Captain Ratatype
Suppose that, ever since our school days, we've been typing for around two and a half hours a day — lessons, then office work, then chatting with friends, and so on. Add it all up over a lifetime, and each of us spends something like 45,000 hours typing at a keyboard. By rights, then, we ought to be typing like absolute pros. But is that actually true?
Typing quickly and typing properly aren't always the same thing
If you reckon you're a fast typist, have a think about how many fingers you actually use. Two? Four? Can you manage all ten? And how many mistakes do you usually make along the way? Five per cent? Ten?
Learn proper touch typing through the right kind of practice, and you could boost your typing speed by at least 15%, while cutting your mistakes down to almost nothing.
How a typing tutor helps you improve
The whole secret behind fast typing comes down to muscle memory. Your fingers learn exactly where to go, and before long you're typing like a professional. Building up that muscle memory, though, is precisely what a typing tutor is for. It doesn't much matter how many hours you spend typing away in documents or chats each day if you're still hunting and pecking with two or three fingers.
Ten minutes of proper practice every day — that's what genuinely makes the difference. Regular typing practice is what gets you real results.
How fast are you, really? Take the typing speed test and see for yourself
Not keen on just taking our word for it? Have a go at the online typing speed test — it only takes a minute, and it'll show you straightaway how many words per minute you're managing and how many errors you're making. Then spend some time practising with our typing tutor and see how your results compare a month later.
It's ideal for anyone keen to turn their learning into a proper routine. And once you've got the basics down, there's plenty of scope to mix things up: have a go at learning in another language, or sharpen your accuracy with the Ratashooter and Ratarace typing games.
Incidentally, if you ever decide to go for a typing speed certificate, it makes a handy addition to your CV — and for jobs that ask for a typing speed test, that certificate can sometimes be exactly what opens the door.
So, which is it going to be: 10,000 hours or 10 minutes? The choice is yours.
