How make you type faster

You know the feeling. You seldom learned any keyboard skills at school (assuming they were even being taught when you were there) so your typing is closer to hunt & peck than it is to Mavis Beacon. Which is OK in case you are tapping out a short e mail but is a pain in the neck in case you have got a multi page document to produce.

Here are some tips to help you type faster without having to take steps backwards in your typing speed while you learn.

1. Use over finger!

If hand is laying dormant or is gripping your mouse with a vengeance than move anywhere near the keyboard, it is time to make use of at least finger from each hand.

In the event you use each hand to cover around half the keyboard then you'll reduce what a hard disk manufacturer would call "seek time". Your fingers have less distance to travel, which will speed up your typing. & of them tapping away will help as well.

2. Thump the space bar along together together along along along along along together with your thumb

This is again an simple trick to learn.

Gradually train your thumb to be the thing that hits the space bar than moving of your fingers down to the bottom of the keyboard.

3. Think about touch typing

This is a brige far for lots of people. I am fast with a few fingers & my left thumb to have found that learning to touch type was much hassle. Possibly finally I'd have sped up but short term touch typing was grinding my typing & my creativity to a halt. Your choice - in case you are pounding a keyboard day in, day out, it could be worth the short term hit on typing speed for the longer term benefit.

4. Watch the screen, not the keyboard

This is an "ouch" at first.

But learning to watch the screen over the keyboard was probably the single most important thing I personally did to speed up my tapping.

Touch typists do it by definition, so I figured that if it was lovely for them, it was lovely for me.

There is occasions when I'll slip & my eyes will glance at the keyboard. But they are less & less often & are used to "get my bearings" on where the keys have moved from (psychologically - I don't balance my keyboard on my lap) since I last checked.

A purist touch typist would glare at me for doing this - they'd use those tiny raised bits on the F & J keys to keep themself guided. But in case you are not a touch typist, glancing at the keyboard is fine.

5. Cheat!

Again, Mavis Beacon would throw her arms up in horror at this suggestion.

But there is nothing to say you need to make use of a keyboard.

There is programs available that will transcribe your words onto the screen. So you can literally talk your words than hammer away at that QWERTY keyboard.

Windows keeps it a tiny small tiny small tiny small tiny little tiny bit of a secret but ever since Vista, it is had that capability built in but - for reasons I have seldom understood - switched off. Do a fast search & see whether you get on with this technique - I find it slows me down, as I am liking to listen to music as I type but you may pick it is the best way to not type.