Have you been meaning to learn how to type, but never seem to get around actually starting the lessons? Wish you could bang out dozens of words per minute, but don’t want to shell out for typing software? Well for those of you who were not lucky enough to spend a few hours per week under the expert guidance of Mavis Beacon during your high school years, TypingWeb is here to fill the gab.
TypingWeb is a web application that offers a wide variety of typing exercises from beginner to advanced, right inside of your browser window. You can register with the site in order to keep track of your progress, or go through the lessons without registering.
Tips for Learning to Type
Here are a few tips for mastering the skill of typing:
- Don’t look! If you catch yourself cheating, tape a sheet of paper to the top of your keyboard and let it rest on top of your hands as you do the exercises.
- Concentrate on accuracy first, then work on speed.
- Read fast to boost your typing speed. While doing the speed drills I read ahead and try to type fast enough to catch up to my train of thought.
Advanced Typing Exercises
TypingWeb isn’t just for beginners — the site also offers advanced exercises for veteran typists to stretch their fingers. I did some of their accuracy and speed drills, and topped out at 101 WPM with 98% accuracy. I will admit that my performance dropped to around 50-75 WPM with 98% accuracy for exercises with complex usage of numbers and special characters… I have never been very good at no-look typing on the number row.
Twitter users: how fast do you type?
So Of Zen and Computing is wondering — how fast do our readers type? Give some of the TypingWeb speed drills a try (located under “Intermediate Course”) and tell us how you did via Twitter (@ozac). We’ll publish some of the responses right here.
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