike the keys.

Then pick one habit to fix at a time. If visual search is the problem, go back to touch typing drills and cover your keyboard with a towel or use a blank keycap set. If you bottom out every keystroke, practice with a conscious focus on lighter touches. If you can hear yourself typing across the room, you are pressing too hard. Trying to fix everything at once leads to frustration. One fix per week keeps progress steady.

3. Practice for precision

Deliberate typing practice produces the fastest results. Randomly typing paragraphs helps, but structured typing exercises that target your weak points improve your typing speed sooner.

Start by identifying which keys or key combinations slow you down. Most typing programs track your typing accuracy by letter and highlight problem areas. Common weak points include less-used letters like Z, X, Q, and punctuation marks, as well as number row keys.

Drill those specific keys until they are automatic. Short, focused typing practice like this builds typing skills in less time than long, unfocused sessions. Then move to word-level practice using common English words and phrases. A relatively small set of everyday words makes up much of what you type at work, so getting fast and accurate on those words has an outsized impact on your practical typing speed.

A simple daily practice routine

1. Warm up for five minutes on the home row keys, then spend another five on typing exercises for your weakest keys
2. Type complete paragraphs at a comfortable speed for five minutes, aiming for zero errors
3. Finish with one of the one-minute typing tests in your program to check your current typing speed and accuracy

The whole routine takes 15 to 20 minutes. Consistency beats intensity. A month of short daily typing practice produces better results than occasional two-hour marathons.

4. Focus on accuracy before speed

This seems counterintuitive when your goal is more speed. But accuracy forms the foundation for speed. Errors cost extra keystrokes to backspace, retype and check, and those corrections add up across a full workday.

Consider the correction cost. A typist at 70 WPM who makes frequent mistakes has to stop, backspace, retype, and verify, which breaks rhythm and focus. A typist at 50 WPM with better accuracy barely pauses to fix typos and keeps a steady, productive flow. The lesson: accuracy reduces friction, and friction is what makes typing slow.

The practical approach: slow down until you can type a full paragraph with zero errors. Stay at that speed until it’s comfortable. Then increase speed by 5 WPM and stabilize again. This staircase method builds reliable muscle memory at each level before pushing further, and it pays off in the long run.

Accuracy benchmarks to aim for

Beginners should target 95% accuracy before worrying about speed at all. Once that’s comfortable, push for 97%, and only then start adding WPM. Advanced users maintain 98% or higher while sustaining 60+ WPM, but that level takes months of deliberate work.

If your accuracy drops below 95% during typing tests, you are typing too fast for your current typing skills. Slow down, stabilize, and build back up. For words you misspell again and again, you can also type accurately using autocorrect Snippets that fix them as you go.

5. Use typing tools and text expansion

Technique improvements increase how fast your fingers move. But in the modern workplace, the biggest time savings come from not recreating text you’ve already written. The fastest typing is the typing you don’t have to repeat.

Most of us type the same phrases over and over without thinking to save them: email greetings, project status updates, meeting agendas, addresses, phone numbers, boilerplate responses, code blocks, and URLs. Every time you retype something you have typed before, you spend keystrokes and time on words you already wrote.

It was simple, but having those sentences in TextExpander helped me be way more efficient because I no longer had to type the exact same thing over and over again.

Brian Deighton, Senior Inside Sales, CompanyCam

Text expansion: your biggest typing speed multiplier

Text expansion tools let you type a short abbreviation and insert a full block of saved text. For example, type ;sig and your complete email signature appears. Type ;mtg and a formatted meeting agenda template fills in. Type ;addr and your full mailing address drops in wherever your cursor is. Type ;follow and your saved three-paragraph follow-up email appears, ready to personalize.

TextExpander takes this further with Snippets that can include the current date, fill-in fields for the details that change, formatted text, and conditional logic. You reuse what stays the same and apply judgment where the situation changes. Teams can share Snippets, so when the wording changes, one update reaches everyone who uses it. A support rep who sends the same standard responses repeatedly can insert each one from a short abbreviation instead of retyping or copy-pasting it.

The math is simple. If you have 30 phrases you use regularly, and each one averages 20 words, typing those phrases manually at 60 WPM takes about 20 seconds each. With text expansion, each one takes under 2 seconds. That saves 9 minutes per cycle through all 30 phrases, and over a week of heavy communication, the savings add up quickly.

Other tools that reduce keystrokes

Autocomplete and predictive text. Operating systems and many apps now suggest completions as you type. On macOS, the built-in text replacement feature handles simple expansions. Windows has no system-wide equivalent, though Microsoft Office apps such as Word and Outlook have AutoCorrect entries that work inside those apps. For more advanced needs, a dedicated text expansion tool offers team sharing, dynamic content, and cross-platform consistency.

For first drafts and brainstorming, voice dictation removes the keyboard entirely. Google Docs, Microsoft Word, and macOS all have built-in dictation, which helps when the bottleneck is the speed of thought rather than the speed of fingers.

Clipboard managers fill a different gap. They store multiple copied items and recall them with a keyboard shortcut, so you stop switching windows to copy and paste the same things.

Strong typing technique combined with smart use of tools is what separates a fast typist from an efficient typist. A person who types at 60 WPM but uses text expansion for repetitive content can get more done, in less time, than someone who types at 90 WPM but retypes everything from scratch.

6. Optimize your typing environment

Your keyboard, desk setup, and screen position all affect how fast and comfortably you type. Small environmental changes can remove friction you did not know was there.

Keyboard choice matters. A keyboard that matches your typing style reduces fatigue. Mechanical keyboards with tactile switches confirm each keypress, which helps with accuracy, and low-profile keyboards reduce finger travel. Try a few switch types before committing, since preference varies widely.

Screen positioning is the other big factor. The top of your monitor should sit at or slightly below eye level, 20 to 40 inches away, as recommended in Mayo Clinic’s ergonomics guide. Looking down at your screen flexes your neck forward, and that tension can travel into your shoulders, hands, and wrists. A monitor arm or laptop stand is an inexpensive fix. While you are adjusting your setup, position the screen perpendicular to windows rather than facing them to cut glare.

Minimize distractions. Typing speed drops when you are interrupted or multitasking. For sustained typing, close unnecessary tabs, silence notifications, and block out focused time.

7. Fine-tune your ergonomics

Typing speed and typing health are connected. Poor posture and wrist positioning cause tension and fatigue that slow you down and can lead to repetitive strain injuries over time. Here is what good posture and a comfortable position look like at a desk.

Posture

Sit with your feet flat on the floor or on a footrest, your thighs roughly parallel to the floor, and your back supported by your chair. Your shoulders should be relaxed, not hunched up toward your ears. If you catch yourself leaning forward out of a comfortable position, your screen is likely too low or too far away.

Wrist position

Your wrists should stay straight and in line with your forearms, not bent up, down, or to the side. Keep your forearms roughly parallel to the floor and your wrists slightly elevated, so your hands float above the keyboard rather than resting on the desk or a wrist rest while you type. Use wrist rests during pauses between typing bursts, not for support during keystrokes.

Chair and desk height

Per OSHA’s computer workstation guidance, your elbows should stay close to your body and bend between 90 and 120 degrees when your hands are on the keyboard. If your desk is too high, you will shrug your shoulders to reach the keys. If it is too low, you will hunch forward. Set the height so your hands reach the keys with your wrists slightly elevated and your shoulders relaxed. An adjustable chair or a keyboard tray can solve most height mismatches.

Take breaks

The 20-20-20 rule works well for typists: every 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds. Beyond eye strain, take short hand and wrist stretch breaks throughout the day. These micro-breaks ease the tension that causes fatigue-related slowdowns later in the day.

8. Master keyboard shortcuts

Every trip from the keyboard to the mouse costs a little time, and those trips add up over a day of computer-based work. Watch someone who knows their shortcuts work through a spreadsheet or an email inbox. Their hands rarely leave the keyboard. It looks like a different activity.

Keyboard shortcuts keep your hands on the keys and your workflow moving. Start with the shortcuts you would use most often and build from there.

Essential shortcuts every typist should know

• Ctrl/Cmd + C, X, V: Copy, cut, paste
• Ctrl/Cmd + Z: Undo
• Ctrl/Cmd + A: Select all
• Ctrl/Cmd + F: Find text
• Ctrl/Cmd + S: Save
• Ctrl + Shift + V (Windows) or Option + Shift + Cmd + V (Mac): Paste without formatting in many apps
• Alt + Tab / Cmd + Tab: Switch between windows or apps
• Ctrl + arrow keys (Option + arrow keys on Mac): Jump between words
• Ctrl + Shift + arrow keys (Option + Shift + arrow keys on Mac): Select text word by word

App-specific shortcuts

Every app you use often has shortcuts worth learning: Gmail for composing and archiving, Slack for switching channels, spreadsheets for navigating cells and entering formulas, and code editors for multi-cursor editing and jumping between files. Advanced users learn one app at a time. Once they become muscle memory, the mouse starts to seem slow.

Focus on learning three to five new shortcuts per week. Write them on a sticky note near your monitor until they become automatic.

9. Set goals and track progress

Improvement without measurement is guesswork. Regular typing tests give you concrete data on your progress and show you how to improve your typing next.

How to benchmark your typing speed

Take one-minute typing tests at the same time each day, using the same testing tool, for consistent results. Many websites offer free typing tests, including Monkeytype, 10FastFingers, and TypingTest.com. Track both your WPM and your accuracy percentage, because speed without accuracy is misleading.

Typing speed benchmarks

Use these levels as practical guideposts for where to focus next, not as research averages.

• Below 30 WPM: Usually hunt-and-peck territory, where you’ll make the fastest progress if you learn touch typing.
• 30 to 40 WPM: Workable for short messages. Consistent typing practice can move you up a level within a few months.
• 40 to 60 WPM: Good enough for most office work, but improvement here still saves real time.
• 60 to 80 WPM: Comfortable for writing-heavy work such as content, support, and programming.
• 80 to 100 WPM: Fast. Diminishing returns on raw speed begin here, so focus shifts to tools and workflows.
• 100+ WPM: Expert level. At this speed, your bottleneck is thinking, not typing.

If you want research-based WPM benchmarks and a structured, week-by-week schedule, our guide on how to type faster covers both, including a 4-week practice plan.

Setting realistic goals

Aim for a 5 to 10 WPM improvement per month during active practice. This rate is sustainable and avoids the frustration of unrealistic targets. For example, if your current typing speed is 40 WPM, reaching 60 WPM within three to four months of consistent practice is a reasonable goal.

Track your weekly averages rather than individual test scores. Single tests vary based on the text, your energy level, and your focus. Weekly averages smooth out the noise and show your true trend. It’s easy to get discouraged by one bad test score when your weekly average shows your typing skills are steadily improving.

10. Make practice enjoyable

The best way to improve your typing is the typing practice you stick with. If practice isn’t fun, you will likely stop, no matter how effective it is.

Turn practice into a game

Typing games add competition, variety, and fun to drill work, and many are free typing games you can play in a browser. TypeRacer lets you race other typists in real time. Nitro Type adds a car-racing theme. ZType turns typing into a space shooter where you destroy enemies by typing words. Epistory goes further, building an adventure game around typing mechanics. These typing games keep practice engaging while building the same typing skills as traditional drills.

Type things you care about

Type passages from books you enjoy, song lyrics, or articles in your field. Some typing programs let you import custom text, so you can practice with your own material. Familiar, interesting text keeps practice fun.

Build typing into your daily work

You do not always need dedicated practice sessions. Practice touch typing during regular work: keep your hands in the correct starting position, resist the urge to look at the keyboard during emails, and try typing Slack messages without backspace. These small commitments build typing skills without extra time.

Track streaks

Consistency matters more than perfection in the long run. Track how many consecutive days you practice and aim to keep the streak alive. Even five minutes on a busy day counts.

Improve your typing speed and accuracy today

The tips above build on each other: technique gives you the foundation, daily practice builds typing skills, better accuracy cuts the time you spend on corrections, and tools let you reuse the words you have already written. That combination is what makes an efficient typist. Teams that answer customers all day measure both sides of that equation.

TextExpander is all about efficiency, a combination of speed and accuracy. If we aren’t efficient, we are wasting time and money, and our customers are waiting on us. That makes TextExpander great for us and our customers.

Todd Curtis, Chief Customer Officer, You Need a Budget

If you write the same replies, updates, and instructions every week, try TextExpander free and keep the answers you use most ready wherever you type. Start on your own, then share your Snippets when your teammates want them too.