Why is my typing speed not improving?

A typing speed that stops rising usually has one of four causes. A habit may be holding you back, your speed may be coming at the cost of errors, your practice may not cover the letters you really type, or your test may be too noisy to show progress. Each has a different fix, so work through them in order before you assume you need more hours of practice. Our guide to how to type faster covers the methods in full.

A plateau is normal, because skills settle at different speeds

Typing speed is built from more than one kind of skill. A 2015 study followed 62 children on an online touch typing course and tracked two of them: the finger movements behind single keystrokes, and the words typed over time. The finger-level curves flattened sooner, so the authors concluded that the finger-level skill seemed to need less practice to develop than the word-level skill ¹.

If your words-per-minute score has flattened, the fingers may already be settled while the word-level skill is still developing. That points to practice on whole words, phrases and your own sentences, not only drills on single letters. The study followed children on one course, so treat the pattern as a lead for adults rather than a rule.

A habit of looking at the keys can cap your speed

The most common cause of a stall is looking at the keyboard. A 2003 study calls this visually guided typing, the strategy in which "the performer looks at the keys to locate their position" ². Check for it with three signs:

• Your eyes go to the keys each time you reach a letter you are unsure of.
• Your speed drops when you switch to unfamiliar text, but your accuracy stays the same.
• Your error count rises as soon as you speed up, even on a passage you know well.

If you see these signs, practice with the screen or a printed page in front of you, and keep your eyes on the text. Our question on how to type without looking at the keys covers accuracy in the same routine.

Speed bought with errors does not add up

Every error costs time, because it has to be found and fixed. In the 136 million keystroke study, faster typing was negatively correlated with error corrections, at r = -0.36 ³. That is a correlation across many typists, so it does not prove that fewer corrections cause higher speed. It does show that the fastest typists were not the ones who corrected the most.

Your own rhythm can change with the day, too. In a study of real office work, workers kept their typing speed up in the morning, and that speed came with more errors to fix ⁴. If your best sessions are early and your worst come at the end of a long day, the plateau may be fatigue. Compare sessions at the same time of day before you judge your progress.

Your practice may not match the letters you type

Not all keystrokes teach the same thing. The 136 million keystroke study found that letter pairs typed by different hands or fingers predicted speed more closely than repeated letters did ⁵. A random word list may spend most of its time on pairs you rarely type.

The fix is to practice on text you would type anyway. Write down the pairs you hesitate on in your last email or document, and drill those in short passages. A stall is often a few pairs that have not yet become automatic.

Real gains take a long time

Touch typing can be learned quickly, but the 2016 study's authors write that reaching the performance rates reported in the literature takes hundreds of hours of deliberate training ⁶. Weeks of steady practice can produce a clear change, but a flat month is not evidence that you have reached your limit.

A typing course is also not a guarantee of speed. Trained typists in the online sample averaged about 5 words per minute faster than untrained typists, a small gap next to the spread of about 20 words per minute within each group ⁷. What you do each day matters more than whether you took a course.

Your test may be too noisy to show progress

A single test result can move for reasons that have nothing to do with skill. A study of a one-sentence typing test found that the test was reasonably stable over two years, with an intraclass correlation of 0.79 for computer typing ⁸. That means the test ranks people fairly consistently, but it is not perfect, so one run is only an estimate.

To see real progress, use the same passage each time, at the same time of day, and average three runs. If a change is only a point or two, wait for the next week's results before you decide anything.

It depends on what you are trying to reach

• Composing versus copying. If most of your typing is drafting, thinking takes much of the time. Our guide to writing speed explains why, and a faster keyboard will not fix that.
• A job or test with a minimum. Check whether the minimum counts accuracy as well as speed. The number that decides the outcome may be the net score, not the gross speed.
• A short window. A week is often too short to judge a change, so measure again after several weeks, not the next day.

What to do this week

1. Record a baseline: three one-minute tests on new text, with the errors counted. Our guide to how typing speed is measured explains the figures.
2. Type a passage from a printed page. If your speed jumps, your eyes were setting the pace.
3. Pick three letter pairs you hesitate on in your own writing, and practice only those for a week.
4. Set an error limit for each passage, and raise the pace in small steps only after a clean run.
5. Repeat the three-run test after three to four weeks, at the same time of day, and compare averages.

For the speed levels that matter for a job or a goal, read is 60 words per minute a good typing speed. For the games that many people use as practice, read do typing games help you type faster.