Jashe’s Comprehensive

(Speed)Typing Guide
dedicated to Luise, Young, Leona, Delf, Lenke and every typist who wants to improve

STRAWPOLLS AT THE END OF MANY CHAPTERS!

typing
/ˈtʌɪpɪŋ/

noun 1. the action or skill of writing something by means of a typewriter or computer.

Hello fellow and aspiring typists! 😄

Over the years I have spent among the typing community so far, I have noticed that while
there’s plenty of sources for typing advice available for plenty of people who have sought
it, they oftentimes only focus on a few certain aspects of typing. They tend to be pretty
short and easy to read/watch, and now and then the suggestions would contradict each
other.
I thought I would try to concentrate the advice while adding a lot of original thoughts from
yours truly and shine some light on it from different perspectives, especially my own. This
guide also serves as a kind of personal archive with some history, trivia and info on the
community, and also as a vast collection of further material. And who knows, maybe this
will turn into a go-to place when looking for a more well-rounded typing

😄
encyclopedia/bible directed at typists of all levels who want to improve their “real” and
also website typing skills?

If you’re looking for a short, straightforward guide, this is not quite the right place, though
keeping to the bold text and focusing on the topics that interest you in the content guide
(or only looking at the content guide for a VERY basic version) will be the easiest method
in that case.
While it certainly only covers part of my guide’s content, I think John’s - a dear friend of
mine who went viral, and the fastest Dvorak typist - typing guide is very well written and
instructive: How to Become a Faster Typist, and his videos are also definitely worth
checking out!
There’s also helpful guides by Foggy, Taran, Fruit, blender, Shazzy, and two more videos
by the top typists of the Ultimate Typing Championship and by SpeedTyping.
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Anyway, I hope you enjoy this long read of over 150 pages!

__________________________________________________________________

Abbreviations & Terms

First off, let me explain some of my formatting principles:

‘ ’ is for indicating words, letters, or names; “ ” is used as a usual quotation mark and
mostly to indicate exaggerations; bold is for the especially important parts; CAPS puts
emphasis on a word, cursive is for fictive audience questions or for more meta remarks
that are not necessarily supposed to be coherent with the guide’s content; red text either
means that there’s a construction site which I will have to edit again in the future or that
the information is variable/updatable; the color blue addresses stuff that is not related to
typing, and are mostly quick jabs at issues I have in the world; the background colors
green and red talk about the pros and cons of something; and underline serves to structure
my guide into different chapters and subchapters. ( ) means that I probably
overcomplicated a sentence again and couldn’t help but add some additional info...

Touch-Typing
Typing without using your eyes to find the keys: Through muscle memory, your fingers
just know where to go. Traditionally, this is done by ascending from a hunt-and-peck typist
to a touch typist using home row (which is explained in Tips & Tricks).

Hunt-and-Peck
A common, but bad and amateurish way of typing where one keeps looking at the
keyboard due to not knowing where the keys are, and usually types with both index
fingers. Very inefficient and slow. Shoutout to Eli at this point, an amazing typist.

WPM/CPM
Words Per Minute/Characters Per Minute: The number of words and keystrokes typed in
60 seconds. Usually, a word represents 5 keystrokes, so that 100 WPM = 500 CPM.

2
Accuracy
(Percentage of) how many keystrokes out of all are actually correct. Perfect 100%
accuracy means typing a text flawlessly without errors, 0% percent accuracy means typing
everything/all words wrong. Typing sites use various methods to measure one’s accuracy,
but universally, the higher your accuracy, the better.

Consistency
Related to accuracy, Consistency describes how well your scores keep up over a period of
time or a multitude of texts. On monkeytype, it tells you how constant your speed was:
The higher, the more you stayed at the same speed throughout the test.
The more consistent you are, the more similar your WPM scores and the less deviation
there will be, which means you don’t get many bad scores, but don’t reach extraordinarily
high WPMs either.

Raw Speed
To put it simply, how fast anyone inputs the keystrokes or how fast someone is capable of
typing, not taking into account their accuracy.
Alternatively, it can mean the total amount of keystrokes typed, not caring if they were
correct or not.

one of shazzy’s Advanced English scores, set on 17th May

2020
Here the raw speed is 974 keystrokes which is 194,8 WPM, but because he typed 27
keystrokes wrong (5,4 WPM) his result is 189,4 WPM.

3
Burst Speed
Related to Raw Speed, Burst Speed usually refers to a typist’s ability to type a short and
easy text as fast as possible. It is a contest of pure finger speed rather than how accurate or
consistently well you can type or how good you're at difficult words.

Non-Quit
Common term typically used for sites such as TypeRacer and NitroType where a typist
doesn’t abandon (bad) races in order to achieve a higher average and avoid difficult texts,
but finishes every race. Nonquit accounts are supposed to display a typist’s real average
skill in WPM across a number of different texts.

Real Typing
I use this term to describe forms of typing that have some sort of real practical purpose
and value in real life, be it texting & chatting, writing an essay, leaving comments on
forums, googling stuff etc.
Usually, you will need a grasp of the whole keyboard to excel at real typing, as symbols
and punctuation are quite prevalent, and you want to avoid making errors/typos. This
guide is supposed to cover real typing, but it’s also supposed to help the aspiring
competitive typist.
Both can overlap, for example in the Intersteno Congress you have to type advanced,
coherent texts.

I also use this system to indicate fingerings:

4
“Ok, but... hold on” you may think, “who is this guy and why does he think he can help me
at all? Is he gonna force me to learn Dvorak and practice 40 hours a day?”
(Yes, I did type for 40 hours in a 42 hour timeframe. It’s covered here).

Now, that’s a fair question!

Firstly, I’d just like to clarify that I don’t intend to enforce anything on anybody; this is
after all a GUIDE and not the Ten Commandments. You have a lot of freedom and ways
to approach typing improvement, which is something you’ll probably strongly notice
throughout this guide. Also, this document has been created with the help and feedback of
other typists - thanks a lot! Especially to xsession/concurrent, who collected tips from 30
different good typists and allowed me to look into them. While I can only share my
knowledge and do like to express my own views, I’ll try to clearly announce them as my
own too.

“Ok nice, but just WHO are you?” Well, glad you asked!

5
__________________________________________________________________

A Little About Me

My name is Jakob/Jacob Sheng-Jie Poon and I currently study Sinology. I

previously studied English and Spanish.
(Jashe is the name I go by; it’s pronounced without the “e” in English phonology, so like
“ash” but with a “j” at the beginning. The pronunciation varies from language to language
though, it’s unique in Spanish, German, French… and Chinese/Taiwanese people call me
by my Chinese name anyway).

Born to parents from Taiwan and Vietnam , I have been living all my life in

Germany since 2000 and have been typing for as long as I can remember. While I

proudly exercise a variety of hobbies such as computer gaming , piano (both

probably being potent catalysts of my typing speed and finger agility, + I had almost 10

000 posts in a forum of a game called Awesomenauts), singing , chess , and

language learning, over the last few years typing has become my strongest pastime.

I used to type with a handful of fingers some years back, but eventually adopted a standard
home row method that used 9 fingers, and eventually added a personalized
10-Finger-System on QWERTY, whereby I (among other things) include my right thumb
to type the letters ‘m’,’n’ and sometimes ‘b’, while my left thumb has always been
confined to the spacebar. I have mained QWERTY for basically all my typing journey, but
learned Dvorak and Colemak in the years 2017 and 2018 and have kept them relatively
fresh since then, with a 60s PB of 189 and 207 WPM, respectively.
I have also learned the layouts Semimak and Canary during layout learning competitions,
reaching 124 WPM on both on a rather difficult monkeytype test and placing first and
third respectively.

6
As can be seen on my 10fastfingers Profile, where I started my typing journey, I reached a
Personal Best of 221 WPM in the English Normal Mode on 13th May 2020, beating Sean
Wrona’s flawless 220 WPM run and former world record and taking the Top 6 Verified
Highscore of All Time at that time. I also scored 182 WPM in the Advanced Mode a few
days later, and had taken Top 2 on a custom 10 minute test with 194 WPM weeks earlier. I
have now also almost achieved 190 WPM on the monkey-type 1 hour basic test.

I’m currently - September 2022 - ranked Top 5 in English, Top 2 in English Competitions,
and on monkeytype I hold Rank 8 in English Time 15 (250.34 WPM) as well as Rank 9 in
English Time 60 (224.18 WPM). This excludes rocket once, who has both the world
record at 262 WPM as well as the alt-layout world record at 228 WPM with Colemak.

While I’m not the fastest - though I was featured in a Top 10 Fastest Typists In The World
video - or let alone the most accurate typist, I’m especially proud of my diverse skill set
and am kind of known for my (English) skills in the other layouts Dvorak and Colemak
(so much so that I was featured in a video which has amassed over 3 million views) and
also in different languages, being a rather fast multilingual typist - averaging almost 140
WPM across 34 languages - and holding the world records in Swedish (formerly),
Esperanto and German. German is by far the fastest second language with a personal best
of 209 WPM, the 27th fastest verified score of all-time in all languages on 10FF.

Furthermore, I boast some high scores on sites such as typera.net, dominate the TypeRacer
German Universe and regularly reach nonquit averages of 170+ in the English universe. I

😃
race on Nitrotype and Keymash now and then.
I also upload videos to my Youtube Channel (subscribe if you like ). I type on an
Apple Magic Keyboard or use my laptop.

Because of my years of experience with different layouts and websites and languages, I
think I am quite qualified to talk about typing in general and am happy to share the
knowledge that I have.

7
8
9
(10FF Discord Server, monkeytype Discord server in July 2021 and September 2022
respectively)

I have an unhealthy hunger for roles. They are my ego’s life source

____________________________________________________________________

The Essentials
(aside from a functioning PC, a keyboard, an internet connection, and preferably short nails. Yeah,
typing is pretty simple and cheap.)

Now, before you start any typing practice, the one thing I think you should place above
everything else, even fun and your typing improvement, is your mental and physical
health. Therefore, I strongly encourage you to develop a typing practice routine that works
for you.

Here’s my tips, which extend far beyond just typing but more so apply to activities
and your life in general:

1.0 Track the time you spend on every website.

This helps you to know where your time goes and allows you to consciously invest your
precious time; for example, you could decide to do 30 minutes of typingclub.com, 20
minutes of TypeRacer, and 10 minutes of 10fastfingers every practice session, splitting it
into smaller sessions. The simple way of doing this is looking at the clock, perhaps
setting an alarm, and switching when the designated time has come. I have used
RescueTime as well as Limit for years and it’s helped me a lot to realize how I spend my
time.

If you get addicted to stuff & activities easily or, like me, suffer from a lack of self-control,
do consider installing extensions that limit your time you can spend on certain sites or

10
that just block them entirely when you just don’t have time to practice typing: 8 Website
Blockers For Studying, Productivity, & Focus | Freedom Matters
I have used BlockSite on Google Chrome to block chess, typing and communication sites
during weeks where I focused on studying, and it’s worked wonderfully.

1.1 Practice regularly

And by regularly, I mean preferably “daily”. As someone with a few different hobbies,
one of the most important lessons I have ever learned is that consistently and patiently
exercising an activity for a bit every day is a rather slow, but very effective and sure
way to improve at anything.

Doing typing for 1 hour each day over a week is way more effective than doing a 7-hour
session (which is actually discouraged as it’s over-practicing, unhealthy and arguably a
waste of time): Not only is it way less exhausting for your brain and body, it also allows
you to build up muscle memory over the period of one whole week without actually
investing more time.

Of course, busy schedules are ubiquitous and you won’t always be able to attend to a
desired activity every day. But, even just 15, 20 or 30 minutes of diligent conscious
practice every day - on top of the typing that you do anyway whenever you use a keyboard
- helps a lot, and it really adds up over time.

While you practice, make sure to take regular breaks. This is especially important if you
do practice sessions that can last for hours, in which case I think taking a break every 30
minutes is sensible. Get up, stretch, walk around, get some fresh air, drink some
water, eat some food… it’s basic knowledge, but easily forgotten during hectic everyday
life.
Also, give your fingers some rest. I have often set new Personal Bests when coming back
to my laptop fresh and relaxed, after having tired out my fingers, hands and wrists and
getting frustrated from my futile attempts of achieving any satisfactory result.

And let me be clear about this: without any practice, you will hardly get anywhere.
Sometimes you will “magically” improve without having practiced whatsoever, but still
almost all of your progress, namely muscle memory, better motor skills and finger
11
dexterity, will stem from practice. There’s no hidden secret or magical boost that can
suddenly turn you into a proficient typist, or I would know by now. No guide or teacher or
talent can replace practice, you will still have to put in work. The purpose of this guide is
to tell you how to approach the way you practice, you could even say “art of typing”, and
give you helpful tips.
Now be warned: everyone is different and thus there is no universal way that works
perfectly for all, and I often offer a variety of different options and encourage you to try
out things for yourself. However, there are still some principles that you should follow.

1.2 Make sure you have good posture.

This is one piece of advice you will find in any typing guide, and for a reason: Having
good posture while you type is really damn important! You want to be kind to your
back, shoulders, eyes, and wrists (the wrists and the left thumb, my spacebar thumb, tend to hurt the
most after a long day full of practice during which I ignore basically every essential tip I just listed).
Make sure you are treating yourself right.

I think the folks over at https://www.ratatype.com/learn/ have got it right:

And make sure you can type comfortably on your keyboard with as little strain and effort
as possible

Now, having good posture is not mandatory for setting high scores. Sean Wrona, widely
considered one of the best typists, has shown notoriously bad posture by slouching while

12
typing, and other top typists have achieved very high scores while lying in bed. But I think
it’s extremely important if you don’t want to damage, but maintain your healthy body; and
I have found that having my feet flat on the ground and my back straight yields better
scores. I always lay my wrists on my laptop while typing, but some people type faster
when they have their wrists elevated, so try it out yourself and see what feels best!
(Wrist rests and ergonomic keyboards might also be worth checking out!)

1.3 Join the typing community on Discord

Admittedly, this is not really essential, but it’s nevertheless a very easy and hugely
rewarding step to take. Joining the typing communities allows you to get to know other
typists and chat about literally anything with them, in many different languages no less.

Our community is full of amazing people - primarily young male computer enthusiasts -
who will gladly help people who seek advice. You can become known in the community
yourself, you get to hang out with almost all the best typists, (the most dedicated typists
also tend to be quite active in the community), you can join fun voice chat rooms, and on
top of all that, you also improve your typing skills just by chatting! ;)

There’s definitely some immature, annoying and toxic people present, but the majority of
typists whom I have gotten to know are really a decent bunch and I have had great
memories during my time there, you can absolutely make great friends!
Make sure you don’t “waste” too much time on Discord (as there’s no definite stop and

😄
you can keep on chatting for hours and hours and easily waste your whole day this way);
but do enjoy your stay there
Links to the Discord servers of several typing websites can be found, among other things,
here.

13
 Some typing servers

__________________________________________________________________

Psychology

2.0 Know what role ‘typing’ plays for you.

Just how important is typing for you? Probably important enough that you’d bother to read
a guide about it, well, that’s fair. But why are you interested, what are you trying to
improve? Are you new to typing and looking for basic guidance, or are you a veteran
looking for some advanced tips?
Where you are coming from and what your (next) goals are, are crucial factors which
should determine how often/regularly/long you practice typing, and what you
practice.

14
If you’re an author who writes fantasy novels, you probably want to become quicker at

😏
writing down your notes & your brainstorming sessions, and you want to be able to write
proper sentences with a broad vocabulary (same thing if you like writing guides, heh ).

If you mainly chat online, proper punctuation and a formal style becomes less important.
If you’re a hardcore gamer, you may even want to adapt a typing style that doesn’t deviate
strongly from the usual WASD left hand position (whether that’s a good idea is another
question).
If you’re a programmer, being able to type symbols, numbers and special characters fast
becomes paramount.

If you’re a language enthusiast, most likely your typing skills will cover a variety of
languages instead of just one. But usually, you will just focus on getting better in one
(main) language.
If you’re interested in QWERTY and alternative keyboard layouts, chances are you’ll
install some alteration of Qwerty, Colemak or Dvorak or some other popular layout too.
If you’re just doing this for fun, you don’t have to take typing as seriously as say a
medical transcriptionist who does typing professionally.

These roles may overlap, are prone to change and don’t have to matter a lot; after all, most
people just want to improve their general typing abilities, the importance of typing can
keep changing over time, and everybody has to be able to communicate in various
registers. But it’s still good to know and be conscious of what typing skills you want to
acquire and how much you are willing to practice for it. Practice what you need
typing for.

I would say that typing fast can be a pretty useful skill and everyone should at least be
able to touch-type, but if you’re already able to consistently reach triple digit WPM
speeds, you’re probably better off working on certain hard or soft skills in your life
instead. Many people may view typing as a chore and avoid doing it as well as they can,
but it certainly can be a lot of fun too; just try to not get addicted and forego your
responsibilities or even basic human needs. (1.0 addresses that)

Despite how universal typing is nowadays - a fine motor skill that stretches across any
discipline, any job with electronic devices -, actual competitive typing is hardly taken
seriously by anyone and thus our community remains a pretty small, niche community.

15
The sad facts that as of right now there are barely competitive events (let alone lucrative
ones), that speed-typing is not a professional sport, popular typing videos actually rather
focus on gaming/gamers or ASMR, and that 216 WPM by Stella Pajunas and 212 WPM
by Barbara Blackburn are
still cited as the fastest typing
speeds ever, even after about 70
years, speaks volumes.

Barbara Blackburn died over 12 years ago…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5f2gkTIJBs < actual fastest typing speed on a

reasonable text, by Taran

So, just be aware that typing skill doesn’t bring you much recognition, and that for most
people it’s not very important.

However, this also means that becoming one of the best is way easier than in other popular
and well respected disciplines (think Olympics for example) and has been done by some
within just a few years, and you can become well known fairly easily, if not just by being
active in the community.

Also, with the increased popularity of smartphones and advent of steadily improving voice
recognition software, the keyboard typing as we know it is likely to dwindle even more.

2.1 Be realistic in your goals and be patient

Don’t expect any miracles in your improvement, for example going from 100 WPM to 200
WPM within three months on any typing website is an unrealistic ambition that, when
attempted seriously, is almost certainly going to lead to disappointment.
“Psychologically speaking, setting physical goals like "I want to reach 100 wpm by the
end of March!" is a bad idea. From an A priori standpoint, it is difficult - if not impossible
16
- to determine the feasibility of such statements. Furthermore, you might try your best,
practising maybe 3 hours a day, and in the end still creep around 95 when April comes
around. That is going to be disheartening, demotivating and demoralising.
A better idea is to say "I am going to practise for 45 minutes each day until April!". Set
yourself goals that you can actively know that you have control over achieving. That way,
you will be rewarded if you actually do it. You are in control of your reward and know A
priori that it is feasible to do that.” - this added text was taken from a suggested edit.

The simple truth is this:

If the saying in chess culture is that “Chess is 99% Tactics”, then I think a fitting
equivalent for us would be “Typing is 99% Muscle Memory”. Besides getting your
fingers to be dexterous enough to actually press the keys quickly,

Learning to type faster is all about building

the muscle memory in your fingers to 1. learn which
key produces which letter and 2. how to type certain words in a language.

It is a matter of practice, and of time, and while the act of typing itself doesn’t have much
room for, say, creativity or artistic expression, its straightforwardness also means that
everybody who is physically and mentally capable should be able to at least reach a decent
typing speed (I’d say 80 WPM), if not triple digits (100 WPM), and maybe even a very
good speed of 2 WPS/120 WPM or around 1% top percentile if they really tried, though I
don’t really think being able to type at a speed of more than 100 WPM is necessary in
ordinary life^^

Also, don’t become disheartened if you ever feel like you’re stuck and are not making
progress. Everyone, absolutely everyone I know has bad days and times when they seem
to not improve or are even becoming worse and worse.
It’s absolutely normal to hit a ceiling, and I am willing to bet that that ceiling is not final if
it’s say, below 180 WPM: you can, and will, surpass it if you really try. Most typists I
know have been stuck somewhere at some point and often managed to break through
eventually.

17
2.2 Believe in yourself and reward yourself

Aside from patience, having faith in yourself and being confident is also good. My
ultimate goal not long ago was to reach 200 WPM on 10fastfingers, now I have crossed
220 WPM and passed 200 WPM in German without putting in too much effort: I have to
thank patience, and consistent, regular overall typing practice for that.
So, never give up and keep pushing, unless you are absolutely convinced the effort is not

🙂
worth it anymore and have found preferred ways of investing your time. That’s totally
fine, good luck on your journey

Also, make sure to reward yourself as you progress and reach higher typing speeds.
Divide your path towards your end goal into a number of achievable milestones, like ‘42,
69, 85, 100, 120, 133.7’ and ‘150’ WPM and celebrate each achievement by taking a break

😎
for the day, eating some chocolate, doing something you enjoy (even) more than typing…
whatever pleases you

Milestones don’t have to be specific numbers though: the goal can also be being able to
beat a specific typist - for example your brother - just once or being able to keep up with
them, getting onto the leaderboards on a website, reaching a specific number of races,
getting recognized in a hall of fame… There’s many possibilities, and they all can serve as
an extra boost of motivation for you!

But if you’re lacking motivation to practice, a nice way to trick your brain is to say

😳
“ok I will just practice for 5 minutes”. If you enjoy typing and your inner ambitions take
over, you may end up typing for way longer anyway, just make sure it’s not too long

Milestones exist so they can be passed, so don’t let them hinder you! While you should
please stay reasonable and realistic to whatever extent you are able to, don’t be pessimistic
and think that you can’t improve. It will affect your mental state and your performance
negatively.

2.3 Practice when you’re in top form

18
If you want your practice to be as efficient as possible, a no-brainer here would be to only
practice when you’re feeling well, when you are fed and very awake. If you are, or if
after a while of practice you become tired, intoxicated, and can’t focus, can’t read, just
can’t type, practicing can almost become pointless. It’s better to take a break and return
later or even only on the next day. If you have different hobbies, order them by importance
and ration your energy wisely. I’ve seen quite a few top typists advise to stop practicing as
soon as you lose your focus or something starts to hurt.

A strategy can be to type before going to bed, as your brain will process the newly
developed muscle memory overnight and you may improve quicker this way. When I
learnt to type Colemak upside down at 60 WPM within a week, I noticed that my speed
improved overnight, not during sessions.

Having a regular sleep cycle and sleeping enough is extremely important in your life
and affects your energy, motivation, mood, performance and so much more dramatically, I
have plenty of experience to back this up unfortunately, if it isn’t already unquestionable.
I streamed once in late June 2020 after a whole day of no sleep, having been busy all day
working on this guide, and I could barely speak or type at all and everything felt totally
weird.

Some people also advise to always give 100% when you practice typing and pay full
attention and concentration and focus on improvement. I think it’s safe to say that this
mindset is going to yield better results than careless and unmotivated typing practice.

2.4 Have fun!

😊
Perhaps a bit cliché, but still so so so important. You are going to enjoy typing way more
if you have fun while doing it. Doing things that bring joy to you - like racing against
others on typeracer - will obviously help you with that, but also just smiling, being happy
and having a positive attitude works wonders. And if you do happen to experience slow
improvement or none at all, at the very least you won’t feel like you wasted your time
trying to better your typing. Try mixing up your practice routine by using different
resources (websites), playing typing games, listening to your favorite songs or to a nice
podcast while doing boring drills; make sure you have plenty of drinks and snacks, and if

19
the weather allows, you can even take your laptop - if you have one - outside and practice
outdoors.

__________________________________________________________________

The Basics

We are 19 pages in and finally arrive at the basics, hooray! However, I’d argue that the
Essentials and Psychology sections are really important too and should be read before this.

3.0 Touch type

Touch typing is one of the fundamental principles of typing and also probably the
biggest and most important step you can take to better your typing when you’re still a
beginner. It’s also what is primarily taught in typing classes, which I haven’t had the
opportunity to attend.

I’d argue that it’s a skill everyone who uses a PC should know, the sad reality is that that’s
far from being the case as of 2020 and most likely will never be.
“Touch typing” essentially means knowing your way around the keyboard just by touching
the keys, and discontinuing using your sense of sight to hunt and peck individual keys with
a few fingers.

If you aspire to become a decently fast typist, it is absolutely essential that you get
familiar with your keyboard and get acquainted with everything that’s on it/ that you
learn where the keys are by acquiring muscle memory. Basically all your further
progress will consist of learning how to tap these keys faster and faster after another.

Touch typing is so important that it forms the core message of blender’s fun little guide:

20
Usually, touch typing involves learning the home row method, where you use the middle
row of the keyboard as a basis where 8 of your fingers keep returning to, designate each
finger for a column except the index fingers which cover two columns, and of course use a
thumb to press the spacebar. Usually, it’s the right thumb, but using the left one is also
fine.

BBC Dance Mat Typing - Mrs. Smeltz

Vanilla home row on the Qwerty layout

I strongly recommend learning to touch type with the home row method and it’s the
first thing you should do if you haven’t learned it yet. Here are some websites that you can
check out, I recommend trying out all and sticking with one that you particularly like:

21
It’s possible to become a fast typist just by yourself in an auto-didactic way, but these
websites are supposed to help you “smooth” into the layout. Later on, feel free to dedicate
most of your time to the popular websites like monkeytype, 10FastFingers, keymash, (Nitro
Type) and especially Typeracer. I talk more about those in Websites & Servers

keybr.com/
typingstudy.com/lesson/1
typing.com/student
www.typingclub.com/

And just in case you want to learn the Dvorak layout instead:
learn.dvorak.nl/
This way, you learn another layout from the get-go and don’t have to switch later on,
which means you won’t “waste” any time acquiring QWERTY muscle memory that you
won’t need later.

I encourage you to consider learning a layout that is not QWERTY. It’s a hotly
debated subject, and
I will expand on these topics in Alternatives as well as in Keyboard & Layout

3.1 Use as many fingers as you can

Or at least, as many as you are comfortable with. The home row method uses 9 fingers,
and for good reason: There’s a ton of keys across the keyboard, and you want to make use
of all of your fingers so that you don’t have to move your fingers as far and can thus reach
the keys much quicker, and also so that you don’t have to use the same fingers over and
over again. That alone is a massive boost in efficiency, comfort and speed.

Now, it’s possible to do just fine or even to become a great typist using a handful of fingers
or less, some friends of mine reach insanely high scores with 7, 6 or 5 fingers. But they are
quite rare specimens whose abilities and exceptional talent are not applicable to the
general mass, and they also generally don’t endorse their typing style but instead agree
with this tip.

22
There’s really no reason to voluntarily only use a few fingers to type: Imagine using only 6
fingers to play the cello, violin or guitar… It might be possible, but it’s way more difficult
and I think you’re only severely handicapping yourself and hindering your progress. (I
didn’t use the piano as an example because chords are not a thing on typing keyboards)

If you’re a person who already knows how to touch type, but doesn’t use many fingers to
type, I can only encourage you to start using more, certainly if you’re interested in
improving your typing. Do friends, colleagues and family the favor and spare them the
sight of seeing you type with 4 or so fingers ;)

This advice is also among the most commonly mentioned when you ask for typing tips,
and I’ve yet to see someone argue that using less fingers than more is preferable instead.
You only really need one thumb and can perhaps dispense with the weaker and shorter
pinkies, so I’d say 7-8 fingers are the minimum.

In some layouts for other languages, the keys on the far right side of the keyboard are
actually very commonly used though, like ‘öäü’ in German or ‘åøæ’ in Norwegian and

😉
Danish or ‘ñ’ and ´´`` for creating accents in Spanish, and in those cases I think you’ll be
grateful that you have a right pinky MVP

After all my years of typing, I’ve ended up with my personalized typing style where I use
all 10 fingers (at least on QWERTY), and it’s the one I find most comfortable and efficient
for now; I will explain it further in 5.1

Poll in the TheTypingMatch Discord Server

3.2 Accuracy First

23
This is absolutely one of the most important tips, ESPECIALLY if you’re inaccurate, and
one that you will hear all the time. During my research done for this guide, this was by far
one of the most common pieces of advice.
This, dare I say, axiom postulates that accuracy be prioritised over speed.

The argument is that your speed will come naturally, or alternatively should be practiced
after acquiring good accuracy (more about that in 7.1), and you want to focus on
maintaining a reasonable accuracy during your entire typing journey, as well as focus on
the words you’re typing for better accuracy.
I am not saying “an accuracy as high as possible” because you are not supposed to slow
down to a crawl and ensure 100% accuracy, I think that’s not reasonable nor effective.

Still, it makes sense to be an accurate typist for a variety of reasons:

To put it a little hyperbolic: It doesn’t matter if you can type super fast if most of what
you type is wrong.
While it certainly is fun to try to type very fast, what you input should obviously still be
what you intended to write. Whenever you type a word wrong, you are also developing
wrong muscle memory: you are essentially being counterproductive.

Every time you correct a typo, you waste energy and lose valuable time: You are not as

😏
efficient as you could be, and you’ll also look like an absolute fool in moments when
you’re trying to show off your typing skills to other people

It can sometimes be acceptable not to correct your mistakes, for example while writing
down notes or in casual chats where you use slang, and proper grammar, punctuation and
orthography is not paramount. Or while practicing burst speed, which I will talk about
later. But generally, it’s way less disturbing to see a flawlessly written text, (especially for your
teachers, professors and potential future employers, who won’t like spelling mistakes), and you will be taken
more seriously.
The quality of this guide would significantly drop if it were suddenly ful o abd mistkaees,
woundl’t it?

The truth is that a lot of the better typists (including myself) don’t really have good
accuracy. They haven’t paid much attention to it during their typing progress and while
they can demonstrate some really impressive speeds, they tend to make a lot of mistakes
which really hinder their typing prowess. This is why I stress accuracy so much: Do not
neglect correct typing, or you will suffer the consequences.
24
And lastly, accuracy is of course also super important on typing websites and in
competitions, where one typo can very well decide between winning a race or losing it,
getting first place or third… Having a better average accuracy than someone else is
absolutely an advantage!

😜
Some races from the (supposedly) nonquit account of Michael Deroche, one of the best
and also historically most inconsistent typists ever. Don’t be intimidated
Notice how all races below 170 WPM have an accuracy of 96.X%.

__________________________________________________________________

Your Rhythm

These bullet points are still quite elementary, but are neither totally basic nor
very advanced, so I think sandwiching this topic inbetween is a fair decision

4.0 Go faster on easy words, slower on hard words

25
A very useful method of typing that is recommended and exercised by a lot of typists, and
championed by Sean Wrona. The idea is to speed through the easier words and thus
save time and boost one’s WPM, while slowing down on more difficult words to
ensure that you type them correctly. Do also slow down on words you frequently typo
on to make sure that you finally get them right.
This may happen naturally anyway as you automatically slow down when encountering
words you haven’t typed often yet, but you can definitely apply this method consciously
and thus yield better typing results.

Note that short words are not necessarily easy! You might even want to consciously slow
down on common words that are frequently mistyped on QWERTY, like the words ‘like’
which you can type with a sliding motion from the ‘i’ to the ‘k’ btw , ‘the’, and ‘and’

🙄
(teh, nad, liek). You will only slow down for a short while and you guarantee that these
dwarves of a word don’t ruin your entire sentence

Here’s an useful tip by Sean that I found on Reddit:

4.1 Read one word ahead

Most typists agree that looking one word ahead of the one you are currently typing -
while typing a predetermined text - is the way to go: This way, you register the word in
your brain, know what you have to type in advance and avoid unnecessary pauses.

I’ve ruined countless races by falsely completing sentences in my head and guessing the
next word wrong, or simply by misreading the word entirely (most often while being
tired). In fact, during typeracer sessions, I blame most of my mistakes on my eyes, not

26
 👍
my hands. Make sure you don’t do that, and once you know your layout well enough,
you’ll be able to type very cleanly

If you read more than one word in advance, you do risk getting the order of the words
mixed up and creating unnecessary confusion. I have seen recommendations to not read
faster than you type so that you can process the words properly.
But if you have no trouble doing that, go ahead! Whatever works best for you^^ Usually
you register words way faster than you can type them and so reading just one word ahead
is usually enough, but as you improve and become a faster and faster typist, it can
definitely pay off to have more vision.

That’s also why, if you have the time and if you want to make matters easy for yourself &
reach a high WPM, you may want to skim through the whole text - if it’s available like
on typeracer or keymash - and see where the easier and harder words are, where you might
have difficulties…

Also, for sites like TypeRacer, it’s perfectly reasonable to type out (part of) the text before
the race starts, so your fingers already know how to type it and just need to repeat that
without mistakes. It can even work just mentally, just imagining yourself typing the text
can already help.

This is especially significant when you’re just learning a new layout, as your muscle
memory is barely established yet and typing things out in advance will help you to avoid
thinking “Ok, what is the key for this letter again?”

4.2 Read entire words, not single characters

And as you become fully aware where the letters on the keyboard in your layout are, you
want to upgrade from reading individual letters to reading entire words. So instead of
reading t, y, p, i, n, g, you want to connect the letters with each other and start moving your
fingers in motions. -ty pin g-
This allows you to “look at the bigger picture” and allows for some fluency in your typing
because you are able to connect your keystrokes with each other in a coherent way.

27
(After that, one tip I’ve heard is that you should type in phrases and sentences, not
individual words. But I’ve also heard the opposite advice: Break down sentences into
individual words and focus on them, instead of seeing the whole text and maybe becoming
anxious).

One thing I do with (longer) words that I often mistype, which often contain double
letters or are just absurdly long and difficult -mostly on purpose- is: I mentally divide
them up into individual parts/syllables. Dividing up the word makes it easier to
process it and can allow you to break it down into parts that you have the muscle
memory for.

Some examples are: can-not, bet-ween, dif-ficult, cap-abilities, indi-vidual, illumi-nation,

super-cali-fragilistic-expia-lidocious, methy-lethy-lamy-lopheny-lium ←
You can also do that with suffixes and prefixes (un-,in-,-ism etc.) and words that are
multiple words put together (counter-measure, comfor-table [the words are comfort and
able, but the way I type it is comfor and then table], our-selves, some-times, some-thing).

I think this can help a lot, but make sure you don’t create long pauses between the different
parts that slow you down. Do however pause before tricky letter combinations so you can
nail them.
One other very, very important thing is to:

4.3 Get your spacing right.

I find it rather hard to explain, but you should be aware that the spacebar is not only the
largest key, but also the one you will be pressing more often than any other, and therefore
it’s very important that your thumb is in tune with the other fingers. I’d say it’s the most
important key to master, especially since you always mess up two words if your timin gis
off. To achieve this, I suggest getting yourself used to making sure that you have
completed a word without mistakes, then spacing as soon as you can.

28
4.4 Overall

Overall, you want to find a good typing rhythm and pace where you can comfortably
type and don’t rush, but also don’t slow down or pause too much, and where you
obviously don’t make many typos. You can however also sacrifice some comfort for speed
and try to go at a fast pace without any additional pauses or messing up your accuracy.

There are some typists, I think typically the more consistent ones, who disregard 4.0 and
instead tend to type at a rather uniform and consistent speed/pace at high accuracy, and it
works out for them. My general typing method when I want to see good results is
warming up enough, and then typing as quickly as I can while still maintaining high
accuracy, though there are exceptions that I will address later on in Core Disciplines

__________________________________________________________________

Alternatives (Optimizations)
Congratulations! You’ve conquered the first stages of typing, and now you’re ready for
some more advanced/specific/competitive tricks. You are entering the world of speed
typing.

If you don’t think you’re ready yet though, my advice is to ignore this section as well
as Advanced Tips for now and instead focus on the prior 4 and maybe take a look at

😙
Core Disciplines. This is going to be long and detailed, and - be warned - I’ll be talking a
lot about my own experiences

5.0 Alternative Fingerings for QWERTY

You think you’ve learned the home row system pretty well? Hey, that’s good! You can
now perhaps type two or three times faster than back in your hunt n’ peck days, and you’ll
be typing faster and more efficient than most people that you’ll ever encounter!
29
Anyway, perhaps you have begun to notice that something feels a bit weird about the
home row method… it’s a lot of awkward motions, isn’t it?

Well, good catch! The QWERTY layout may have been quite optimized for the typewriter
back in the days, but that’s like 150 years ago, and now it’s without a doubt an imperfect,
suboptimal, flawed system that is still dominantly in use solely due to tradition and
the majority of people’s unwillingness, or rather ignorance, to change. (Looking at
you, imperial units…)

Let me explain: While the idea of resting your fingers on the home row so that they can
reach all keys easily is fundamentally a sound idea, it doesn’t really work that well on
QWERTY because it’s the only serious big layout to my knowledge where the key
locations are not optimized for home row. Generally, it can be said that the letters seem to
be placed quite arbitrarily, except they are partially loosely based on the alphabet (look at

🙃
the home row: You’ll find ‘fghjkl’ in consecutive order. And also, you can write
‘typewriter’ just using the top row ).

The truth is that I wanted you to first fully internalize the QWERTY layout, and now
you are free to change up your fingering however you want!
I think if you truly know where the keys are located, you’ll be able to upgrade your typing
flexibility without too much trouble. I suppose it’s possible to learn a different method
right from the start, but I think it’s more important to build a foundation first; and just like
you can only paint a house after building it, you should only optimise your typing style
after having developed necessary muscle memory for the layout, otherwise it might be too
confusing.

I consider home row as a solid basis and you can absolutely become a great, even top
typist with strict pure home row like a few people have, but I still believe that having your
own personalised way of typing is better as long as you use enough fingers. That’s what a
lot of guys & girls and I’d say most, if not almost all top typists do.

For example, check out these personal finger maps made by some pretty good - elite
typists, who each demonstrated how they utilize which fingers on which keys: Fingermaps
You can also use Octahedron’s layout to create maps yourself:
https://keymap-creator--octatypes.repl.co/

30
It’s not necessarily easy to tell if those finger maps are personal optimizations or spring
from bad habits, but in any way it showcases a variety of different ways to operate on the
QWERTY layout with a different number of fingers. In any case, if you’re not using home
row in the first place, I think it’s important to become aware which fingers you use for
which keys.

How do I alternate my fingering and deviate from home row?

Well, you want to do your best to eliminate consecutive finger usage and jumping
between columns! If you can alternate your fingering so that you create one smooth
motion instead of an awkward jump like in ‘minimum’ or ‘decided’, that’s awesome. If
you can avoid moving your arms and wrists too much, that’s great too.
You want to maximize your comfort, freedom, and speed.

I have rather small hands - South-East Asian genes, you know - and type on either a
Laptop Lenovo Keyboard or on a Tenkeyless Apple Magic Keyboard that is smaller in
size.

These are my main secret 👀 QWERTY deviations, some of which I only discovered
recently (I’m also starting to develop some Colemak deviations, but they aren’t too
relevant or important):

-5.0.0 I use my index finger to type “c”

This seems to be a pretty mainstream alt-fingering on Qwerty. Typing “c” with your
middle finger can be awkward, especially in words like “conceded”, so using your index
instead is often more practical and comfortable.

-5.0.1 I use the left thumb for Spacebar instead of the right thumb. This has no particular
reason and is a force of habit, and since I don’t think using the right thumb instead is
necessarily better, I never bothered to change this particular fingering. Because of this
circumstance, I also ended up:

-5.0.2 Using the right thumb to press the letters ‘n’ and ‘m’, often ‘b’ and sometimes also
the comma. This dramatically reduces the usage and jumping of my right index finger.

31
You can also do the reverse and use your right thumb for the spacebar and the left thumb
for the letters ‘x’,’c’, ‘v’ and ‘b’.
Lately, I’ve preferred this 10th finger implementation for random word texts where
punctuation marks like commas and periods are not required.

-5.0.3 Using the ring fingers to hit ‘1’,’0’, and ‘Backspace’ and sometimes ‘-’ and ‘=’
too, though I also use the right pinky for these two. My pinkies are too short to
comfortably hit the outer numbers on the number row, that’s why the long ring finger is
much preferable for me. Same thing applies to Backspace. I have also unconsciously
started using my ring finger for Q, this way my left hand doesn’t shift up from the home
row.

By the way, if you have trouble with the numbers coming up in a second, you can try typing

😄
them out in vanilla fashion except you use your thumbs for 5 and 6… you’ll automatically
know which fingers I meant!
Here’s the fingermap I inserted in the beginning of the guide: Jashe's Comprehensive
(Speed)Typing Guide, May-July 2020

-5.0.4 Taking some liberty around the “border” between the left and the right hand:
This means arbitrarily using either the left index or the right thumb to press ‘b’, and
sometimes pressing ’y’ with the left index, especially in one of the most common English
words ‘you’, but NOT ‘your’ or ‘yourself’ where the left index finger needs to return to
‘r’.
‘You’ can also be typed in different ways, like 7|9|7 (the vanilla way that I avoided), 7|9|8
(ugh), and 7|10|8 (moving your hand up to the top row so you have one smooth motion).

-5.0.5 Using my right middle finger to press ‘u’

This has proven to be immensely helpful, especially in the German language. The primary
English example is probably ’just’ 7|8|2|4, instead of 7|7|2|4, and to an extent also ‘guys’
which is 4|8|7|2 instead of 4|7|7|2

In some cases you can use your right middle finger to type ‘y’, like in ‘they’ 4|7|3|8 or
‘why’ 2|7|8 ! Or you can move to the other direction and implement the middle finger for
o, e.g. ‘love’ 9|8|4|3 or ‘follow’ 4|8|9|9|8|2 , or ‘also’ 1|9|2|8, though that can be somewhat
uncomfortable and tight to type.
32
-You can apply the same principle to the left hand and 4.1.6 use the middle finger to
press ‘r’ and ‘t’!

A very nice example is the word ‘forgot’ that is awkward to type because you use your left
index 4 times… unless you have the knowledge! 4|9|3|4|9|3 is the answer!

A lot of this is still quite new to me. I type quite a lot and I think I am pretty open to
changes and new layouts, yet - unlike other people, who seem to adjust their fingering
automatically/unconsciously - it took me a long long time until I figured all this stuff out

🤗
… so, I hope that I can catapult your awareness forward (by maybe a few years even)
doing this

🙂
Consider trying out my deviations, but also have fun exploring your own paths; it’s finally
one aspect of typing where you can be creative and experiment a lot I think that these
alternations can make your QWERTY times way more comfortable and also much faster.

But beware: every deviation can cause you to lose your footing and might cause you to
mess up!
Sometimes I stick with my “inferior” home row method and type a word the conventional
way instead of an improved, optimized way because I don’t want to risk mistyping it.
Generally, typing with 9 fingers is a safer, but less speedy typing style for me (better
accuracy, less raw speed) and I often alternate between the two fingerings depending on
what text I have to type.
You need to be really confident with the layout before you can freely mess around with
different fingerings and acquire new, different muscle memory.

Also, coming up with new fingerings on the spot requires a lot of talent and awareness of
bad fingerings and their potential for correction. In the end though, the fingerings should
come naturally to you and you shouldn’t have to think about how to type any usual word^^

5.1 Alternative Rests for QWERTY

So Sean Wrona, whom I’ve mentioned a few times already, who’s still considered the
all-around best typist, and who also says that I believe my biggest advantage in typing is that I do not
33
necessarily use the same finger to type the same key. I use whichever finger is most comfortable, which can
vary based on the context of the letters in the word, disregards home row completely. Instead, he
positions his fingers on
A S E R N I O ‘ and they keep returning to those keys.

This makes a lot of sense if you consider that etaoins are the most common letters in the
English language and the keys you press most besides the spacebar and some punctuation.

He argues that this is more efficient than the asdf jkl; home row method since your fingers
are often already resting on the keys that you need to type, thus massively decreasing the
travel distance. Also, he argues that your fingers naturally want to release their tension and
stretch out and therefore their “real” home row should be the top row instead of the middle
row.

Keyboard Heatmap | Realtime heatmap visualization of text character distribution

QWERTY heatmap on a sophisticated text.

While I can’t say I agree wholly with the later statement, I do consider his

34
A S E R N I O ‘ method to be superior to the home row method and tried out a “top row
method” more than one year ago out of curiosity, way before I added my right thumb or
was aware of Sean’s methodology. I got used to it instantly and scored roughly the same
WPM as with home row, but didn’t pursue it further at the time.
Since I use my left thumb for spacing and have included my other, I essentially use a
similar A W E T N U I O (P) resting position and it’s worked well for me.

These methods are not without their drawbacks though: The biggest and I’d say quite
obvious disadvantage is that the bottom row, which is the slowest and worst row for
basically everyone, becomes harder to reach, and I’ve noticed that I make more mistakes
than usual when I have to type a c, comma or period.
(which made me use the index finger for ‘c’ sometimes, like in ‘because’, ‘once’, ‘ceded’
or ‘(con-)descend’ . Now and then I’d even use the left ring finger, for example in
‘decided’ I’d tilt my hand to the left and do 3|2|4|8|3|2|3)
Also, by not having your index fingers on the F and J keys, you lose the tactile orientation
that the little bumps used to give you.

Note that these are tips in the first place primarily because of the flaws of QWERTY. I
haven’t felt the need (yet) to change up my fingering on Dvorak or Colemak that much,
though some things like the “ring finger for number row” and the “right thumb usage” still
apply.
I dare assume that typists who main an alt layout also have way more similar finger maps,
since alternative keyboard layouts are usually made for home row while QWERTY is not,
and therefore the demand for deviations isn’t as strong.
While surely my relative inexperience with them is a good reason why I haven’t had many
alternative fingerings yet, I’d strongly argue that it’s also because they’re already relatively
well optimised for the English language.
I believe that had I focused on improving my Home Row Method with say Colemak
instead of investing all the time adding more fingers, finding fingering alterations and
trying to fix my accuracy, I might just have equalled my QWERTY skills or even
surpassed them by now. (More about all that in Keyboard & Layout)

5.2 CAPS LOCK instead of Shift.

35
Speaking of Sean Wrona, there’s something else that he does differently from almost all
the rest: he uses 5.3.1 CAPS Lock instead of Shift.

This means he does CAPS Lock → Character(s) → CAPS Lock instead of Shift +
Character. The reasoning behind it is that he types so fast that Shift becomes unreliable:
It’s very easy to hold down Shift for too long and therefore fail the next letter that wasn’t
supposed to be capitalized.

I can definitely attest to this: While I, like most people, primarily use the left Shift to
capitalize words it’s usually recommended to press Shift with the hand that did NOT press
the last letter you typed, but the left Shift is easier to reach than the right one, I have
messed up hundreds if not thousands of words by leaving one of my pinkies on the Shift
key for too long (or by leaving the key too early, even).
I found it particularly annoying in languages that generally have more capitalized words
than English, like German.

I like how Viper, the best Colemak typist, puts this:

So yes, you do press one more keystroke at the end if you use CAPS Lock, that’s one
drawback. Another is that it’s pretty easy to screw up if you don’t manage to turn off
CAPS Lock again: VERY QUICKLY< WHat you wanted to write is now accidentally in
full CAPS. It’s also quite unfortunate if you accidentally activate CAPS Lock. I had this
happen to me during my 213 WPM run and it really threw me off:
youtu.be/F8oKKD7ZQ6U?t=42
Since then, I’ve disabled the CAPS Lock button using KeyTweak:

36
It’s possible to disable your keys in other ways, too

So yeah, this is a rather minor topic and is only a tiny little controversial in the sense that
it’s not a big topic of debate as the vast majority of people use Shift, and people haven’t
reached a definite conclusion yet which is better and I don’t think we will.

If you mostly type one of those languages where there’s a lot of Capitalized Words, or
just struggle with the Shift key in general, I think this technique is worth a
consideration. It takes some getting used to for sure, but with some practice I’m sure you
will get back to your old typing speed.

5.3 Different ways of deleting characters.

I’d say the most common ways of erasing wrong words is Backspace, Control +
Backspace and Control + A.

Backspace is the most surgical one, but also the slowest one since you need to press the
Backspace each time to get rid of one letter, or just hold it down (which is very imprecise).
37
It makes sense to use this when you are at the end of a super-duper-ultra-ginormous word
and retyping the whole word would take too long.

The least precise, and most “absolute” one is Ctrl + A, where you press the Control key,
hold it and tap A. This selects the whole text and upon pressing any key (most likely the
next letter you have to type) your old mistakes are all erased at once :D

This doesn’t work at all in longer documents. Let’s take this guide: If I were to use Ctrl +
A, I wouldn’t just erase the last word or sentence, no, I would get rid of all the text, more
than 10 000 words in total as of now.
However, it works very well on sites such as TypeRacer, where you can very quickly press
this key combination and retry writing whatever you have to type, not having to reach for
the Backspace key. Often, when you notice your mistake(s), you’ve already typed 7 more
characters and backspacing all of them would be way too slow. A lot of fast typists
therefore primarily or only use Ctrl + A.

The last technique, and I’d say a nice middle ground, is Control + Backspace. This erases
the last word before your cursor, meaning everything you typed after the last spacebar or
symbol ( :;”{}<>@#!$%^&* and so on).
I think this method works universally well and is quite practical in everyday use, as
oftentimes you need to erase more than you can with just one backspace, but can’t quite
select all the text.

It’s probably best to learn to use all three very fluently and apply what is best to each
situation, but it’s possible to just stick with Backspace or Ctrl + Backspace entirely, if you
really want to.
Chak and Izzy, two of the best typists, agree that quick corrections can absolutely
save you many WPM. Already feeling whenever you typo before you see it on the screen
and being able to fix the mistake immediately is a very significant skill.

5.4 Thumbs

Ok, so what thumb should you use to press the spacebar? I’ve mentioned that I use the left
thumb for it, but it’s a matter of habit and there’s no specific reasoning or advantage
behind it.
38
Typing guides typically say that it doesn’t matter (and I tend to agree it doesn’t matter
much, despite how common the spacebar is) or that you should use the right thumb.
This makes sense, considering that most people are right-handed and therefore have a
dominant, stronger, and faster right hand.

Also, since QWERTY English typing is heavier on the left hand than on the right hand, it’s
logical to use the hand that is less busy and thus try to balance out the usage between both
hands.
This is amplified in languages where the left hand is even more occupied: Try out a
1-minute test in Galician and tell me which hand you are more likely to strain: Typing Test
Galician
It is diminished in other layouts like Colemak, as they tend to have relatively balanced
usage between both hands; and on Dvorak, which has a right-hand emphasis, the reverse
might be true.

There’s also some people, even some very fast people, who don’t use any thumbs, but
instead relegate their index finger or some other finger to the spacebar. I strongly
discourage you from doing this and I 100% think that using a thumb is better - in terms
of speed, comfort and efficiency - instead of ignoring it and putting even more
responsibility on your other fingers.

Lastly, there’s also the technique of using both of your thumbs which follows the “Both
Shifts logic”: You alternate them, typically using the thumb of the hand that didn’t type the
last letter.
For example, after “example” you’d use the right thumb to space as the letter “e” is written
with the left middle finger on QWERTY.
I think that this is a good idea, although I’m not sure it’s worth learning.

Here is the result of a small poll conducted in early 2020:

https://www.strawpoll.me/19312101/r

Here’s another poll:

39
__________________________________________________________________

Advanced Tips

6.0 Improve your reading speed

I’d say this is a quite advanced and not too crucial tip, but it definitely serves you well in
everyday life and in typing to have good reading abilities, meaning that you are able to
comprehend what you are reading at high speed (say, 300 WPM in a language that you’re
familiar with).

This also improves your ability to look ahead in a text. You can improve your reading

😉
speed through a variety of ways, but I think you can also naturally improve just by
chatting… that’s one more advantage of Tip 1.3 by the way

I’d actually attribute most of my typing mistakes to my improvable reading speed and
comprehension, often misreading complex words on TypeRacer or simple words on
40
10fastfingers (though admittedly, those words are often similar and typed at ultra high
speeds like 230 WPM).

😆
One word that I misread during my 219 WPM run that ended up being one keystroke off
from being rounded to 220 WPM. A devastating mistake, one could say

I’d say this is a bigger reason for my typos than say, wrongly ingrained muscle memory,
and it’s what has been holding me back from reaching say 230 WPM in 1 minute.

As I mentioned in 4.1: As you improve your reading and typing skills, one thing you can
do is evaluate the difficulty of upcoming words and what the chances are that you are
going to misspell them.

This is very relevant in competitive settings or when attempting to set new highscores, in
general at times when you want to maximize your performance. You can ask yourself:
How much do I want to risk? Do I slow down to make sure I get the word right, or do I
yolo it?

If you yolo it and succeed, your speed will be higher than if you had slowed down to
ensure accuracy, but if you don’t succeed, your speed will most likely be lower because
you need to correct the mistake and lose valuable time and your flow.
(more about the flow below, and more about this under Core Disciplines)

6.1 Try to get into the “zone”

From my understanding, “the zone” essentially means a state of mind where you reach a
nice flow in which you are not consciously typing the words, but just letting your
fingers do the work… at a better accuracy and faster speed than usual!
41
You are actually zoned out and not really concentrating or thinking, and therefore you
don’t even notice how fast you are going. Under other and normal circumstances thinking
about the text and about every single word as well as worrying about making mistakes can
absolutely slow you down.

Also, you effectively remove your nervousness and panic - if you are prone to them -
while typing, both of which are infamous for causing mistakes and massive chokes.

I am obviously no psychologist and fortunately don’t experience much, if any nervousness or panic
myself, but I know that even some of the best and most consistent typists are cursed by choking when
they’re under pressure. I think what might work is lying to yourself and tricking your brain into thinking
that you don’t actually care that much about your performance, and alleviating some expectations you
have towards yourself. Trying to distract yourself, listening to some good music, and having a good
mood/smiling more might also work.

Typing peak performances are often, if not most often, achieved while being in the zone: a

😯
lot of highscores come when you’re relaxed and not even trying. and the reaction is often
an elated “WTF, what did I just do?”

Personally, reaching this highly coveted zone has brought me a lot of Personal Bests. For
example: my 213 WPM run from last year came entirely out of nowhere (as indicated by
my reaction) and was a huge 10+ WPM jump, unfortunately the flow was kind of
interrupted - as I’ve mentioned in 5.2 - when I accidentally pressed Caps Lock at the 43rd
second and started messing up way more after that.

My 221 WPM and my German 209 WPM were also typed in the zone for the most part,
as in the first 40 seconds or so, though they didn’t come out of nowhere as I grinded for
both. This is true for most other milestones that I can recall, like a 175 WPM, a nice jump
from the 160s, in late 2016.

Try thinking about times when you were in the zone and attempt to replicate those
situations, whether it is through - again - distracting yourself, daydreaming, focusing on a
podcast or some awesome music… whatever works for you.

And speaking of top performance: I would argue that you are at your very best when you
are warmed up and relaxed. However, I have also very often achieved highscores on my

42
first try when I wasn’t warmed up yet, but still had all of my physical and mental energy,
and also at times when I had grinded for a while beforehand. (I reached the 221 WPM on
10fastfingers 3 hours into a Twitch stream during which I also played TypeRacer,
typegg.me and chess)

So, do also recall the times at which you achieved a new highscore, and determine what
works best for you: first attempts when you’re still fully focused, just casually typing;
warmed up attempts; long grinds; or something else entirely. For example, full focus and
serious mode might very well work for you.

6.2 Notice your weaknesses and fix them

Let’s end this chapter with pretty important advice: As you improve your typing skills and
live through your typing career and journey, one thing (or several things) you should pay
attention to is where your weaknesses lay. This could qualify as a basic tip, but of course
you need to develop some abilities in the first place before you can go on fixing the
weaknesses.

Now, ‘weaknesses’ is a pretty broad term and applicable at several magnitudes:

6.2.1 Most commonly, you can detect your weaknesses by looking

at mistakes that you commit:

Pay attention to what words you often misspell, various typing websites will tell you. Is it
because of a weird fingering?

Well, we covered that plenty, you can try a different fingering just for that word.
Otherwise, just repeat that word over and over again, perhaps at different tempi (I’d say
increasingly fast), with different variations and different words before and after. Your goal
is to correct your muscle memory so you can avoid typoing the word in the future.

Pay especially attention to bigrams and trigrams and common words, as getting them right
can already cover a LOT of all the words that you’re going to type.

43
Check this out: Most common bigrams and trigrams - Text Practice and use the Normal
Typing Test to get familiar with the most common words in any language.

I’m going to focus on myself a lot now; my intention is that you can sort of get an idea and
example/demonstration of what I mean and hopefully apply it to yourself.

As for myself, I noticed that I very often misspell words that contain a “th” bigram, like
‘the, these, those, that, them’. It’s the most common bigram in the English language, and
so that really hurts my WPM. Since then, I pay particular attention to getting it right
everytime, and slow down if necessary before typing the word.

Also, some “rolls” (more about that under Keyboard & Layout) that involved my right
thumb like -ion and -oin, e.g. in the words ‘union’ or ‘point’, were or are frequent errors
and so I try to avoid typos in those words to the best of my ability too.
Words that I frequently misspell(ed) besides th-words are plentiful, and include ‘make’,
‘come’, ‘you’, ‘have’, ‘of’, ‘like’... now, I can’t slow down physically on every single
word of course, and so I have to still keep a reasonable speed and just be mentally more
aware of potential dangers.

If you’re just starting out and learning a new layout, pay attention to which letters you
pause on most, which ones you need to think about and get wrong. Those are the ones
you have internalized the least yet. On optimized layouts, those might be the keys in the
top and bottom row, as the middle row is by far the most used row.

6.2.2 Also, speaking more in terms of keyboard areas, I noticed

that while I have a strong right hand, my left hand is slower,

and I often mess up on words like ‘way’ or ‘awful’, awkward movements that involve
both the pinky and ring finger at the left side of the keyboard.

Furthermore, while the bottom row is certainly the worst row, I am especially bad and
inaccurate at the letters ‘x’, ‘c’ and ‘v’ and therefore I sometimes use my index finger for
the ‘c’, as I’ve mentioned in Alternative Rests for QWERTY.

44
If you feel like one hand of yours is much superior to the other, you can try to balance it
out by practicing words that only require one hand.
QWERTY left hand practice - Text Practice
QWERTY right hand practice - Text Practice

6.2.3 In the smallest dimension, weaknesses can describe

individual keys on your keyboard and how fast you are at pressing
them.

Sean Wrona did an analysis on my typing - using one of my basic TypeRacer accounts - as
well as his other Gold Patreon subscribers, and calculated my average speed on each
character in milliseconds:

45
What can we learn from this? Well, first my strengths: I’m pretty fast at spacing, as well as
some of the most common letters. That makes sense since I’ve typed them more often than
anything else and you become naturally better at whatever you type.

46
Now my weaknesses: I’m slower on UPPERCASE letters than I’m on lowercase letters,
which is the case with every typist (as an additional Shift or two CAPS lock taps are
required), but I’m also slower on them compared to some of the best typists, relatively
speaking .
Also, I should probably learn to type various symbols faster, particularly the more
common ones like comma, period, hyphen and ‘?’, and definitely need to learn how to

type the “&”.

Although the sample size is small, it still takes me 3x as long to type that key combination
than anything else, which is a strong indicator that I lack the muscle memory for it. And it
makes perfect sense, I have rarely needed to type it, plus it differs between Qwertz (Ctrl +
6) and Qwerty (Ctrl + 7).

If you have an imported typeracer account, you might be able to enter that in here
https://repl.it/@Volhosis/SoulfulCyberTransfer?embed=1&output=1#main.py and it will
calculate your fastest-slowest keys.

Lastly, you can also consider your weaknesses on a big scale:

__________________________________________________________________

Core Disciplines (+ Champions)

There’s different parts of typing that I refer to as Disciplines, and chances are you are
better at some than the others. This is certainly true for us typists in the top 1%, as I will
demonstrate. Some typists are really good at all of them, and in my opinion that qualifies
them to be a potential top typist.

Below, I will list a variety of links/websites that you can access to train each individual
discipline. But you should know this: You don’t necessarily have to regurgitate any
arbitrary text on some website: You can also train your speed with your own set of

47
(easy) words, you can always keep an eye on your accuracy in general, and you can
train your endurance by for example copying off books.
That is actually a typing practice method that has been used by Viper and probably more
people and has many upsides: Your peaked interest, your deeper comprehension and

😎
essentially killing two birds with one stone by being double productive: Learning and/or
enjoying the content of the book and improving at typing; multitasking at its finest

Some typists recommend focusing on each of the elements, at least the first three
disciplines, for a set period of time like a week before switching to another. This means
really trying your best to be as fast, or as accurate, or as tireless as possible while
neglecting the other disciplines.

One popular strategy is to alternate between focusing on accuracy and speed: If you
feel like you’re inaccurate, focus on accuracy. If you feel like you’re accurate and can

😏
comfortably type everything, focus on improving your speed. Rinse and repeat until you
reach a high level, easy as that!

7.0 Accuracy
Do this to improve your typing accuracy!
Typing tips: How to Type More Accurately!

I’ve stressed how important accuracy is, and hopefully don’t need to explain again why
that’s the case. Well, how do you train that? If you practice properly, perhaps you can
manage to smoothly become faster and faster without a drop in accuracy. But the truth is
that almost everyone could work on their accuracy, and absolutely everyone, everyone
makes mistakes.

If you want to be very rigorous with yourself and strive for perfect accuracy through ways
where a high precision is paramount, then there’s a few surefire ways:

https://10fastfingers.com/top1000 is a good way to become familiar with the most

common words in currently 20 languages. You have to complete the Softcore Mode first,
where wrong words are allowed. In Hardcore Mode, you are allowed to typo and are given
the chance to correct it, but if you submit one wrong word, you’re out and have to retake

48
the test. Getting all 7 stars (140 WPM) is very tough and has only been attempted and
completed by a few people, including me.

https://www.keyhero.com/typing-instant-death/ has a system of Instant Death Mode

(IDM), which is even stricter and doesn’t allow you to typo. If you tap one wrong key,
you instantly die. It is available in 25 languages. I was pretty content with the texts and the
way this website worked the few times I used it.

https://play.typeracer.com/?universe=accuracy is the most popular of the three, but it’s

only available in English. This works just like keyhero, you have to type a quote perfectly
until you finish your race. The universe is pretty vacant so you probably won’t encounter
anyone, but you can agree to race against each other or you can use practice mode to
quickly enter races without having to wait out the long cooldown. You need a premium
membership to save your practice scores, though.

https://monkeytype.com/settings allows both the no-wrong-word policy and IDM (and

much much more).

Accurate typists tend to excel at these Instant Death Modes, and are typically quite
consistent. They often are best at longer, more difficult quotes where the fast typists will
tire and make mistakes. While they usually lack raw speed, they have the pleasure of not
having to correct their mistakes,, which is not only good in real life but also in websites
that require perfect accuracy.

In the typing world, THE Accurate Andy would be Aaron Adams, who doesn’t seem to be
active in the community but is nevertheless respected for his, well, evident obsession with
perfectionism.

mako is probably the most accurate among the older typists: mako (mako640) As you can
see, he doesn’t drop below 98% accuracy often, and this is him typing on his non-quit
account at still very fast speeds. However, mako isn’t an active typist anymore.
Instead, now we have StaticNine, an insanely fast typist who is also ludicrously accurate
(normally 97-98%). He is known for being the first person to type for 1+ hour without
ANY mistakes at all, and also for being the first to reach an astonishing 200 WPM over 1
hour on monkeytype.

49
Other top typists who I consider to be very accurate include bailey, Viper, izzy and Sean.
chak and joshu can also be very accurate

delirious is the last typist I will mention: She’s not quite at the top, but she’s very very
accurate and often holds non-quit averages of 160+ on her account:
(delirious) She also has led in points on the daily, weekly, monthly and yearly
competitions in the TypeRacer IDM, ahead of Thomas who is a Dvorak typist.

Taken on 9th July 2020. A high accuracy is of course easier to achieve than high speed (as
in, anyone can have great accuracy if they type very slow), but at least here you can see
good typists who are accurate or attempt to be.
50
7.1 Speed/Burst

Ah yes, Speed. While I have stressed the importance of accuracy, of course speed is still
the primary improvable component, and together they form the Yin and Yang of typing.
You can imagine the equation “Raw WPM x Accuracy in % = Your real WPM” where if
either is 0 the result is 0.
You can type as accurately as you want, if you type 10 Words in a minute you will still get
nowhere. But if you type fast, it can be really fun and rewarding.

It’s often recommended to practice your speed after you’ve attained a good accuracy
and feel very comfortable and precise with the speed you currently type with. As I’ve
mentioned, alternating between focusing on speed and accuracy is a popular strategy,
focusing on each when you have “maximized” the other.

So! Speed can refer to both ‘burst speed’, your absolute max speed over a short period of
time during which you approach the limits of your physical limitations, and your general
typing speed.

Even if you type (much) slower usually, your burst speed shows your potential maximum
speed and what you’re physically capable of doing. It can give you confidence knowing
you’re capable of typing much faster, but you shouldn’t mistake your maximum speed for
your usual speed (e.g. “I can type at 180 WPM!” when you reached 180 WPM in a 10
word test or anything like that).

Burst typists can reach incredible speeds; they’re not cheaters but they are cheetahs: They
tire pretty quickly due to the physical exhaustion (and intense focus) and can’t keep up
their top speed on a quote or rather during a race session for long.

When practicing your burst speeds, I recommend to only do it for a short while, as you
naturally can’t expect to keep up your peak performance. If you do it for longer though,
make sure to take regular breaks and to relax your mind and arms, hands and wrists.

While practicing speed, your goal is just to get your fingers to move faster. It’s the one
instance where you can really neglect accuracy.
51
Here’s what one of the fastest typists ever, shazzy, had to say:

shazzy also recommends practicing the three main disciplines Accuracy, Speed and
Stamina (Endurance) each for a full week. Accuracy and Speed are the most important
though and should be practiced most.

So, for speed, you typically want to choose websites that don’t require perfect accuracy.
typings allows you to choose 10, 25 or 50 words that you can breeze through. Monkey
Type does almost the same and also allows you to set a certain time, same as
https://10fastfingers.com/widgets/typingtest with 30 seconds.

The TypeRacer captcha test works very well because it allows for bad accuracy. But the
traditional way of building burst speed is through ghosting (= buying premium, then
selecting a short and easy quote that you repeat over and over again, saving the scores that
you want to keep), which does require you to type everything correctly.
I am however not that convinced that repeating one specific text over and over again
and only building up muscle memory for that really makes you a faster typist.

However, this method of burst practice is still very popular. If you wish, you can click on
this link: http://typeracerdata.com/texts?sort=relative_average and have a go at some
of the quotes at the top. You need a premium account, which costs 12 dollars every year,
and you can save 5 scores per quote every day ( in June 2020).

52
And a fair warning at this point: The lag can get pretty bad, causing your end WPM to be
much lower than you actually typed. This is increased the worse your internet, the shorter
the quote, and the farther away from the US you live.
One of the primary reasons why I kind of dislike bursting ghost practice, besides the
endless repetition and hoping for a “lucky run”, is that I can easily get a 50 WPM lag at
times where my race ends up at 220 WPM instead of 270 WPM, an incredibly huge
discrepancy.

The most extreme lag Conspyre has suffered, and he lives in the US

__________________________________________________________________

Tip although I’m not a bursting expert: When you are bursting a single quote over and
over again, start slowly and make sure you can type it without pausing and typoing,
because that’s going to be essential. Then gradually speed up until you can’t go faster
anymore. For a personal best, you just need to go as fast as possible without hesitation.
You have to know the quote by heart and be able to type it blind, I can almost guarantee
you that reading will slow you down.

Make sure to practice the parts where you screw up most so you can develop the proper
muscle memory there. Chances are it’s gonna be towards the end of the quote.
It’s very disheartening to have an insane burst till the last word or even last character,
where you screw up because you didn’t practice enough. Same thing applies to any piece
that you play with any instrument.

Also, I’ve noticed that while thinking out each keystroke in my head is too slow, I can
think of the general direction that my hands move to.

53
My highest unlagged score on a quote that I have practiced a little with an adjusted score
of 282.6 WPM. Adjusted score essentially nullifies your reaction time, only counting your
WPM from the moment you actually start typing. The individual sections’ graphs are all
over 200 WPM, which means I was steadily fast throughout the whole quote and now just
need to speed up in general.

For this particular quote which doubles almost every word, I 1. shift my hand to the right
for ‘people’ and type it 9|3|8|9|8|3 which I find faster than trying to type it with my pinky
and right finger 2. for “ideas”, practiced the same-finger jump from ‘d’ to ‘e’ followed by
a quick ‘eas’ roll 3. thought of ‘have’ and ‘no’ as first two movements to the left and then
a movement to the right.
For the more alternating words ‘with’ and ‘and’, it was kind of just luck and prayers at this
high speed^^ “power” is the fastest word on QWERTY, so that tends to boost the WPM.

So yeah, since the text is always the same short quote in typeracer ghost bursting, you can
take your time to get good at that particular quote and develop your own way of typing it
optimally.
__________________________________________________________________

54
If you want to practice the quote without being stopped at every typo, you can also go to
My Practice Texts and insert the quote into there, as you are allowed to finish with wrong
words on 10fastfingers.

You can also try to type the 50 Fastest English words according to Sean Wrona:
50 fastest words on Qwerty - Text Practice
Here are my 50 Fastest Words:
Jashe's 50 Fastest QWERTY words - Text Practice

And lastly you can also just try the normal 1 minute test in 50 different languages; it
doesn’t fit into the bursting category anymore but is still known to be a general speed
catalyst: Typing Test English

Fast typists, meaning really good typists whose primary strength is their raw/burst speed,
are more so the norm than very accurate typists.
They’re the ones who are more likely to be on the leaderboards for top speeds: Those
don’t really take your overall consistency into account, just your peak speeds, which fast
typists of course excel at.

However, while they’re very fast, they’re usually not that accurate and therefore have to
correct a lot, which is annoying, and not that consistent, which can lead to bad scores and
performances.

55
 Screenshot taken 26th of February 2021. The 10FF All Time Leaderboards is probably
the best indicator for fast raw typists (certainly those who use the website), while you’ll
find the fastest burst typists on the “easiest” TypeRacer quotes.

56
Update on 11 September: Now, the monkeytype All-Time English Leaderboards are
perhaps the best demonstration of top bursty typists.

The best strategy on 10FastFingers, certainly at this level, tends to be to just go full speed
in order to reach the highest WPM possible, and hope for the best. Typos aren’t punished

57
(you don’t get minus points or anything and you are never stopped), and usually correcting
your mistakes results in too much raw speed loss to be worth it.

Also, many typists including me have just reached such a high speed that it wouldn’t be
worth it to go slow and try to be accurate, which is why we just type at our very fastest and
try to get less than 20 wrong words, which is the cap for when scores are still saved to the
site.

This is the reality, and it’s also why I so insist that you practice accuracy. If I had
practiced more on being accurate myself, then I may be slightly slower, but that would be
compensated by the less amount of wrong words.
And I would do a lot better on sites where accuracy matters, like TypeRacer, as well as in
day-to-day chatting and browsing and such.
So, practice accuracy over speed, but don’t completely neglect either one!

A 200 WPM flood on 9th July 2020. Lag screwed over poem, a French typist, and I lost
around 15 WPM myself. It’s safe to say most others also experienced some WPM loss.
58
Take that into account and you get a general idea of some good bursters on typeracer,
though this is just a snapshot and typists have bad and good days

11th September

The perhaps burstiest burst test is the Monkeytype 10 Word test. Here you can see
everyone who managed to exceed 300 WPM, so around 50 keystrokes in around 2 seconds.

While some people tend to be either on the speedy or on the accurate side, the typist who,
also according to himself, seems to have found the perfect middle ground is… huge
surprise, Sean, who is neither the fastest nor the most flawless typist, but is good enough
in both aspects - being able to type almost uninterrupted at an extremely high, although not
ultra high speed - that he is still considered one of the best all-around typists for the time
being.

7.2 Endurance

59
Endurance is of course also a part of typing. If you need to type (quickly) for an extended
period of time, the dangers are that your fingers can tire fast and your mind can wander
off, resulting in a loss of focus and concentration.

If you do typing professionally or just work around the PC a lot, chances are you’re gonna
be typing for hours a day, although that may not be concentrated uninterrupted typing. If
you want to train your fingers to type at a high level for some longer time, I think just
doing lengthy, somewhat intense practice sessions can already work quite well.

A common way of training endurance with rather easy words is the 10FF 10 minute test,

😉
though you can shorten the duration in the settings,, and upon completion you are free to
contact Foggy: 10 minute test leaderboard spreadsheet - 10fastfingers.com
(Foggy hasn’t been active in the community for years now, so maybe don’t).
You can also look for very long texts in Practice Mode.
Intersteno also offers a 1 minute and a 10 minute test of sophisticated texts in various
languages: Training with Taki version

On https://monkey-type.com/ you can even set a custom time. Currently, people are
doing 1 hour tests and getting a discord role for completing one.

It’s up to you to set the pace: Preferably, you want to find a nice speed where your hands
are relaxed and can keep up nicely, but you could also do the opposite and go for a very
high speed to see how long you can keep it up.

Of course, Endurance is not part of the Yin and Yang, but it shouldn’t be ignored. The better your
endurance, the longer you can keep up your performance. I don’t think there’s a really good way to
measure endurance, so I’ll take Foggy’s 10FF 10 minute test leaderboards:

60
And then we can compare the results against the 1 Minute highscores, though it’s hard to find out what
someone’s Normal Personal Best was at any given time. In any case, it seems like most people drop about
25-30 WPM from their highest WPM.

I can happily say that I don’t really get tired from 10 minute runs and could very easily keep typing,
perhaps thanks to my occasional long typing sessions and my piano prowess, and it shows in the results: I
only dropped about 20 WPM from my highest 1 Minute scores back then, and came in overall 2nd.

Sean is Top 3 on the 10 minute test as of now. He’s known for typing around 170 WPM over 50 minutes
on a regular English text, which probably only few other people could match.

In case 10 minutes wasn’t enough for you, there’s also the 1 Hour Monkeytype Test

Top 10 as of 12th September 2022. Shoutout to mac for maintaining this leaderboard

61
The top 3 are me, an incredibly skilled and accurate typist named StaticNine whom I
mentioned in 7.0 Accuracy, and Joshu.

I guess the hardcore version of endurance would be tests or sessions that last several hours
and more. I’ve heard stories of Nitrotype or Typeracer Sessions that lasted more than 100
hours. I myself have typed on Colemak for a record 40 hours straight with 2 hours of afk
time, maintaining over 100 WPM in the first 24 hours. You can watch that endeavor here
Typing For 40 Hours - My Journey

7.3 Complexity

Another part of typing is the ability to not only rely on your muscle memory, but to type
complicated and more difficult words (and also symbols and numbers) that you’re not
very familiar with, by having fast fingers and knowing your layout really well.

Typing Test English Advanced is one way to train that, typera.net/ 1 Minute Word is
another, randomracer.com/typing.html and typinghq.com/ also exist.
Monkeytype.com has a setting in which the language setting is set to English 10k, and you
even have the option of setting it to English 450k!

Getting in some more advanced words practice can be weirdly fun and useful as you learn
to (WO)MAN UP AND TYPE REAL WORDS

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Typing more complex words makes sense, as in the “real world” you are never going to be
typing random words that make no sense. No, in a normal text you will be typing all kinds
of different words of varying difficulty with punctuation, symbols! and numb3rs.

And of course, one guy, whose name you will not have heard for the last time, comes to
mind when it comes to complexity: SEAN WRONA.

If you’ve ever been on TypeRacer and finished a hard quote, chances are that he was at the
top with a margin of like 30 WPM to second place. I am not bad at hard words myself,
especially for a 10FF main, but this guy, he is something else. He doesn’t care that the
quote is supposed to be hard, he still types 200 WPM on it (on most quotes, anyway, on
numbers, and on the 10FF Advanced Test).

But chak is also amazing on hard quotes and well, actually at any quote, so I think he
deserves a shout out too. Below, I have compiled a few impressive (ghosted) races:
https://data.typeracer.com/pit/result?id=|tr:arenasnow|1689
https://data.typeracer.com/pit/result?id=|tr:arenasnow|516
https://data.typeracer.com/pit/result?id=|tr:arenasnow|507
https://data.typeracer.com/pit/result?id=|tr:chakk|4745
https://data.typeracer.com/pit/result?id=|tr:chakk|4594
https://data.typeracer.com/pit/result?id=|tr:chakk|4590
The last one isn’t as difficult as the other ones, but it being typed at 240 WPM made it a
worthy inclusion

By the way, here’s one pretty important tip:

Doing non-quit is a common strategy that can

improve your accuracy, endurance and complexity
comprehension.

It means you finish whatever run or race you start. Your average WPM will almost
certainly drop, but that’s not the point: If you want to improve, it’s very important to not
hold on to some artificial peak number you reached. If you let it go and focus on
improving, you will reach that number very soon again anyway.

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Non-quitting applies particularly to typeracer and is a well established term there, but can
also be said about all other typing websites.

By not reloading any tests or races that you start, you don’t give yourself too much time to
breathe - though regular breaks are always recommended - and by not allowing yourself to
cop out every time you screw up, you force yourself to learn the muscle memory for all
kinds of different words and symbols and for a variety of quotes, therefore allowing
yourself to get familiar with more complex words and get accurate on everything you
come across.

7.4 Multilingualism

So far I’ve focused a lot on English typing and mostly only mentioned that typing other
languages is possible. And yes, English is overwhelmingly dominating on most typing
websites and Discord typing servers.

However, there’s nothing sexier than a man (or a woman) who takes care of multiple
languages by themself. It shows that they didn’t just learn the muscle memory for the
most common words of one language, but that they have truly internalized their layout so
much that they can type unknown exotic words on it, or even use variations of it to fit to
other languages.

While multilingualism is often “neglected” and is not as significant as your top speed and
accuracy, I personally have huge respect towards people who can type multiple languages
quickly and I like to use this factor to differentiate between good and great, fantastic and
absolutely mindblowing typists.

There’s nothing wrong with sticking to just one language and you can become an awesome
typist (in that one language), but being able to produce words quickly in many more

languages is very laudable to me.

Multilingual typists often have a primary language - usually their native language - that
they type the fastest, and then the second fastest are typically the linguistically related

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languages. They tend to come from non-English speaking countries and (almost) always
have polyglottic or at least bilingual tendencies.

Here’s the 10FF Multilingual Leaderboard that people who desire so can enter:

I’m a pretty fast multilingualist myself and very proud of it.

Andrea has a slightly lower average WPM than me but types 8 (!) languages more; these
are totally “exotic” languages with a whole different alphabet and typing system. Since he
understandably scores rather low WPMs on those languages like Russian, he is actually
much much faster than me.

Linsk is comparatively slow, but he types every single available language which is just
incredible and pure dedication.

The sensation here is Glevion though, who scores a whopping 158,7 WPM across 37
languages, leaving everyone else far behind. Glevion might just be the best multilingual
typist of this decade, although I wouldn’t bet on it…

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Sean (who's proven his awesome multilingual skills on Intersteno multiple times),
Kukkain and Schollie are or were language beasts as well, and shazzy's Typing Profile is
amazing too and becoming more and more amazing.

A lot of these typists are active on multilingual Discord servers too.

Here is a link to Mecanografía, a cool and pretty lively (as of July 2020) multilingual
typing discord server with a focus on Spanish.
If you don’t main English and are looking for a typeracer replacement or other good
typing websites, you can ask around on that server.

Which Discipline(s) do you enjoy the most?:

http://www.strawpoll.me/20437626

__________________________________________________________________

Websites & Servers

Typing Website Official TIER LIST! by Speedtyping

You can modify the appearance of MANY websites as well as add extra shiny features
through extensions such as Tampermonkey • Chrome, Userstyles.org: Website Themes &
Skins by Stylish, Dark Mode, and more!

So as I’ve said, it’s possible to become a decent typist outside of typing websites by just
everyday keyboard usage like chatting and gaming, and especially through dedicated
practice, and it’s possible to use sources such as books and podcasts.

But one day, you might just want to see what your WPM is and therefore you hop onto a
typing website, only to be captured by its magnificent features. You take a look at the
leaderboards and are blown away by the insane, superhuman scores that have been set on
there. “No way! They type 3 times as fast as me!”

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Intrigued, you decide to join the community. You are welcomed instantly, rapidly increase
your typing speed to 200 WPM, and find the woman of your dreams and you live happily
ever after.

So who am I to deny you this paradise? I will do my best to talk about the pros and cons
of the following typing websites - that are all free to access - from MY OWN
experience.

8.0 10FastFingers
Discord Server
Merch
10FastFingers is the main site I’ve used throughout my typing “career”. And in those
maybe 6 years… not too much has happened. Christian Strang, the site owner, seems to
have largely abandoned the site. The ads are often annoying, intrusive, inappropriate and
the site is not that customizable, though both can be fixed through extensions. The
leaderboards take a while to update, the word lists are apparently not often exactly 200
and 1000 words (as they’re supposed to be). It lacks replays, a friend system, levels,
statistics etc. etc. and it’s not very interesting to race on for many due to the nonsensical
and repetitive text, nor is it entertaining to watch; especially when the typist just starts over
and over again. 10FF is also criticized for being too easy and not being relevant to real
typing at all. A number of fast and known typists openly bash on the page in their 10FF
profiles, pointing out what I just said and also criticizing the moderation team and/or
Christian.

The discord server isn't that active despite the massive amount of members, and when it is,
it's often spam and low value. That’s certainly how it has been in the Summer of 2020.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way: 10FastFingers is still a very good site for
improving your raw speed and learning the most common words in 50 (!) supported
languages, some of which are actually not way less popular than English. And since those
words easily make up the majority of all words that you type on a daily basis, learning

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them already helps you immensely and allows a basic grasp of any language. This
principle also absolutely applies to language learning.

It has some very nice features like customizable tests, private texts that you can fill with
whatever text you like, pretty cool achievements and additional badges for supporters and
translators. It is upheld very actively and rigidly by Linsk and Vishy and other people (in
the past), who update dozens of leaderboards every day, remove blatant cheaters and
scrutinize suspicious users.

In this server of around 24 258 members as of October 2021, it has by far the most
members out of the linked servers, and I am generally happy with the mostly mature
discord chat and moderator team (although there’s definitely people who dislike the team)
and although there’s a fair share of… well, children who contribute a lot of immaturity, the
experience I’ve had on 10FF has been quite nice, wholesome, funny and interesting for the
most part and I’ve made some great friends and experiences on there. I love the channels
and the leaderboards + the member list (says the 220 WPM typist, what a shocker) and a LOT of
people/friends in there.
Oh, and of course I LOVE the roles

If you wish to have your WPM displayed while you type, you can copy the content of
this pastebin: https://pastebin.com/CdYQsz03 (thanks, Shazzy!), press Ctrl + Shift +
I on the website, and paste it into Console

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8.1 TypeRacer
Discord Server
Merch

TypeRacer… this US-centric website (think Reddit) doesn’t prohibit top typists from
occupying a spot with a second account (June 2020). That is very easy due to the ghosting
feature that premium users have access to, allowing them to repeat a quote until they have
“mastered” it. The premium users also have the option of saving races in practice solo
races, which regular users cannot. Right now and since forever, you can quit races without
receiving any penalty, this isn’t good for typing improvement and gives a wrong idea of a
given typist’s skill thus making comparisons very difficult as some scores will be inflated
due to quitting. Some if not most of the best typists quit races regularly, including me.

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The lag can be quite bad at times, deducting tens of WPMs from your score at worst,
especially if you live far from the US, have bad internet and raced on a short quote. Its
other universes are barely used.

The Discord is also largely centered around the US, which you will notice if you step into
the chatroom for some time, and there has been a not insignificant amount of (somewhat)
toxic, yet oftentimes unbanned people who often openly express their hate for certain
people. That is certainly how I have experienced it. Feel free to disagree.

Still, TypeRacer is probably still the best choice when it comes to typing websites and
for becoming a good, well-rounded typist. It has many functions, ranks, a friend system,
messages, and a permanent competition system that awards both speed, accuracy and
activity. It was also the first multiplayer typing game of its kind and was popularized by
famous streamers, particularly Reckful (Rest In Peace).

The Instant Death Mode Universe works and is great accuracy practice, but so is the main
universe in general as you aren’t allowed to enter any wrong words. The Premium feature
only costs 12$ a year, a negligible sum. The site hosts thousands of diverse quotes which
can range from depressing over to neutral across philosophical over funny to epic, and add
a comedic or educational value while you type. The leaderboards are updated instantly and
once every minute by default, and is quite lively as it only retains the scores for an hour. It
allows for some wholesome community action like this:

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Although what I said about the toxicity is true, of course there are still mostly decent,
friendly and encouraging people in chat, which probably has the oldest age group out of all
servers. I think it can get out of hand at times, but the atmosphere is still mostly chill and
comradely and the chats can be a lot of fun and entertainment. The chat is also almost
never asleep, it's very active.

Also, as of late February 2021, some great additions have been made to the site: It
received a completely new modern look that also promotes other universes, and dark
mode.

If you’re on Google Chrome, use Ctrl + A to correct your mistakes and frequently
accidentally open up the “Save As” window that is the dreaded Ctrl + S combination, you
can disable it through this extension:
Poem also created a bunch of scripts: Typeracer: Adjusted speed calculator Typeracer:
Exact last 10 average Typeracer: Awards Organizer

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8.2 Nitro Type
Discord Server (I’m not active in the community but it’s apparently widely
considered to be very immature, even self-admittedly so, so be warned)
Merch

There are three big main issues I have with Nitro Type:

The first one is that I very strongly feel that its goal is to essentially keep the kids (the
target audience they pander to) playing the game: You get virtual cash and experience for
each race, and a gold, silver or bronze medal if you place in the top 3.
Also, there is a number of achievements targeted towards completing a streak of races or
doing a marathon (Keyboard Cat = Race 400 Times in a Single Session), and there’s a
plethora of cars to collect.

Accuracy is my second and third problem.

On Nitro Type, you don’t actually need to correct your mistakes: if I had to write the
word : “vroomer”, I could type “vrwaoieuhgaiuehgknwaelioomer” and the word would
still be accepted because at the end of the day, all the game demands is that you input the
letters of the word no matter how.

I highly disagree with this system and don’t think it produces good, responsible, let alone
accurate typists; and it has very little to do with any other form of typing as they all do
NOT ignore additional keystrokes that you input. It does however appeal to children and
teens stronger this way as it allows for some reckless typing.

And thirdly, if you can’t be bothered to type “vroomer”, there’s the option of simply
pressing ‘Enter’. What this does is it activates a Nitro that instantly skips the word
ahead of you. While this does not give you additional WPM, it allows you to freely skip
any word you don’t want to type (thus losing your chance to learn the muscle memory)
and well, it basically encourages laziness.

72
For I’d say mainly these reasons, Nitrotype isn’t respected as much as typeracer and isn’t
really used as a benchmark for skill at least in the typing world that I’ve witnessed. You
can be a great nitro typist but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a great typist, I would
say.

And last but not least, I very rarely find opponents on Nitrotype and almost always only
encounter bots, something I don’t experience on typeracer or 10FF multiplayer. As you
can imagine, this isn’t really fun. However, that issue should be fixable by racing people
on a private track, and shouldn’t really trouble the vast majority of typists who do usually
find equally skilled typists on the track.

You can only activate one nitro per race, and one could perhaps argue that it allows for
some “strategic outwitting” of the opponents.
Also, Rraptor - a better typist than me - had this to say about Nitro Type improvement:

chak - nowadays generally considered the best typist - also agrees that Nitro Type is best
for improving your speed, though he warns not to get used to the non-correction system.

If you view my first argument from a different perspective, you could say that it’s strongly
motivating by rewarding you for every race you complete. This is the position taken in the
video: Why you should play Nitro Type.

Furthermore, through the money system, which I do fundamentally like, there’s often
generous donations, cool giveaways and events with cash prizes with which you can paint
your cars or buy new ones. The cars are really slick and well designed in my opinion. I
also like the sense of community: the community is active and engaged, you can invite
people to private racetracks (like in TypeRacer), but you can join official teams with their

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 😎
own unique stats, roster, and a message of the day. There’s community events like chess
tournaments.

It also actually has pretty active YouTubers with a high amount of subscribers, something I
haven’t yet seen with any other typing website really. Here are three typing channels that
primarily revolve around Nitro Type:
Penguin Typer Titanium Tendons Speed Typing

8.3 Conclusion + Comparisons

If I had to rank these three websites, who by the way are the most popular typing websites
as of now, it’d be TypeRacer > 10FF > Nitro Type.
I'd also judge someone's typing skill based on this ranking and based on how well they
perform in each discipline.

It is commonly recommended to focus your practice on TypeRacer and 10FF, and

these two are often sufficient, although I encourage you to at least try out everything you
come across and see how you like it.

However, all three can serve different purposes - typeracer for accuracy, nitro type for
speed and 10ff for endurance for example - and most elite typists have spent at least a little
time on all three. They also generally don’t stick with just one website, but are more or
less somewhat active in both 10FF and TypeRacer, or all three sites.

Note that cheating is common and apparently easy on all three websites, cheaters are
reported all the time and subsequently banned. There's been DDoS attacks on 10FF and
especially typeracer.

Also, the most real - as well as most respected and undisputed - representation of your
typing speed is probably typeracer non-quit, as 10FF usually produces inflated scores due
to the easy words and lack of punctuation, capitalization, numbers and symbols (+
non-quit is not really a thing on 10FF), and I would certainly not list 221 WPM as my
usual speed. My personal best on easy words over one minute with no need to correct, yes,
but my “real world” typing speed would more be around maybe 140 WPM or even 120
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WPM, and for this guide - where I need to constantly think about what to write - it’s much
much lower.

Nitro Type tends to have easy quotes as well and produce high WPM scores (partially)
due to the luxury of not having to correct your mistakes; if you get used to Nitro Type,
your average WPM is usually going to be much higher than on Typeracer.

Taken 27th July 2020: This is from the Typeracer Profile of a fast and active Nitrotypist
(150 WPM average)

You get good at whatever you practice. This means that you’re naturally also going to
excel at whatever site you focus on. As Typeracer is the hardest site, typeracers usually do
pretty well on Nitrotype and do ok on 10FF, the best typeracers who haven’t practiced on
10FF usually score 190-200 WPM there. Some dislike the random easy string of words
and dismiss the site.

The few people or at least notable typists who primarily do 10FastFingers need to get used
to “real” texts first and usually have way lower WPMs on typeracer. I’d say that if you
learn a new layout and practice only 10FF Normal English until you hit 200 WPM once,
your typeracer nonquit average may not even be as high as 120.

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Nitro Typists seem to do fairly well on 10FF and can really show off their raw speed on
that site. I’d strongly assume that those with good accuracy don’t have to worry about
typeracer, but if they don’t have that, it’s gonna look as brutal as in the picture above.

It has been found that your 10FF Advanced Mode average often corresponds to your

😄
Typeracer (non-quit) average, see for yourself how both compare and if that equation
holds true

8.4 BONUS CHAPTER: Monkeytype

Discord
Merch
Unboxing ~450€ worth of Monkeytype Merch (except not quite T_T)

Since the creation of this guide in June 2020, a new website has emerged that has taken the
typing world by storm and gradually established itself as one of the best typing websites
ever: formerly monkey-type, now monkeytype.

Monkeytype is, to put it simply, amazing, and I think one of the best things to ever happen
to the typing world. It was created by miodec, a young cool Brit, and has been constantly
updated and improved since its launch, remaining ad-free to this day. It has exceeded 25
000 members and is continuing to grow.
At its core, the concept is similar to 10FF in that you try to finish tests with as high of a
WPM as you can. However, its customizability is what really makes it amazing: You can
virtually do anything you want on this site! Anything reasonable you can think of, chances
are it’s already been implemented. I particularly like the funboxes and the multitude of
different themes.
It’s easier if you go on the site and see for yourself instead of me trying to explain
everything here.

The biggest flaw of monkeytype in my opinion as of now is that the Leaderboards only
show the top scores in the regular English language. Although it’d take up resources, I
think having leaderboards for at least the most common languages is essential, or it risks
suffering the same anglocentric focus of typeracer. Also, as of October 2021, the daily
leaderboards have been removed, which is a big bummer that will hopefully be fixed soon.
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I also love the discord server and its community, and I can proudly call it my new discord
home. The community is awesome and very active (often too active, i.e. spammy), and the
mods are all cool #coreybestmod and do a good job although they can be slow when it
comes to things like updating the #challenge-list.

Perhaps unsurprising if you’ve seen my role count, but I also particularly love the dozens
of challenges that have been created over the last months.

I think monkeytype is here to stay and it has potential to trump both 10fastfingers and
typeracer in popularity/usage as it keeps improving and as multiplayer (known as tribes) is
implemented.

8.5 Other

Of course there are far more than just these four websites. I’ve already included some at
the beginning of The Basics, and I do believe they should be used as sort of crutches to
help you start off your typing journey.

While typera is pretty old, the other three websites listed here are rather new, and
pretty good, especially Keymash.

TyperA Keyma.sh by Cameron + Discord

TypeTest + Discord TypeGG.me by eiko + Discord
Keymash also holds competitions quite regularly.

Games: ZType – Typing Game - Type to Shoot Type N Conquer

TYPEGUN
Epistory - Typing Chronicles Save 65% on Epistory - Typing
Chronicles on Steam
and Nanotale - Typing Chronicles ; Typing of the Dead

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I find ZType a lot of fun, although quite basic.
Type’N Conquer is full of bots who type very slowly, but has a unique concept of
conquering land and eliminating your enemies.
I have played Epistory for at least 24 hours + some of the sequel Nanotale. Overall, in
Epistory the graphics and arena mode are my favorite, the gameplay and the different
environments are great in my opinion, while I find the story and music decent. There were
some bugs last time I played (and I’m not talking about the ones you have to kill) and I’m
not sure yet how an average typist is supposed to beat the game.

For more basic websites, check out the chapter Touch Type.
and Typeracerdata Community also lists some more websites.
But how do you rank them? Please answer below:
http://www.strawpoll.me/20437644

__________________________________________________________________

Keyboard & Layout

Difference between a mechanical and membrane keyboard explained here

9.0 Keyboards

Before we jump into the “drama” that is the layouts, let’s first talk about keyboards. But
before we do that, you should know that I’m not here to argue about whether you should

😄
buy a mechanical keyboard or not. That’s up to you, and there’s enough discussion out
there that deals with this topic

However, if you can’t decide between different switches, you can buy a switch tester. The
most popular switches seem to be the blue, brown and red ones, I recommend trying out
all of them for some time and see how much you like them for typing and gaming.

78
In order to avoid spending hundreds of bucks on keyboards that you don’t end up using,
the best solution may be to go to an electronics store, try out different keyboards there and
pick up the one you like most.
You can probably get it for less money somewhere else, but purchasing your favorite
model is also a way to say “thanks for letting me try out these keyboards” and support
local markets.

So, FAQ:

9.0.1 What keyboard should I use for typing?

Answer: Whatever you are comfortable with. It’s a matter of what you’re used
to and what you prefer to use for typing.

There is no single keyboard model that is proven to be superior to all others. World records
have been set on all kinds of keyboards: cheap ones, expensive ones, mechanical,
membrane, chromebooks and macbooks, Razer and Corsair; and I disagree with the
common conception that mechanical keyboards are faster.
The common reply on my and other fast typists’ videos “and he does it on a laptop
keyboard :o” makes me chuckle a little.

So yeah, while using a mechanical keyboard with any switches (red, brown, blue…) is
perfectly fine, I currently personally prefer using a very flat keyboard without a
numberpad, namely the Apple Magic Keyboard.
(At least for typing. My current favorite overall keyboard is the Corsair K65 RGB
Rapidfire Cherry MX Speed 10KL).

Although it did take a piece out of my heart to buy, for the first time, an Apple product that
was of course super overpriced; the full keyboard clocking in at 120€+, I have to admit
that I do like the keyboard for typing. And so do actually a lot of elite typists, especially
burst typists. The Apple Magic Keyboard is pretty much the favorite keyboard at the
top, although naturally most people use a different keyboard still.

If you look at the Notable Great Typist section, you will see which ones the best typists
use. Typing isn't like other disciplines though: You don't choose a brand or even get
sponsored by them, say Nike or Steinway & Sons (<3) or Razer, often even the best typists

79
don't consciously pick a favorite keyboard for themselves for reasons like lack of care,
money or accessibility/practicability. In any case, it's not obvious whether mechanical or
membrane/chiclet keyboards are more common/popular among good typists.

The upside is that typing on the Apple Magic keyboard is really smooth and easy and allows for
some insane bursting. It registrates the keys instantly and every typo that appears on the screen
can be led back to me. Consecutive key presses are amazing on this keyboard and granted me an
advantage over my old laptop keyboard: I can now type “I’ll”, “you’ll”, in general double letters
quicker.

(What made me main this keyboard for now is the fact that my new laptop keyboard doesn’t
respond correctly and often registrates words wrong, the most prominent instance being the
common word “enough” entered as “enoguh” even if I typed “enough” at a fairly slow tempo).

The big downside I experienced, besides the weird Applelitist command and option keys, is the
location of the ‘Control’ key which was shifted to the right. This is crucial because I very often
hit Ctrl + A in TypeRacer to correct my mistakes, and this key combination requires a new
motion that needs/needed some getting used to.

I’ve typed on a number of mechanical keyboards: A SteelSeries 6Gv2 with Black Switches, a
Cherry MX-Board 3.0 with Brown Switches, a Logitech G710 with Blue Switches, and a Das
Keyboard Model S Ultimate with Blue Switches.

All of them bar the SteelSeries were totally fine keyboards and I do still use the Das Keyboard at
times when I can afford to be a little noisy - its blank keys can take away the temptation to
look if you are just learning touch typing by the way! - but I just don’t really like them for

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typing as of now, it feels weird, I get tired easily and the actuation point - the point at which the
key is registered - seems to be worse than with the Apple Magic.

Apple Magic Keyboard vs Das Keyboard Model S Ultimate. Taken on 23rd July 2020 by
me. The actuation point on the latter keyboard seems to be around halfway, but still you
can easily see how it would require more energy and time to press the mechanical keys.

Nevertheless as I’ve said, there is nothing wrong with being an enthusiast for Mechanical
Keyboards and if you love typing on them, good for you!
There is also nothing wrong with prioritising comfort, typing feeling and aesthetics over
actual typing speed, though in that case this guide, which largely addresses speedtyping,
might be nothing for you.
You will surely be familiar with the subreddit r/MechanicalKeyboards for all the Click and
None of the Clack!

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So in conclusion, while there is no keyboard or keyboard type that is definitely the best, I
strongly recommend finding one that you’re happy with and that you can type quickly,
accurately and comfortably with. The Apple Magic Keyboard is recommended.

😉
Do also take into consideration the size: If you have small hands you may want a smaller
keyboard, and if you have big hands then not so small keyboards
Some people order a fancy new keyboard - perhaps one that their favorite typist uses - in
the hopes that it will significantly improve their typing, but that’s just a pipe dream
unfortunately.

If you have enough money to spare and you’re looking for different types of keyboards
that are supposed to be more ergonomic than traditional keyboards, you can check out
different ergonomic keyboards like
ErgoDox EZ: An Incredible Mechanical Ergonomic Keyboard
Advantage2 Wired Ergonomic Keyboard for Mac & PC | Kinesis Keyboards keyboards
for serious typists
They are arguably more important for ergonomics than the layout, so if you are
having say comfort issues, maybe buying an ergonomic keyboard will solve those
problems rather than learning a completely new keyboard layout!
(I don’t have any experience with any of them and they’re easily forgotten because I’ve almost never heard
conversations about them; in any way I can’t give you my opinion on them)

Remember that at the end of the day you are the one doing the typing, and chances are a
new keyboard will NOT suddenly fix someone’s bad habits and bad accuracy.

9.1 QWERTY + Discussion

This is about the US layout. There are variations of QWERTY like Qwertz or Azerty, which are not too
relevant in this discussion. I also ignore layouts for other languages like Mandarin Chinese or Hindi
which might have more users than QWERTY.

Furthermore, I mostly ignore layouts such as Workman, MTGAP, and other layouts that don’t belong to
the Big Three due to lack of relevance and, mostly, my lack of experience on them. I do link to pages
though where more qualified people cover those layouts.

Now, let’s address the elephant in the room: QWERTY, the standard and most common
keyboard layout.

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There have been numerous discussions about QWERTY, the different alternative layouts
and which one is the best, discussions that were full of varying opinions, statistics and
personal anecdotes, and it’s safe to say there has not been a unanimous, definite answer
so far.

By the way, keep in mind that all optimized layouts are designed for touch typists, who use
a PC, and 10 fingers. Some of the developers of alternative layouts actually discourage
you from using their layout on mobile; and since you either swipe or typically use your 2
thumbs, whatever advantage their layouts may have don’t play a role here.
If you are going to learn a new keyboard layout, you should do it properly and use your
fingers as intended without peeking at the keyboard.

I’m also not here to set new axioms, but since I may just be one of the most qualified

😘
person on this planet (or rather, the only one stupid enough to waste their time like this,
you guys are welcome ) to answer this question - at least in terms of diversity of
experience in English and not necessarily knowledge - I will gladly share my perspective.
It is rather conclusive, but - I think - still reasonable and fair.

So, during those discussions that have taken place, there are most often QWERTY typists
that will defend their layout fiercely, attacking the alternatives with insults they can come
up with, even though most of the time they have no experience with them. When I asked
them for some rational arguments, here are the main points I received as a reply.

9.1.1 QWERTY is not a bad layout and there’s no need for any
improvements.

QWERTY is definitely not the WORST layout, the supposedly worst layout almost
doubles the typing effort over it: Carpalx - keyboard layout optimizer

But there’s no denying that it isn’t really optimized for anything bar perhaps typewriters
that are out of use today; at least by optimization standards of the late 1800s. The modern
keyboard layouts are all designed with a modern keyboard in mind, QWERTY was
designed for the typewriter by Christopher Sholes in the 1870s.
Considering the heavy use of the left hand (56% supposedly), weird placement of various
symbol like “()” “-” and just about anything that is responsible for the first two
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Alternatives subchapters, it’s safe to say that many improvements can be made over
QWERTY.

These statistics are terrible by any standard; Compare keyboard layouts

I do not however know which text(s) were used for measurement

The only strong argument I can think of in this regard that would be pro-Qwerty is Sean’s
line of thinking, which states that the top row is actually the preferred row for your fingers
and should be used instead of the middle row.

I have uttered that I disagree with that notion, but if he turns out to be “right” then
QWERTY would actually be superior to the other layouts which all utilize the middle row
with the bumps on the (QWERTY) F and J as the home row, for ease of access to all
alphanumeric characters.

Even then, QWERTY has a strong left hand bias and people would have to come up with
an optimized layout that has a top row methodology in mind.

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9.1.2 Other layouts are not proven to be any better or to make you
faster and nobody uses them anyway

It’s true that in nearly a century of Dvorak and some years of Colemak and newer different
keyboard layouts, there have yet to emerge a high number of proficient typists who can,
through their typing abilities and their rate of progress, convince the overall typist user
base of the superiority of any keyboard layout.

It would make sense that since a lot of awkward hand motions, finger travel distance and
consecutive finger usages are removed, you should be able to type more swiftly with the
“improved” layouts, but the little empirical data that we have doesn’t indicate that.

Still, I personally would bet that if you start from zero in a world where all layouts are
valued equally, you would progress slowest on QWERTY: The typing just feels wrong
(off-center), and you can already get very far - about 65-72% compared to 37% - if you
just mostly memorize the home row on the other layouts.

Now, there are some fast typists who don’t use QWERTY: As of February 2021, Viper
reached 227 WPM on 10FastFingers with Colemak and has 224 WPM on ColemakDH
(which I will talk about later), Sophie has 214 WPM, John has hit 207, and I did 207 on
Colemak. (204 in the vid).
But still, the vast majority of top typists are QWERTY-based and my personal bests right
now are all on QWERTY layouts and its alternatives like QWERTZ.

You have to consider though that well, the vast majority of typists use QWERTY, and
mathematically it would make sense that there are more excellent QWERTY typists than
non-QWERTY.

Also, those who decide to learn a different layout often do so later in life, possibly leaving
years of QWERTY experience behind them, plus also “sacrificing” a few months to regain
their old speed. (It usually takes a few months to regain your old speed; if you fully
commit to switching then 4 months is an anecdotal number I’ve heard from the best
alternative typists).

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If we go by any metrics that have been traditionally used to determine a layout’s
efficiency, such as left-right hand balance, consecutive finger usage, same column
jumping, finger travel distance, ease of common bigrams, alteration vs. rolling etc.,
QWERTY gets absolutely destroyed in nearly all categories by the more popular
alternative layouts.
Yet, again, how that translates to real-world usage isn’t as straightforward.
You may not be convinced by my links, so I encourage you to do your own research if you
have any doubts about that. You can insert any text here and see how the different
keyboard layouts - namely QWERTY, AZERTY, Colemak, Dvorak and a few more - hold
up: http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/#/main

And about the “making you faster” thing: While I understand the idea of wanting to learn
another keyboard layout in order to reach a faster typing speed and have better accuracy, I
don’t think that’s really the point.

I think the main point is higher comfort and efficiency whilst typing. That to me is
really the main payoff of learning a layout variant and starting anew. I mean, I have
already optimized my personal QWERTY fingerings over the course of some years, and I
still feel awkward typing it. Meanwhile, typing on Dvorak or Colemak feels mostly
absolutely delightful in comparison; it’s like how typing should actually be like in the
first place.
It’s the perspective that you can type on a better layout for the rest of your life, at least
until keyboard layouts become obsolete like typewriters.

One thing that annoyed the critics in particular were people who recommended alternative
keyboard layouts as a method to ultimately type faster. And while of course plenty of
people have done exactly that and easily surpassed their former QWERTY speed, it
happened - I strongly believe - due to natural progress they would have experienced
regardless of which layout they used.

So, in this guide I’m not going to advertise these layout alternatives as magical ways to
increase your typing speed and become more accurate; I think ultimately the difference in
speed (not comfort though!) is too small and it mainly comes down to, of course, practice
and acquiring muscle memory.

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Lastly, the notion that nobody uses the layout variants can easily be debunked. While
easily 95%+ of typists, and especially casual people who have no idea what this is all
about do use the QWERTY keyboard, there’s still hundreds if not thousands of people who
main Dvorak, Colemak, Workman, Asset, Maltron, Norman, BEAKL,
Bépo/F-Keyboard/Neo; or have at least tried them out or show(ed) strong interest in them.

taken from the 10FF Discord Server numbering 10.000+ members, on 21st July 2020

19th October 2021

🤓
taken from the MonkeyType Discord Server on 21st July 2020. I pretty much ignored the
“favorite layout” part

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26th February 2021.

12th September 2022.

9.1.3 It’s a hassle to install the layout at a new place and it’s
troublesome in video games

These are frequently brought up arguments and I think the question here is how often you
use new computers that belong to other people (which of course will only have QWERTY
installed) or play new computer games that require some use of the keyboard. Neither has
really affected me at all and so I am not the expert here for sure.
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If you spend most of your time on your own PC and don’t try out new games frequently,
you should be fine. But if you use a more obscure layout (or even a common layout that is
not available on an operating system, such as Colemak on Windows) and say, are a student
at school who uses different laptops all the time, even for exams; you may be in serious
trouble.

The most popular alternatives, and certainly Dvorak on Windows, can be installed within
moments, although that could take too long in the heat of the moment. There’s also the
possibility of bringing portable keyboard layouts as in having the layouts installed on a
USB-Stick, but I am not familiar with that.

Also, it’s very well possible to at least retain some basic QWERTY skills so you don’t run
into problems, and at the very least it’s always possible to hunt and peck if you just need to
type for a minimal amount.

Rebinding your keys once if 1. you play a new game 2. that requires some keyboard usage
and 3. doesn’t automatically adjust to your layout should hopefully not be too big of a deal
either, though I imagine it might be a decisive factor for vivid gamers.

9.2 Dvorak (+Neo)

https://discord.gg/fgCHXXc Link to the official Dvorak Keyboard Discord Server. My

experiences in it and in the Colemak Server have only been very pleasant. The community
is friendly, helpful, tolerant and encouraging in both =)

https://ditchqwerty.com/ https://www.typingclub.com/dvorak https://learn.dvorak.nl/

Dvorak is the most popular keyboard layout alternative and is therefore the second most
used layout in the world. It was created by August Dvorak and William Dealey in the
1930s. I’m going to focus on the US Dvorak layout.

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Now, while we could spend a lot of time discussing the intricacies of every layout and how
they measure up against each other on that and that word, I don’t think that’s a good use of
our time.
While I value the comparisons that have been made, as they at least give us SOME sort of
scientific data, I think what matters more in the bigger picture is how I perceived the
layouts in general and my experiences with them, as that’s probably gonna be more
understandable and relatable than theoretical numbers.

I started using the Dvorak keyboard layout, out of pure curiosity, on the 4th April 2017. I
didn’t use it much and have to this date not used it a lot, for reasons I will explain, and
thus my highscores on 10FF are a mere 149,9999 WPM. (As of September 2020, I'm in
the 160s). I uploaded this video in November 2017, where I typed 120 WPM and quickly
declared Dvorak the superior keyboard layout over QWERTY.

But well, while I had learned the layout pretty quickly and I like a lot of things about it,
like the ease of accessibility on Windows, the compact and orderly style that is hard to
visualize for outsiders, the "inboard stroke flow" or better said the 'inward rolls', the
location of punctuation and symbols, especially “-” which lies on the home row, and the
way some words are much easier than in the other layouts like “you” and “something” and
“people”,

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it also has some downsides, for example the traditional Windows shortcuts become harder
to reach. Also, while QWERTY has a 56% left hand bias, Dvorak does the opposite and
relegates 56% of the work to the right hand. This makes some sense as most people are
right-handed and it was one of the principles that were adhered to when designing Dvorak,
but still Dvorak has been frequently criticized for its overuse of the right ring finger and
pinky, as you can see in the heatmap. Personally, I like a balanced hand usage best.

But the biggest downside for me, and this is a personal one, is Dvorak’s inherent design:
It’s made for alternation. If you have the Dvorak keyboard installed, try typing ‘Alabama’
and you will see what I mean.

https://bruhdooh.home.blog/ Bruhdooh’s definition of Rolls and Alternations

While I think alternating is a fine concept, it’s just not my style at all. I much prefer rolls
(as do many other people from what I’ve read on discord) and I think one main reason that
I am much faster on Colemak than on Dvorak nowadays is not only because of more
practice, but because I type faster with rolls.
In fact, my PB on Dvorak is only 189 because I found it really hard to increase my raw
speed beyond that point.

This also makes sense if you consider that the fastest QWERTY words are (mainly)
typeable in a single motion: 50 fastest words on Qwerty - Text Practice
It makes me think that Colemak may lead to more speed, whereas Dvorak may lead to
more accuracy as alternation feels like a more “precise” way of typing while rolls are
faster, but more prone to being mistyped. I talk a bit more about that in 9.5.1

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 Mainly for this reason, I have largely abandoned Dvorak. But it’s a perfectly fine layout
still, and although August’ Dvorak’s and his team's analysis on his own layout should be
taken with a huge grain of salt, I don’t think he did a bad job back in the 1930s.

I’d say these two terms are the biggest difference between Dvorak and Colemak, which
have 9 (out of 10) same letters on the home row. QWERTY would be a mixed layout of
rolls and alternation, with some very random and dare I say, bad letter placement.

Something I noticed strongly in the last 2 years is that interestingly, good Dvorak typists
tend to be pretty accurate; and though their scores are respectable, no one really sticks out
so much that they would be considered an elite top typist.
This would mean that while the Dvorak layout doesn’t tend to produce fast typers, it does
produce accurate typists like Thomas and a few more that aren’t active in the community
anymore to my knowledge.

I made this observation on about a handful of people and it became a characteristic of a

typical advanced Dvorak typist. Even the best and fastest Dvorak typist, my dear friend
John shines more through his consistency and accuracy than his speed (about 200 WPM
10FF) in my opinion, even with him being a nitro typist at heart.
Linkbane also seems to be quite good, but as I've mentioned, there aren’t many super fast
typists who are very visible Dvorak mains.

Neo – Keyboard Layout

I only briefly tried out Neo - a layout optimized primarily for German for a little while -
and only on 10FastFingers (~50 WPM), so I didn’t get to try out the different layers. I

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think that’s a neat idea, but due to lack of experience as of now I don’t have a strong
opinion on them.

My impression is that there’s a lot of alternation, which makes sense as it is strongly

inspired by the Dvorak layout. Even though I am only 1/4th the speed on Neo as I am on
QWERTZ, the words felt very easy and smooth to type (63% of all letters in an average
German text are on home row, compared to 25% with Qwertz). I have yet to try it out
more, but I highly suspect that I will have the same alternation “complaints” as with
Dvorak.

By the way, I asked around in the Dvorak Discord and here are some of their favorite
words to type on Dvorak: ‘that’, ‘eastern’, ‘mountain’, ‘joke’, ‘most’, ‘leave’, ‘around,
and ‘stewardesses’.
These are (mainly) words that can be typed very smoothly on the home row.

You will find a number of QWERTY vs. Dvorak videos if you look for them. I do
encourage seeking them out if you are interested. Chances are the uploaders won’t have as
much practical experience as I do, though as mentioned I don’t have hundreds of hours of
Dvorak usage. Here’s one: DVORAK vs QWERTY Which should you use?

Here’s a video by John with more than half a million views: Should you learn to type with
Dvorak? Question answered by fastest Dvorak typist

9.3 Colemak
https://www.colemak.academy/ Good website for learning Colemak
https://discord.gg/vzswtep Colemak’s discord server
Colemak keyboard layout: ergonomic, fast and easy to learn QWERTY/Dvorak alternative Colemak’s
official website

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Colemak is the third most popular keyboard layout), created by Shai Coleman in 2006.
Comparisons usually end up having Colemak slightly triumphing over Dvorak, but the
difference is negligible compared to the advantage both show over QWERTY.

If the ergonomic differences between QWERTY and different keyboard layouts is already
arguable (which I don’t think it is, but it IS argued about plenty), then the fine
discrepancies between Dvorak and Colemak are really not important and should be mostly
a matter of taste. Still, since alternative typists tend to care more about optimizations,
every little difference is going to be relevant to them. And, in the alt layout typing world,
Colemak is significantly more popular than Dvorak, with Colemak getting rather high
praise while Dvorak has a bad rep.

It scores even better than Dvorak on the home row, and boosts a significantly higher
“Keys typed by the same hand” score: 44% to 31%.
This indicates the conceptual differences of rolls vs alteration: While Dvorak aims to
balance the load between two hands with an emphasis on the most often stronger right
hand, Colemak aims to type words quickly and swiftly in single hand motions, with an
even balance between both hands.

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Also for me, while Dvorak is pretty compact and stays mostly in the center of the
keyboard because it was designed to have lots of inward rolls towards the middle,
Colemak feels a lot more “outward” (and maybe a little more awkward as well): You often
type words at the edge of the keyboard, for example the first word in this sentence. And I
do like that too usually, just not with "you", a roll I find uncomfortable to type.

I tried Colemak out roughly a year after Dvorak, and contrary to what one may expect, I
don’t actually feel like I had an easier time learning it than Dvorak, although Colemak is
specifically designed to be easy to adapt to coming from QWERTY muscle memory, only
changing 2 keys between the hands. (This is only a feeling though and not a strong
criticism, perhaps my memory serves me wrong as my Dvorak learning days lie in 2017).

The advantage is that you only need to do slight changes to your muscle memory to adapt
to Colemak. The disadvantage is that precisely because of that, the chances of you getting
QWERTY and Colemak mixed up is higher than say with Dvorak, which is more alien and
completely different from QWERTY.
Still though, Colemak is supposed to be easy to adapt to and that’s cited as one of its
biggest advantages over its competitors.

While this means that the usual (Windows?) keyboard shortcuts remain intact,
unfortunately the bad symbol placements innate to QWERTY also remain.
Some criticisms I have heard are certain bigrams being difficult or inconvenient to type,
such as ‘th’ or also ‘lu’, ‘le’...

Colemak-DH intends to solve some of these problems by putting the d and h closer to the
index fingers. I personally don’t have a problem with horizontal home row typing and
therefore do just fine with regular Vanilla Colemak, but if you use Colemak and also
express the same complaints then you can definitely look into the more vertical DH
variety. Viper has switched to Colemak DH from regular Vanilla Colemak and quickly
jumped back to his old level.

The Colemaker’s favorite words are: ‘and’, ‘sin’, ‘thirst’, ‘doing’, ‘going’, ‘first’, ‘station’,
‘around’, ‘pound’, ‘sound’, ‘mountain’, ‘fountain’, ‘often’, ‘start’, ‘thought’, ‘sentence’,
‘cardboard’, ‘could’, ‘should’, ‘would’, ‘starstruck’; and many many more.
Unsurprisingly, these are all quick rolls.

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9.4 Layoutfluidity
Look Mom, I’m famous OwO

Layoutfluidity, a term I invented, is a little fun discipline that I may have pioneered, which
I didn’t include in Core Disciplines because it’s a rather niche silly thing.

Layoutfluid typists are people who are decently fast in multiple alternative layouts that are
vastly different from each other. This excludes language-specific layouts and thus
multilingual typists, although both are not mutually exclusive.
Most people who switch to a different layout are naturally “bi-layouty” and eventually
forget most of their first layout. In fact, it’s completely normal that your muscle
memory decays over time, it happens to everyone I know who knows multiple layouts. It
applies to a lot of other activities too, and it’s very similar to how you forget the muscle
memory for instrumental pieces you learnt a year or so ago and haven’t played since then.
Some even reached enormous speeds of like 170 or 180 WPM before deciding to switch,
like Viper or Sophie.

But layoutfluid typists intentionally keep up several layouts and risk messing up their
muscle memory; + frequent accidental layout changes via Windows + Spacebar or Shift +
Alt are extremely annoying.
This is something I consider pretty stupid, useless and even counterproductive to typing
progress, but it’s still fun for me and for many people impressive to watch.

I am to my knowledge by far the best layoutfluid typist, being extremely fast at QWERTY,
very fast at Colemak and fast at Dvorak.
(As of January 2023, rocket has me beat)

To showcase my fluidity, I created a fun and well, challenging challenge in late 2018
where I would type on three different layouts over the course of 1 minute on 10FF and
switch every 20 seconds:

Layoutfluid 1.0 (Qwerty + Dvorak + Colemak 129 WPM)

Layoutfluid 2.0 (Qwerty + Dvorak + Colemak 138 WPM)

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Layoutfluid 3.0 (Qwerty + Colemak + Dvorak 158 WPM)
Layoutfluid 4.0 (171 WPM)
Layoutfluid 5.0 on monkey-type.com (182 WPM, 202 raw)
191 WPM
IT IS DONE. Layoutfluid 7.0 (200 WPM rounded)

John later followed this example and did a layoutfluid test himself
10 Fast Fingers Keyboard Layout Medley - 3 layouts one test (one handed typing)

(John has also done a lot of more unusual stuff in the direction of craziness/ridiculousness,
for example typing with his arms crossed on 2 keyboards. He did 169 WPM in early 2019,
which I later beat with 181 WPM. He has since then beaten me back.
and then he just dunked on everybody by posting this video: The Pinnacle of Quality
Typing Content (Typing With 3 Keyboards and Arms Crossed) )

However, there are some more typists who utilize 3 or more vastly different layouts.
Bailey reached 232 WPM on 10FF English Normal and 207 WPM with Asset, and before
Asset he typed Norman in the 150s until he dropped it.
Then there’s also Hunter Shaffer.

As of early August 2020, a typist named Octahedron created a ‘layoutfluid’ funbox mode
on monkey-type.com, which splits your test into three thirds of QWERTY, Dvorak and
Colemak.

9.5 Conclusion

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9.5.1 So overall, what is my favorite layout?

Right now, it would be Colemak. It isn’t perfect and I might use some improved version
in the future, preferably with punctuation like Dvorak’s, but I really like the style and
comfort of Colemak and recommend it to everyone who wants to try. The trend of 2020
and 2021, as far as I experienced it, has strongly favored Colemak and its alterations, with
many people recommending it over Dvorak.
Dvorak is a pretty good layout too though (debatable) and if you prefer alternation over rolls,
then that might just be the right choice for you. There’s also the Semimak layout which
some people loved, but I didn’t like too much. (Nor did I like the Canary layout much).

You might even decide on one based on your typing “style”: It does seem that Colemak
may be more tailored towards fast, more inaccurate typists and Dvorak towards slower,
more accurate ones, however this is a small discovery and I should say, hypothesis by me
with a weird premise, as of course everyone should strive for good accuracy.

But since I managed to get 205 WPM on 10FastFingers quite quickly on Colemak while I
still struggle to type words fluently/quickly on Dvorak (and reach beyond 189 WPM)
although I learnt it one year earlier, I do feel like Colemak allows for more raw speed. This
is further supported by the fact that I’m the third person to hit 200 WPM on Colemak,
while John - by far the best Dvorak typist, which keep in mind is the more popular layout -
just barely hit it with 998 keystrokes. (Notice his good accuracy in all English tests).

(The reason I haven’t made the switch to Colemak fully is because I am pretty damn fast
on QWERTY and because I have not yet typed other languages with Colemak and thus
don’t know how)

Both layouts can still be optimized and I don’t think it will be possible to entirely
eliminate same finger usage and same column jumping, take for example the word ‘edge’
that is kinda awkward to type in both layouts. I would use the respective middle finger to
type ‘g’. ‘typing’ is also really bad on both layouts. On Colemak, I’ve found ‘timely
starcraft’ to be funny to type. On Dvorak, ‘puppy’ is terrible.

Maybe there’s never gonna be a layout that cannot be improved with optimized fingerings.

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 This means that you can always still go for a personalized typing style with your own
fingerings, though I have strong suspicions they won’t be as dramatic as potential changes
on QWERTY.

SOME special words are easier on QWERTY than on Colemak (and Dvorak), for example
‘power’, ‘typewriter’ and ‘warrior’ and probably most of the fastest/easiest QWERTY
words too, though the differences aren’t typically that great.

9.5.2 And which is the best layout?

Impossible to say. It’s not QWERTY. It’s most likely not Dvorak or Colemak or any of
the others either, though they might be close. I’d say it depends too much on the opinion
and taste of each individual to be objectively determinable, but if there was an objectively
best layout, it would probably be one we haven’t discovered/invented yet. Even then, it
could only really work for one single language.
And even even then, language keeps changing and has many different facets and registers,
so… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

9.5.3 But should you switch and use a different layout than
QWERTY?

Well, it depends. I do wholeheartedly believe that Dvorak and especially Colemak are
superior, but whether it is worth it to switch is a whole different question. If you are super
satisfied with QWERTY and have already reached a good speed with it and don’t desire
any changes, or perhaps genuinely believe that QWERTY is the best layout (for you),
then there’s not really any point to make the jump.

If you feel awkward typing on Qwerty, suffer from a condition like Repetitive Strain
Injury or Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (which are commonly cited reasons for switching),
want a more comfortable typing experience and are willing to start from the scratch for
it, I strongly encourage you to go ahead and at the minimum try out a new layout or, if
you’re brave, even a few new ones and eventually decide on one you stick with. (An
ergonomic keyboard might be the better solution instead, though).

99
(The problem with this is that it usually takes a few weeks until you reach a decent speed
and really get a feel for the layout. Doing this for several layouts takes time, and when you
later on decide on one the muscle memory you acquired for all other layouts basically
becomes irrelevant. So, only do this if you’re adventurous, enjoy learning new layouts
instead of dreading it, and really want to find a way of typing that is perfect for you).

Ultimately, if trying out new things - and of course, typing in general - is fun to you and
not just a huge waste of time, then you can dive into the world of layouts without
worrying if they actually benefit you. Like practicing to type faster, learning new layouts

😉
can be a niche fun hobby for you to enjoy. Just be careful not to mess up your muscle
memory by using too many vastly different layouts

9.5.4 I just started to learn a new layout, how do I go about this

best?
Video by Octahedron
DitchQwerty - Learn Dvorak fast. A free, easy way to learn to touch type the Dvorak
layout, Colemak, and other custom keyboard layouts. The best, most customizable
typing tutor and keyboard trainer available. Also works for workman, qwerty, and azerty

😉
Uhhh not sure, there’s different ways. Probably best to ask around in the respective discord
servers

I know that there’s sometimes “transitional” layouts that are basically stepping stones
between QWERTY and your target layout, though I guess for some it might be
unnecessarily complicated and only add more confusion than necessary. Here is the
Tarmak layout for Colemak.

I know that for Dvorak, my first alternate layout learnt in April 2017, I drew a keyboard
with the respective letters on them and tried to memorize it. I feel like I struggled most
with learning Colemak, despite its claims to be particularly easy to learn; but well it ended
up being my favorite layout so far. When I started Neo, I basically went super cold turkey
and started typing it without any help. I did however come up with a rather basic
mnemonic method where I would try to memorize the layout this way:

VLC WorK at Home with GF Qß

UIA EOn SNoRTeD whY
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Umlaute are beneath their respective counterparts PZ BM J

I think connecting the letters with each other that way and separating my mental image
into different parts somehow helped.

For Semimak, I practiced individual letters and bigrams like this.

Like with so many other things in this guide, I’m not sure there’s a “universally” best way
to learn a new layout, and a method that may work wonderfully for your friend may just
not be your cup of tea.

By the way, if you type languages other than English, inform yourself first about the
language variants of each alternative keyboard before you make the switch. I’m not
familiar with them as of yet, but I know that Dvorak and Colemak have their variants for a
multitude of languages. Keep in mind though that the two layouts are designed primarily
for the English language and may not be ideal for other languages.

Here’s some links you can check out in order to experience other viewpoints:

The Layout Hub – The layout hub, a place for keyboard layouts by bruhdooh (great
page)
How I went from 10 to 130 WPM in 3 months by Pinguefy (superb, accurate and well
edited video)
https://pacebar.wordpress.com/ by siglemic
Keyboard Layout Design ⌨ by Xah Lee
Carpalx - keyboard layout optimizer not that easy to understand
https://colemak.com/ obviously strong conviction for Colemak
intro-to-alternative-keyboard-layouts.md · GitHub
QWERTY vs Dvorak vs Colemak, etc. : MechanicalKeyboards
Is it actually worth switching from QWERTY to Dvorak or Colemak? :
MechanicalKeyboards
Two Reddit replies from the same person

And you can always join the community if you are not a member yet, and start yet another
discussion.

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__________________________________________________________________

Notable Great Typists [October 2021]

Now, the time has come to shine the spotlight on some of our best typists. This
list takes into account each person’s activity, fame and legendary status,
typing skill (and personality), and is as biased and subjective and subject
to change as it’s gonna get. I am most familiar with 10FF and typeracer
typists - which is fine as those are the biggest competitive sites - and especially
typists who primarily type English.

I am of course not omniscient and most likely will get stuff wrong about some
people or forget important facts. Therefore, feel free to ping me on Discord
about any changes (and additions and removals) that you’d like to see
about anyone, especially yourself, and please help me keep this up to date
if possible. Also, maintain human decency and don’t harass any of these
people.

Note that I set my benchmark pretty high and will have to leave out dozens of good
typists. Many great typists that have never been engaged in the community and/or share
little info or social links about themselves have been left out. Others are only very recent
members and need to establish themselves first and get to know the community. (I guess
the biggest example here would be Goldjet, whom I’ve only really met on Twitch).
Some celebrities with good but not top and/or clearly ratable typing skills like Reckful
(REST IN PEACE), iGumDrop and to a small extent siglemic (who is or was active both
on typeracer and on discord) are also not included. Vielle is not included because reasons.

Also, I’m not that familiar with nitrotype specialists, though in order to be a great typist
you should be a bit more well-rounded anyway in my opinion, and I am not aware of any
super good typists who only use Nitrotype.
In the info box, I shortened the names and avoided temporary names, as well as discord
tags. You can find most of these typists on Discord if you actively look for them. Also, I

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assume the nonquit accounts to really be nonquit accounts and I believe the names, ages,
and sex the persons state.
I'm a pretty naive person, and that may be reflected in my descriptions of some
individuals.
I’m sure that a lot of the good typists will quickly become “great” typists as well, and I’m
excited to see which amazing talents will rise in the next few years.

Looking at leaderboards is also a great view to gain insight on some of the best
typists. Here is the Top 100 English 10FF Normal Mode
English Leaderboard
and these are the best typists on Typeracer, thank you to Noah Horn:
TypeRacer Data - Leaders by Text Bests

29 of the notable great typists as of 19th October 2021 are:

Sean

_____________________________________________________________________

Birthday: 24th March 1985

Nationality:
Sex: ♂️
10FF: arenasnow
Typeracer: Sean Wrona (arenasnow) ← Ghosting
Sean Wrona (arenasnow2) ← Non-quit Maintrack
Nitrotype: nitrotype.com/racer/400731
YouTube: Sean Wrona
Twitter: Sean Wrona (@seanwrona)

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Keyboard: Logitech K270
_____________________________________________________________________

Based on the number of times that I’ve mentioned Sean - born in Virginia, lives in New
York - in this guide, one might assume that I’m a huge fan of his. And well… not quite.
Sean Padraic Wrona just that important of a figure in typing.

While I do support him on Patreon and respect him as much as most respectable typists do,
he’s not exactly a role model or someone to idolize. Sean is essentially similar to me in
some ways, but 10x amplified: he’s very introverted, socially awkward, obsessive with
things, extremely honest (even more so than me), a nerd, virgin, and has autism,
depression, an eating disorder…

Sean is undoubtedly very intelligent, and I would claim that that was perhaps his recipe for
success, since he is not athletic and has virtually no musical background.

Although Sean - who has an almost unique Polish-Irish name - attended Cornell
University for a while, he never found a lucrative job, unsurprisingly was employed as a
data entry specialist and nowadays works in a call center for the hard of hearing.

One reason why he’s had such a difficult time finding a job, according to him, are the two
videos that catapulted him to fame (and I guess “notoriety”) in 2010 and made him by far
the most famous typist, though only online and not at all in real life:

Fastest Typist: Ultimate Typing Championship Final 2010 By Das Keyboard

SXSW: This Guy Can Type 163 Words Per Minute

These two videos, which have accumulated more than 17 million views, don’t exactly give
the best impression of Sean and many of the comments in the earlier years were certainly
rough, if not to say very insulting and presumptive about his character and person. Based
on the first video, one might assume that Sean is arrogant and condescending (in my
opinion, if you have reached the top of any discipline, you kind of “earn” the right to be
that way, even if it doesn’t make you sympathetic).

In reality, he’s extremely self-deprecating and self-aware and everything I’ve written so far
has been uttered by Mr. Wrona himself. I think - like me, or at least I’d like to think so -
he’s very honest and realistic and authentic, and won’t give false compliments nor hide his
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typing prowess: He knows exactly how good he is and is not shy about it, but he’s also the
first to point out his mistakes, flaws and weaknesses.

Typing has never been central to his life according to him, and considering that he’s also
very competent at Scrabble (arenasnow is an anagram of Sean Wrona), Arithmetics (quick
calculations in the head), Spelling Bees, and very obsessed with auto racing, that’s

😌
certainly believable. I’ve also never seen a sentence from him without proper grammar and
punctuation, rarely one with typos and never one with emojis in it

Anyway, in terms of typing Sean Wrona has been a dominant figure for more than the last
10 years. He learnt typing with 3 or 4 years and became a world-class typist without really
trying or even being aware of it: Only in the later years (2008/2009) did he start typing on
small Facebook games, typera and hi-games.net and joined the emerging typeracer
community.

He excels at all disciplines and is therefore a very well-rounded typist.

In terms of competitions, he has participated in the Intersteno Contest multiple times and
won both the Mother Tongue as well as Multilingual Competitions many times.

He held world records on virtually all typing sites, notably the

former all-time TypeRacer record with 256 WPM, even though his burst speed is his
biggest weakness and many top typists can match or surpass him there.
Nowadays, when Sean races, he usually averages around 184 WPM non-quit over his
races, which is higher than any other consistent average to my knowledge.

In the video New content ideas he almost hit a 200 WPM last-ten-races average while
talking about something else and not really paying attention to the racing.
At some point, he held the number 1 spot on about 2/3rds of all English typeracer quotes
(before joshu came and destroyed), which he accomplished in a 3 month period during
which he ghosted thousands of races, and now he has a 205 WPM Text Best average on
over 6,400 texts. Yes, that’s the AVERAGE WPM over six thousand four hundred quotes!!

He also held the 10FF World Record for a couple of years with 220 WPM and an inhuman
perfect 100% accuracy, before eventually being surpassed by me, Izanagi, Michael, Viper,

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 😇
bailey, shazzy, Rrraptor and the one who took his No. 1 spot, chak. All of these guys but
me will have their moment of glory in this guide in due time
He also still officially holds the Advanced Leaderboard Highscore with 203 WPM.
Rrraptor snatched it away with a 208, but deleted his account shortly after, giving Sean his
official #1 spot back.

He dominates or dominated other typing sites such as typera.net/ or Nitro Type (on which
he held the world record along with 10FF and typeracer) or TYPE GUN or anything,
really.

Sean says he doesn’t really care about typing, but more about the history of it. While I
don’t think that’s entirely true, 1. as it’s fair to say that he is very obsessive, 2. as he has
cared about being seen as the best and proving himself as the champion, 3. as he’s
practiced his fair share over the decades with 50 typeracer races a day being the norm
according to Sean, (should be tens of thousands of hours spent typing in his life in total)
and 4. as he's participated in dozens of competition without any or with little prize money
to look forward to; it certainly makes sense as Sean rarely races nowadays and has nothing
really left to prove after winning a typing competition/championship in March 2020 over
Izzy and chak, regaining his title as the world’s best (English) typist.
Also, as of 2021, chak is considered the better typist now, with people like joshu being
great candidates to top him.

He instead spent the last year(s) writing a book on typing: Summary of my upcoming
typing book Nerds Per Minute where he also details the life of his and many of the ones
coming up, including chak, Izzy, Michael, Kathy, Alpha Panda, shazzy, Taran, Hunter,
(Aaron Adams, Vielle, Fyda...).
It has been released and is available here:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09H8MQKWD/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8
&qid&sr
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09GN9TPC9 (kindle)
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/nerds-per-minute-sean-wrona/1140181391
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1105160

He also sometimes writes essays in the typeracer server, which in my experience are
mostly about something historical or political.

106
Please be as kind to Sean as you are to other people too. If you have some money and are
VERY interested in typing, consider becoming a Patreon and subscribe to his YouTube.
Sean does his best at staying respectful towards everyone (certainly his fans) and he is
helpful and very knowledgeable.

He has his own website with at the moment partially outdated information: Sean Wrona

chak
_____________________________________________________________________

Birthday: 27th March 2003

Nationality:
Sex: ♂️
10FF: chak
Typeracer: (chakk)
Nitrotype: nitrotype.com/racer/temmi3
YouTube: chakk
Twitch: twitch.tv/chakklet
Keyboard: Ducky MIYA Pro Rainbow Mx Browns
_____________________________________________________________________

Anthony Ermolin is a typing wunderkind (I stole this description from Sean) from New Jersey
who essentially appeared out of nowhere in late 2018 and started dominating in the typing
world and on any typing website within weeks of starting to type on it. He’s the fastest
overall typist right now and if he stays around, he may be(come) the best typist for the
next decade. Chak has pretty much overtaken Sean, and I’m scared what monstrosity he

107
may become, and even more scared what he will become if he really tries. (I think of him
mostly as an extremely fast typist, but his accuracy nowadays is also pretty good)

Chak is most often online, but idle in the community on discord and races on typeracer
from time to time, in recent times he only visited 10FF to try to beat rrraptor’s incredible
235 WPM score, which later on became unnecessary after raptor deleted all his accounts.

Chak beat Sean’s 220 WPM world record of four years on 10FF in January 2019 with 223
WPM, and took it up to 233 WPM one month later, where it has stood as the world record
and first score above 230, something only bailey and raptor have accomplished too.
Verification Video of 227 with a broken laptop keyboard: 10FastFingers 227 WPM - #1
Verified
He also held the Nitro Type World Record.

In the same month as his 233 WPM, he ended up beating Sean in a close and long match at
the Typing Clicking Championship, the biggest online typing tournament to date that
lasted 10 hours. Being the underdog, he triumphed at the end because his energy at 3 AM
was still high compared to the exhausted and fatigued Sean Wrona, who I think was
cheered on less than the underdog. Although Sean had a higher average throughout the
championship, many people considered chak the best typist in the world from now on.

Like Sean, chak is an absolute all-rounder and an absolute beast on typeracer. His 10FF
advanced score in English of 174 and his scores in other languages are not impressive for a
typist of his caliber, but he only tried them out twice or thrice and he could probably
compete at the highest levels in them if he wanted to. (Edit: And indeed, on 16th July 2020
he did one advanced test on 10FF English and scored 195 WPM with 5 words and 22
corrections. He could probably try to contend for the top spot or even break 210 WPM)

Besides holding the 10FF and Nitrotype world records, chak is also a fast burster with a
Personal Best of 309 WPM lagged and 320 WPM unlagged.
There are a few specialists who can beat that and who may be slightly better on very short
quotes, however chak also averages 180+ WPM nonquit with peaks of 200+ and has really
been out of this world with tournament performances like this:

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All of these numbers from chak are evidently top world-class.

What impresses me most is something he’s done over and over again in recent months:
Ghosting insane speeds of 230 or 240 WPM on medium length/difficulty texts with a huge
discrepancy - often 20 to 30 WPM - to the second place, who tends to be Sean.
https://data.typeracer.com/pit/result?id=|tr:chakk|5584
https://data.typeracer.com/pit/result?id=|tr:chakk|5547
https://data.typeracer.com/pit/result?id=|tr:chakk|5546

Chak may have taught himself to touch-type at an early age of 4 or 5, but didn’t type on
typing websites until 2018. He’s an anime fan and plays rhythm games such as osu!. Many
of his sentences are gibberish and consist of random words that don’t exist. Like most
young people, he doesn’t chat in proper, full sentences, but chak is especially difficult to
communicate with for me. He assumes that his typing skills are a combination of genes,
starting at a young age, and practice.

Here’s a video on chak by bruhdooh: The Rise of Chak

109
Here’s another of him winning the 2020 Ultimate Typing Championship: The Fastest
Typist in the World Wins the Ultimate Typing Championship 2020

Joshu
________________________________________________________________________________

Birthday: July 28th 2006

Nationality:
Sex: ♂️
10FF: mthjoshu
Typeracer: (joshua728) (joshunq)
Nitrotype: https://www.nitrotype.com/racer/joshua728
Youtube: Joshua Hu
Keyboard: Apple Magic Keyboard
________________________________________________________

Joshua Hu is insane yeah I don’t even know what to say he is pretty new but he improves
like crazy and is already one of the best typists ever and has insane scores and typing
records everywhere like check his Nitrotype or 10FF account or the #typeracer-records
channel in the typeracer discord, the monkeytype leaderboards (277 WPM on 15s and 249
WPM on 60s) or this http://typeracerdata.com/texts

This kid is something else I don’t know what planet he’s from lol

Monkeytype - 257 Time 15 / 233 Time 60

220 moon quote - NEW Typeracer WORLD RECORD
Averaging 204 Nitrotype (10 Races)

110
rocket

Birthday: 2006

Nationality:
Sex: ♂️
10FF: –
Typeracer: mythicalrocket
Nitrotype: –
Youtube: mythicalrocket
Keyboard: SteelSeries Apex 7 with Browns

rocket, born in 2006/2007, is an incredible typist who has rocketed rapidly in recent times. He’s the
current world record holder on monkeytype with an unbelievable 262 WPM, he beat my layoutfluid
worldrecord and he’s also taken the alt layout worldrecord from Viper.

It’s probably not a stretch to say that rocket is the most talented typist of all time, considering he only
started taking typing seriously in 2020.

rocket doesn’t reveal a lot about himself, but he’s also a pianist.

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Izzy
_____________________________________________________________________

Birthday: 1994/5

Nationality:
Sex: ♂️
10FF: deleted 10FFisntrealtyping for now
Typeracer: ‫( איזי‬fastermaybe), iamtyperacer , performancecheck
Nitrotype: N/A
Youtube: Izzy A
Keyboard: Laptop
_____________________________________________________________________

Izzy Aroeti is a typist from the older generation, the fastest English typist from Asia and
certainly Israel, a typeracer beast and certainly a typing legend I am not very familiar with.
I say typeracer beast because I don’t know his nitro type scores (if he ever typed on it at
all) and because he “only” reached a bit above 200 WPM on 10FF. Or well, at least before
on 25th July 2020 he easily scored 217 WPM.
Still, he may very well be the best non-native English typist.

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He’s similar to rrraptor in the sense that he’s very friendly and encouraging and was very
nice to talk to when I could, but likes to abandon the community and his accounts; he’s
had a plethora of accounts over the last years.

He’s similar to Sean in the sense that he’s a very consistent and rather accurate typist with
quite unimpressive bursting speeds. Then again, he has a 224 WPM on his basic typeracer
account, and I haven’t seen him ghost easy quotes with a premium one. In some aspects,
namely typing wise, he could be considered a somewhat weaker Sean, and sometimes a
somewhat stronger Sean. He also doesn’t seem to care about speed typing and even
considers it somewhat of a waste of time, and is only doing it because he’s so world-class
at it.

In fact, he is so world-class that he is the first one to reach the rank of Grandmaster on
keyma.sh:

Izzy is the fastest out of everyone at Capital Letters because he designates his right pinky
just for that key. One thing that stood out for me about Izzy is that he doesn’t necessarily
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read all of the text in a quote: Instead, he automatically kind of adds in the words based on
his predictions. While this makes reading while typing easier and faster, he’s also prone to
mistakes caused by mispredictions and I’ve seen him “unnecessarily” mess up through
this method.

Although he isn’t active in the community anymore as of now and only visits now and
then, he still races on typeracer regularly. I enjoyed getting beaten by him maybe 9 out of

😇
10 times on maintrack when he raced on his old account and am proud of every win
against him
When Izzy isn’t racing or placing 3rd/4th in tournaments, he’s busy studying computer
science in Jerusalem.

bailey
_____________________________________________________________________

Birthday: 26th August 2005

Nationality:
Sex: ♂️
10FF: bender
Typeracer: bailey (slekap), quitless
Nitrotype: N/A
YouTube: bentobox
Keyboard: Leopold FC750R with Cherry MX Reds
_____________________________________________________________________

bailey, or bentley, or slekap, or bentobox, or crinchy norm diet, or baller, or whatever his
name is at any given time, is probably the best Australian typist as well as one of the most
gifted, incredible typists right now.
Being only 16, he may just be the most talented teen after chak, though Izanagii probably
takes that spot. That’s not to say our typing prodigy reached his current level without any
114
effort though: Bailey has been very active in the community as long as I can remember
and is active on typeracer, as well as in the 10FF server and other websites’ servers.

Bailey is an absolute all rounder and shows not only huge natural multilingual skills, but
also the most impressive layoutfluid skills I’ve ever seen: While first trying out the
Norman layout and reaching 150 WPM on 10FF on it, he later after some months
seemingly out of nowhere scored 207! WPM on the Asset layout (if you assume that he
didn’t use QWERTY, I do believe him), an absolutely amazing feat considering that
120-130 WPM already puts you in the Top 1%.

He also works miracles on his main layout QWERTY though: He hit 245 WPM on
monkeytype, and the current worldrecord of 241 WPM on 10FF, and has a high advanced
high score of 190 WPM. On typeracer, where he is quite active, he regularly ascends to
new heights, scores in the Top 5 on quotes, sometimes even Top 3 or 1, and crossed the
190! WPM mark with 191 WPM nonquit over the last 10 races.

Although Bailey was apparently banned from the typeracer server for doxing the phone
number of someone, I’ve always liked and loved and adored him a lot and never seen him do
anything totally inappropriate as you might expect from someone his age. Instead, I see
him as a respectful - in our case, we have strong mutual respect - and a very cool
adolescent with enormous potential.
As with chak, I’m excited and also very scared how much sicker he’ll become over the
next few years.

Michael
_____________________________________________________________________

Birthdayr: 12th November 1993

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Nationality:
Sex: ♂️
10FF: Top 6: michaelderoche
Typeracer: Top 4: (deroche1) with 300 000 races
Top 7: zigfried ← Nonquit
deroche (l___l) ← burst account
Nitrotype: N/A
Keyboard: Apple Magic
_____________________________________________________________________

Michael DeRoche is one hell of a typing legend and one of the biggest names in typeracer,

😉
being cited by Sean as the “most influential and persistent typist of his era”. If you want to
learn more about him, you should read Sean’s book about typing

A piano prodigy, Michael only started to compete seriously at the age of 21.
His scores weren’t that impressive back then at 100-130 WPM and low accuracy, but he
showed extreme willpower/determination to break all kinds of typing records (including
typing the digits of pi and the alphabet) and eventually reached the highest number of
races on typeracer within only 2 years, using interesting ways to achieve that:
https://clips.twitch.tv/VastSpookyMacaroniBabyRage (WARNING: loud, contains
profanity).

He had at least 73 accounts on typeracer, was also very active in the discord server and he
contributed thousands of quotes to the site, banned tons of cheaters, he was just a very
valuable community member. He streamed quite often on Twitch, but stopped competitive
typing before I joined the typeracer community.

Having been through a wild life, Michael seems to have stabilized now, indicated by his
absence on discord, of addictions, and by his high scores on his new nonquit account.
While Michael was infamous for his extreme inconsistency, nowadays - on a new
comeback account - he has pretty good accuracy and almost like Izzy, he averaged nearly
180 WPM over 1000+ races nonquit and reached a 197 WPM peak over the last 10 races.

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Michael’s biggest strength has to be his insane raw burst speed, as he holds the number 1-3
spots on many of the shorter, easier quotes on typeracer. : His highest speed on his basic
account is 239 WPM, and on his premium account it is 347 WPM.

He holds the record for the highest unlagged maintrack speed at a mind-boggling 272
WPM:

https://data.typeracer.com/pit/result?id=%7Ctr:deroche1%7C245038
He also reached 223 WPM on 10FastFingers in only 218 tests, beating Sean’s 220 WPM
seemingly effortlessly and kind of out of nowhere like Rrraptor, though I assume he had
his account flagged which would explain why he sneaked in the score so unnoticed, as
flagged accounts’ scores are not shown in the Last 24 Hour leaderboards. He also did 190
WPM in the Advanced Test.

His are not viewable, they are private or have been removed :I

Kathy
_____________________________________________________________________

Birthday: 13th February 1993

Nationality:
Sex: ♀

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 10FF: wat
Typeracer:
(nonquitforizzy) (kathyacc) Top 2: (florentine) ← most recent races
Nitrotype: nitrotype.com/racer/florentine
YouTube: Kathy
Keyboard: Logitech Pro
_____________________________________________________________________

Another typeracer legend, Kathy Chiang is most likely the fastest woman of this century
yet - faster than Wendy Lin aka/bka Fyda - and one of the few ones to compete with Sean
during her heyday (in 2017, which was before I joined the typeracer community) and
regularly beat him on shorter quotes where her higher top speed gave her the advantage.
This made her a formidable opponent with a roughly 40% win rate against Sean, a winrate
very very few could match today.

The typeracer goddess would usually average in the 170s, but just like Michael has/had
some of the best burst speed ever, and could reach into the 190s. She was actually the first
one to reach 300 WPM on typeracer (unlagged) and thus obtain the speed record on the
site.
While she only peaked at 192 WPM on 10FF, she also never typed it much and isn’t that
good at random words, but unsurprisingly she did well on Nitro Type.

Kathy returned to the scene in 2019 to compete in the Typing Clicking Championship, but
she was rusty and consequently knocked out in a close match by Mako.
On July 2nd 2020, she also appeared briefly to pay respects to Reckful, who had
committed suicide that day.

While she’ll stay in our minds as one of the Typeracer Greats and one of the fastest of all
time, I’m hopeful she’ll come back one day. Nowadays, she seems to be doing great and to
my knowledge is running her own Esports Club and Arena at UCI, programming. doing
music, visual design and creative writing (poetry)

Like Sean, Kathy has her own website: Kathy Chiang – :)

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Izanagii/Shinryakuu/Retrolyze/Amaranth/Amara
nshin
_____________________________ ________________________________________

Birthday: 5th March 2005

Nationality:
Sex: ♂️
10FF: Izanagii
Typeracer: (izanagiii)
Nitrotype: nitrotype.com/racer/izanagiii
YouTube: Shinryakuu
Keyboard: TecWare Phantom 87
_____________________________________________________________________

Typing 240 WPM on a 1 minute test: The first recorded 4 WPS 60s in history

Izanagi or whatever Japanese name he decides on next is a rare typist from the Phillipines
and has had the most amazing progress I’ve personally witnessed. As the legend goes, the
15-year-old started from 160 WPM in August 2019 (which he had reached without trying
btw) and now Amaranth made typing history on the 11th of November 2020 by crossing
240 WPM on a one minute test. This was later announced by miodec on the monkeytype
discord (with a text written by me c:) :

119
Although he undoubtedly worked very hard in 2020, he is clearly extremely gifted… it’s
like it is the most natural thing in the world for him to almost be number 1 at an activity
others strive for for years. Izanagi’s accuracy has always been his weakest point, but
nonetheless he is now also regularly reaching 170 WPM on typeracer with his lightning
typing speed and has an average of almost 160 in the latest tournament, placing 7th among
seasoned veterans.

Although Izanagii used to drive me nuts by posting an image of every score he typed
which caused me to utter my only ever f word on discord, he’s a very cool and chill dude
and a friend of mine. I am glad he joined the community, and I’m very scared how he will
keep blowing our minds and I hope that he gets used to formulating proper sentences ;P

120
Rrraptor
_____________________________________________________________________

Birthday: N/A

Nationality:
Sex: ♂️
10FF: both accounts deleted
Typeracer: swimmingfrog (lalabird8)
Nitrotype: nitrotype.com/racer/krayken
nitrotype.com/racer/alligatorrr among others
_____________________________________________________________________

Rrraptor the Beast is or has been a Nitrotype main and doesn’t reveal a lot about himself,
so there’s not much I can tell about him, but rrraptor is certainly an interesting individual.
In the brief encounters I’ve had with him, he was a pretty cool dude and nice to talk with.
He clearly likes animals, and so recently I’ve started to think of him as Batman: He’s
powerful, rich, and he likes to appear randomly to beat up everyone only to leave again.

121
That’s exactly what happened on 10FastFingers. He just randomly appeared one day,
created two accounts with the names “Treespider” and “Heartspider”, and within a few
days he snatched the normal mode world record along with the advanced world record
with a staggering 235 WPM and 208 WPM, respectively. And as quickly as he appeared,
he disappeared again, deleting both his accounts and the accompanying verification
videos.
Probably because of his (presumably) years of typing experience on Nitro Type, raptor has
super high burst speed and not very impressive accuracy.
He might just have the highest raw speed out of all typists. Just check this out:

122
He is not usually this fast nor inaccurate, but it does give you an idea what kind of typist
he is :D
It’s therefore not surprising that he isn’t top tier on typeracer, where he averaged in the
160s and almost 170 WPM in the tournament shown above (in which I managed a 3 - 10
against him that could have been a 5 or 6 - 10). If he keeps typing on it though, I’m sure he
will eventually reach a consistent 180 Avg or higher.

On 25th July 2021, raptor hit 246 WPM on monkeytype, a new world record.

123
AlphaPanda
_____________________________________________________________________

Birthday: 5th April 2002?

Nationality:
Sex: ♂️
10FF: flagged
Typeracer: (alpha_panda) (mporsche02)
Nitrotype: N/A
YouTube: LM Strength
Keyboard: Apple Magic
_____________________________________________________________________

Mitchell aka The Shoulder Guy aka Alpha Panda is yet another incredible individual who
quickly climbed the ranks of typing to the very top, first on Nitro Type in 2015 and later
on on typeracer too.

Alpha Panda is a controversial figure because to this day he has not bothered, or dare I say,
has refused to record a valid verification video, making him look very suspicious and
leading to him being called a cheater by many. His verification would be the most
significant one in 10FF history though - as of March 2021 - due to his virtually
unbelievable unofficial and unverified high score of 243! WPM in the English Normal
Test, which would be a historical breach into 4 Words A Second territory. He also
achieved 208 WPM on the 10 Minute Leaderboard, 14 WPM above the third place (me).
Alpha’s own reasoning for not certifying is that he “types for personal achievement, not
for recognition”.

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He is a Type 1 diabetic and is the only typist known to me to have given themselves shots
(Insulin) before typing, supposedly leading to absurd performances such as 4 WPS+.

Alpha is also one of the best typeracers nowadays, can commonly be found in the Top 10
of any quote and reaches scores of 180+ WPM average on maintrack, though he quits a
majority of his races.
He has the highest lagged maintrack score ever: TypeRacer Race Details

He is also strongly (hah) into bodybuilding and calisthenics and apparently not only world
class in typing: Attempting 5 Push-up WR’s in under 1 hour

Alpha in my experience doesn’t show much emotion or affection, and so I was very
delighted when he once cheered me on for 200 WPM on 10FF when I was almost there.
No matter what you think of Mitchell, he is for sure a formidable member of our
community and is able to reach the peak of human capabilities like none other.

shazzy
_____________________________________________________________________

Birthday: 7th March 2001

Nationality:
Sex: ♂️
10FF: shazzy
Typeracer: (shazman)

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 erik (nonquit) (treiderik)
Nitrotype: N/A
YouTube: Shazzy
Keyboard: Apple Magic
_____________________________________________________________________

Erik Treider, our resident Norwegian ViKING, is an old school typist who competed with
the greats. He’s a typing prodigy and perhaps the best typist in Europe.
When he’s not typing, shazzy or shaz - his nickname - is into bodybuilding, physical
fitness and running, perhaps reminiscent of the younger Alpha Panda, and also strong,
buff, athletic.

😎
Shazzy is among my favorite typists, one of my best friends I’ve found, and so far the only
mod on my twitch channel

When it comes to his typing style, he’s an absolute anomaly as he essentially types with
4-5 fingers: both his indexes and middle fingers, only sparingly using his other fingers and
not even using a thumb for space! #indexspacergang
To my knowledge no one on this elite level uses as few fingers as he does, yet he somehow
makes it work, though it’s fair to say he’s been typing for many years now. Still, he didn’t
learn touch typing until he was 14, which is much later than most of the notable great
typists featured.

No one really understands his absurd miraculous typing skills, including himself, as he’s
still an enormously fast burster (ghost: 300, maintrack: 230, and you need to account for
the lag he suffers like we poor Europeans do), beat Sean’s 256 WPM world record peak
speed of 6 years on typeracer, and also reached an incredible 228 WPM score on 10FF
once he got control of his nerves. All his other scores are also impressive and just getting
better, including his advanced PB of 191; TWO other 200 WPM scores in two other
languages, making him the first typist to reach 200 in three languages on 10FF; as well all
his other language results like Italian or Dutch.

Nowadays, he is able to beat anyone when he’s on fire and he shows no signs of slowing
down; I wonder how overpowered he would be if he were to use all his fingers. In my
opinion, shazzy is an absolutely awesome guy and a joy to hang out with. Humble, joyful
and encouraging, engaged and helpful. I’d dearly love to visit him in Oslo and hang out irl, but for now I wish him
strength in dealing with social anxiety, and more confidence.

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StaticNine

Viper
_____________________________________________________________________

Birthday: 2002

Nationality:
Sex: ♂️
10FF: Viperr
Typeracer: Viper (xayiver)
Nitrotype: N/A
YouTube: Viper
_____________________________________________________________________

Next up we have a Czech teen star. Kristian or Xayiver, unsurprisingly the best Czech
typist, is known for switching from a high 180~ QWERTY speed on 10FF to Colemak in
late March 2017. This evidently paid off, as he hit 227 WPM on 10FF English, which at
the time was second only to chak’s 233. His average is 213 WPM! He also challenged
Sean’s spot on many leaderboards, such as typera, typegun and the Advanced English Test,
where he scored an incredible 200 WPM, 2nd place to this day.

In general, Viper excels at any text with a random string of words, no matter the difficulty.
This is interesting, as normally your complexity skills tend to be rather low when you
learn a new layout. It’s possible to hit 200 WPM only after a few months by repeating
them over and over again, but actually internalizing the layout to such a high degree is
super impressive.
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Viper has stated that he has copied texts from a lot of books, which would explain his
complexity speed, but doesn’t entirely explain his non-world class averages of around 160
on typeracer. I assume he just didn’t care that much about the site, and I am sure if he had
taken it seriously he would have conquered that site as well.

Viper has participated in Intersteno contests and done freelancing work as a Czech -
English translator. He switched to Colemak-DH on 8th December 2020 and quickly
regained his speed, scoring 224 WPM as of now.

APackOfSmarties
_____________________________________________________________________

Birthday: N/A

Nationality:
Sex: ♂️
10FF: APackOfSmarties
Typeracer: apackofsmarties
Nitrotype: N/A
YouTube: APackOfSmarties
Keyboard: Das Keyboard 4

I don’t think Smarties has ever chatted a whole lot so I don’t know much about him, but I
know that he has a Roblox Youtube Channel with some videos of over 1 million views. He
uses QWERTY and is one of the few ones who use Caps Lock instead of Shift.

Smarties was already a fast typist in his preteen years and now boasts some of the highest
scores on 10FF, where he has scored a former worldrecord 239! WPM on the normal test,
202! WPM in the advanced test, and 183 WPM on the French normal test.

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Luckily for me, Smarties missed the deadline for the 10FastFingers Global Tournament
2020, and so I was able to easily secure a Top 2 (after Amaranth) in the English Finals and
was able to win a keyboard from DasKeyboard :)

typos_z/Alternator/Algorox

one handsome boi

Birthday: 2001/02/15

Nationality:
Sex: ♂️

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Youtube: Algorox (more than 50k)
Typeracer: Typos_z
Keyboard: Laptop

Jammie Lee is one of the newest additions to this list, and what an addition!
Not only is he an awesome guy (to chat with) and somehow already one of the best typists
around despite just joining recently, he is also an almost world-class pianist (which of
course is much more impressive than any typist could ever be) and naturally a former
prodigy. Much of his typing skill can be attributed to his amazing piano skills.
You can enjoy one hour of his marvelous playing here.

I consider him a powerhouse typist who will probably reach much higher than his current
210 WPM on monkeytype. He’s already made a name for himself on typeracer starting
from April 2021, where he has reached a Text Best of 194 (currently Top 4 on
typeracerdata) on almost 2000 texts by massive amounts of ghosting.
Speaking of Top 4, he placed Top 4 in the Keyma.sh Summer Championship 2021 behind
chak, Izzy and Joshu, a very impressive result.

Schollie ; Kukkain ; Jelani

Nelson
Here I have compiled three great typists of the past who have not been active for years or
even a decade anymore, but who could hold their own against Sean back in the day.

Schollie is the best Dutch typist I’ve seen and held top scores in many typing websites.
Many old typeracer quotes still include Schollie in the Top 10, meaning that in the many
years since he hasn’t been kicked off yet. Still, his highest score is barely 200.

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 Schollie has insane multilingual skills and one of the highest 10FF Advanced scores with
191 in Dutch. He’s the only one of these three typists I came in contact with and I
remember thinking to myself “Wow, I want to reach 200 WPM like this legend someday.’’
And eventually I did and have overtaken his PB of 212 WPM (Top 13) in English, but his
scores in other languages still leave me in awe. Typeracer: (schollie)

Kukkain is another multilingual god and an extremely fast burst typist too. He could
compete and even beat Sean mostly on shorter quotes on sites like Typing Zone. I know
very little about him, but he plays the drums like Taran. He has been absent from the
typing community for many many years. He’s Top 34 on Text Bests: Profile for user
xKµkKain- (tsvukk)
YouTube: Guilherme Sandrini

Jelani Nelson is most likely the most academically successful great typist and was
apparently active in the years 2009-2011. He also made small comebacks for some typing
tournaments. Jelani Nelson (minilek)
Taking on a top typer: Harvard professor Jelani Nelson
Sean Wrona vs. Jelani Nelson

mako
_____________________________________________________________________

Birthday: 4th September 19XX

Nationality:
Sex: ♂️
10FF: Top 29: mako
Typeracer: Top 11: mako (mako640)
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 Nitrotype: N/A
YouTube: Mako640
Twitch: mako640
Keyboard: Logitech G610 with Brown Switches
_____________________________________________________________________

😏
Alan McCreary is a typing legend from the older generation and our beloved handsome
grandpa On a more serious note, there may not have been a more humble, nicer and
more encouraging and positive, hype typist in our community - to the point where you might
perhaps start to wonder if all the compliments he gives out are genuine - and if I had to bet on who
the most popular typist among the OGs(not famous, that would be far and away Sean) is,
it’d be mako.

mako has a very long history on typeracer and if you look at this
Profile for user mako (mako640), you will see that he didn’t have a huge rapid
improvement like many other elite peeps on here, but enjoyed a slow 15 WPM increase
over the last decade while he was seemingly always already a good typist and has always
been up there, the almost exact same thing happened to Sean also.
One jump you may notice is from the end of 2018 to January 2019, when he ghosted all
available texts in the main typeracer universe and registered his biggest improvement.

Unlike most typists here, mako is known for being a very consistent (non-quit) typist.
While his burst or top speed isn’t as impressive as say, chak or raptor, his accuracy is one
of the best and this has allowed his average to remain constant in the 160s and 170s for the
most part (bar one match against Izzy that went pretty south). He also averaged 164 WPM
across 937 races in 2020 in the Typeracer Instant Death Mode Universe, the highest I’ve
seen.

mako has sadly lost interest in typing for now, but he returns now and again for a few

races. He loves dogs and some japanese culture and does programming as
his job. Although I’m not sure if and when he’ll stream again, I can only recommend
following him on Twitch as his streams were always entertaining and fun!

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Taran
_____________________________________________________________________

Birthday: 20th May 1998

Nationality:
Sex: ♂️
10FF: Taran
Typeracer: taran (taran127) high average on one single quote
fastaccount maintrack
Top 8: (slowaccount) main ghosting account
Twitch: Graril
YouTube: Taran
_____________________________________________________________________

Taran, whose real name is indeed Taran, and whose surname is... interesting, is also among
the most prominent typists and has been around for a long time, his 10FF account dating
back to 2012.

His 219 WPM back in November 2018 was extremely fast and almost matched Sean’s 220
WPM. Right now, Taran has 180 WPM in English advanced.

Taran is probably best known for holding the fastest lagged, unlagged and adjusted scores,
being the first person to reach 400 WPM.
https://data.typeracer.com/pit/result?id=|tr:taran127|320 He achieved that through 40-50
hours of practice over 3 years since 2017.
His maintrack skills are hard to judge as he almost never competes live with other people,
but he said he would average around 160. He has however ghosted thousands of races with
his “slowaccount” and reached the number 8 spot on the typeracer Text Best
Leaderboards.
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One other thing that Taran does best is reacting fast. He averages 83 milliseconds on the
first character of a typeracer quote when he ghosts, while no one else in the typeracer top
player base is anywhere near that.

Besides typing, Taran plays the drums, is physically fit and is or was also an elite World of
Warcraft player (like Reckful, who was a big inspiration to him). He’s known for his
excessive shitposting. He also co-commentated the Typing Clicking Championship for 10
hours together with Nico Borst.

Glevion
_____________________________________________________________________

Birthday: 1998/9

Nationality:
Sex: ♂️
10FF: Glevion
Typeracer: Glevion (glevion)
Nitrotype: N/A
Keyboard: Corsair K70 Lux
YouTube: Glevion
_____________________________________________________________________

My ever so rigorous Spanish teacher Glevion is the indisputable 10FF Multilingual

Champion in terms of speed by 20 WPM and unlike everyone else so far, he doesn’t
necessarily type a lot in English. He’s put in a lot of work into typing I would say and can
reap the benefits. He evidently doesn’t care much about typeracer and English and still
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averages 150 WPM in that one language among many. On 10FF, he reached 192 WPM in
it as well as 214 WPM in Spanish.

Glevion is an all around amazing and diverse typist who’s been a silly, dedicated, and very
helpful buddy who spends his time on Mecanografía instead of the other usual discord
servers. It’s pretty safe to say he’s the best typist from Spain.

Andrea
_____________________________________________________________________

Birthday: 21st December 2000

Nationality:
Sex: ♂️
10FF: Andrea Senza Cognome
Typeracer: (andreaak00)
Nitrotype: N/A
YouTube: Andrea Ak
Keyboard: Razer Huntsman Opto-Mechanicals
_____________________________________________________________________

Coming from the best Spanish typist to the best Italian one we have Andrea “Without
Surname”, one of my closest buddies. Having been an avid typist since his youth, Andrea
is one of the few typists I know who does typing kind of professionally, as in competing at
Intersteno Congresses, winning medals including gold medals and being featured,
interviewed…

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Although his burst and top speed doesn’t come close to the other legends, he is the only
one to have 200 WPM+ in the Italian language. 202 WPM verified here: 196 wpm in
Italian on 10FastFingers which is very impressive as Italian is one of the harder
Latin-based languages to type, and most of his other 10FF scores are super exorbitant too.
He is actually the leader of the Multilingual Leaderboard and barely has more points than
Glevion and Linsk, although he can’t quite match the Spaniard’s speed. Considering that
he competes in Intersteno Mother Tongue and Multilingual Competitions, perhaps that
doesn’t come as a surprise.

In terms of typing skill, I tend to think of Andrea and myself as equals. I am better in
English and with alt layouts, Andrea beats me in most languages and maybe even in
Germanic ones too. We’re both around the same age and both had to put in the work to get
to where we are and didn’t arrive here miraculously. I have to assume that I am also the
best typist living in Germany.

😏
It’s been great knowing Andrea since 2017 and who knows, we might someday do stuff
together in real life as well

Hunter
Shaffer/Osteogenesis_________________________
____________________________________________

Birthday: December 2 1997

Nationality:
Sex: ♂️
10FF: Hunter Shaffer
Typeracer: (emiglio)
Nitrotype: N/A
YouTube: Hunter Shaffer
Keyboard: Acer Nitro Laptop
_____________________________________________________________________

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Next up we have easily the most interesting and tragic character in the typing scene.
Hunter Shaffer, whom I first met on 10FastFingers with impressive 200+ scores, suffers
immensely from a number of physical diseases such as his nickname Osteogenesis
Imperfecta, where hundreds of bones in his arms and legs would fracture throughout his
life, and in Summer 2018 he also suffered a brainstem compression and has since then had
to deal with other disorders. As of right now, he is not able to compete at a high level
anymore.
Despite and also because of his immense physical limitations, Hunter has spent his
majority of his live in front of a PC and become quite proficient at computer programming
and especially hacking, being employed at some point in cybersecurity and e-commerce.

His PB on 10FastFingers is a 227 WPM and his verification video is quite special: Typing
over 200 WPM with deformed arms (Osteogenesis Imperfecta Type 3) 10fastfingers
verification

It would not be honest to paint Hunter as an innocent lamb though. He’s been through serious
controversies especially regarding DDoS attacks, and way more intense things I shan’t disclose here.
While he claims absolute innocence and says he would never harm any typing sites but rather intends to
subvert potential attacks on typeracer, 10FF and such, the opposing side is absolutely convinced that
he’s the culprit. It doesn’t help that Hunter has often been caught vastly exaggerating his scores on
typeracer and 10FF, stating averages as high as 190 although he only reached them by ghosting specific
quotes from what I’ve seen; and otherwise also severely underperforming in every competitive match
he’s participated in due to reasons that may or may not be true. There was also an extended period
during which Hunter failed to validate his scores, making him look even more suspicious. He’s also
admitted to cheating and otherwise using illegitimate methods.

However, his physical conditions can be confirmed by Sean, as Hunter is the only major typist Sean has
met personally. They live close to each other and Hunter also took a course in Oceanology at Cornwell
(the uni Sean attended, though years prior), though he never enrolled as a student. Hunter also has
regularly notified the typing community of his current condition and has uploaded dozens of pictures of
him.

Here’s two more extraordinary things about Hunter: He claims to have an eidetic memory,
which gives him a nice advantage as he only needs to look at a quote once and can then
recall every word from memory, not needing to further look at the sentences while copying
the text as quickly and accurately as possible. I have yet to see proof for this though.

The second is the most unbelievable typing-related thing I’ve heard yet: Apparently, our
Dvorak User and Pianist Thomas tried to teach Hunter the Dvorak Keyboard layout in late
March 2020. After just looking at it once, Hunter was able to recite the whole keyboard

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perfectly except for one or two wrong keys. And now the banger: Hunter was able to reach
130 WPM on typeracer with it after an hour.

This sounds absolutely impossible and absurd, as even expert typists would need months
to reach that level on a new layout. However, Thomas and Hunter both insist on the
authenticity of the story, saying that Osteo had the Dvorak layout open and focused on
that, while typing the quote from his eidetic memory. Unfortunately, there’s no recording/
there happens to be no recording, as it would be amazing to watch.

In any case, I hope Hunter manages to improve his situation somehow. I couldn’t even
imagine being in a situation as bad as his and I have immense respect for his strength and
durability, though seeing him being active on Discord is reassuring at least.

IMPORTANT UPDATE ON HUNTER ON 17TH JANUARY 2021

(As of late 2022, Hunter is also a chess student of mine and we’re on good terms).

mcaso
_____________________________________________________________________

Birthday: 1997/8

Nationality:
Sex: ♂️
10FF: crackisgoodforyou
Typeracer: (mcaso123)
Nitrotype: N/A
YouTube: mcaso123alt
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 Keyboard: MSI GT83VR Sli Laptop
_____________________________________________________________________

Michael Caso is a very good typist that has been around for many years (2011). He has an
impressive 218 WPM PB on 10FF and a 156 WPM average on his typeracer account.

eiko
_____________________________________________________________________

Birthday: 4th April 2001

Nationality:
Sex: ♂️
10FF: Eikomaniac
Typeracer: (eikomaniac)
Nitrotype: N/A
YouTube: 엠레 Emre
_____________________________________________________________________

Emre Aydin is a veteran typist and the best one in the UK at the moment.

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After a terrible first impression, we quickly became friends and I nowadays I can say that
eiko is a hot, respectful, humble, competent, intelligent, conscientious adult <3 although
he has behaved much worse in the past.

Besides being an elite typist, he also plays League of Legends, speaks Korean and Turkish,
plays the piano at an advanced level and knows so much computer science that he studies
it at Warwick University and created his own typing website typegg.me

You can see most of that in the video here: Day in the Life of a Computer
Science Student (Warwick Uni)

He’s been pretty busy the past months, but he’s still present and online a lot. He
participated in the Ultimate Typing Championship 2020 and placed an amazing third
place.

Adamsky
Birthday: 2005/2006

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Nationality:
Sex: ♂️
10FF: Adamsky
Typeracer: adam1205
Nitrotype: N/A
YouTube: Adamsky
Keyboard: Corsair K70 Lux
_____________________________________________________________________

So, the reason why I said that eiko is the best UK typist for now is mainly because of this
guy: Adam Fallon. He’s only 15 or 16 years old and he shows tremendous potential: He
averages 150s on maintrack, displays burst speeds of almost 300 WPM, and climbed from
190 to a 211 WPM on 10FF in what felt like a few days.

I don’t see Adamsky in chat a lot, my impression is that he’s a quite mature and reserved
cool kid. He plays the guitar and is interested in music composition.

Although he says he’s already been typing for 8 years, I’m still psyched to see how far he
can go in his teen years.

Keegan
_____________________________________________________________________

Birthday: 29th July 2002

Nationality:
Sex: ♂️

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 ✨
10FF: KeeganT
Typeracer: Keegan (keegant)
Nitrotype: nitrotype.com/racer/keegant3
Twitch: twitch.tv/KeeganT_
YouTube: youtube.com/c/KeeganT
Keyboard: Apple Magic Keyboard
_____________________________________________________________________

I have this feeling that our community could probably write a book just about our
Canadian pal KeeganT, but seeing the amount of pages my guide is racking up right now, I
better stay brief. So… pretty good at Nitro Type, decent at 10FF with 192 WPM, but
typeracers where it’s at: Keegan has over 300,000 races on typeracer.
Yes, right. 300 thousand. Even more than the super obsessive Michael Deroche had. I’m
worried. What a lunatic. He also has so many medals that I’m almost sure he could hand
each citizen of his district two of his medals.

He actually holds a lot of typeracer records, which he may or may not have invented
himself. Oh welp.

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Anyway, judging by typeracerdata - as I haven’t known Keegan for too long - he started in
February 2017 at the age of 13 or 14 and has since then improved to somewhere in the
150s. That being said, Kegan does a lot of shenanigans on maintrack (how else are you
gonna get the most races out of everyone?) and is significantly faster than one may think.
And yep, can confirm, Keegan can easily average 160s in maintrack and has indeed almost
a 160 WPM average in the last tournament, very very impressive. Even though Keegan
says that he averages 150.

What’s most impressive about Keegan is probably his burst speed. I mean, most top typists
have that going for them, but his is especially impressive.

What else does Keegan do besides type racing? He moderates and officiates, which means
he warns/bans people posting inappropriate messages in chat or inappropriate i.e. cheated
scores on the racetrack. He also reviews texts. And has his own universe. Also, he watches
1v1s and acts as a referee there, often streaming these matches on Twitch and later
uploading them to YouTube. And real life? He’s at school, studies software & web
development, and does high-level martial arts. Impressive.
Keep it up, Keegan. Nice job.

John
Birthday: 4th April 2002

Nationality:
Sex: ♂️
10FF: NoThisIsJohn
Typeracer: John | Dvorak (nothisisjohn)

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 Nitrotype: nitrotype.com/racer/hi_i_am_epic
YouTube: john
Keyboard: Laptop
_____________________________________________________________________

I consider John, like Eiko and Andrea and Shazzy, to be a great dude and great friend.
John is silly and lighthearted and creates funny videos some of which I have linked and
can be found here: john but John is also helpful, as proven by the guides I put in the
introduction.

John is the only Dvorak user in this long list, and that’s because he’s the best Dvorak typist
that we know of. He has a Nitro Type background, but also does some typeracer as well.
Unsurprisingly for a Dvorak typist, he is pretty consistent and accurate and shines there
instead of having a super duper top speed, though he did finally hit 200 WPM on 10FF.

John averages in the 150s to 160s on typeracer and finished 8th place in the Typing
Clicking Championship behind dudes like Sean, chak, mako...

John is also a great swimmer, a spongebob fan and just an all around cool dude from

Texas, 10/10 would hang out irl.

John has become the most popular youtuber from our typing community, having several of
his videos blow up, and more than 56k subscribers.

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Sophie
_____________________________________________________________________

Birthday: N/A

Nationality:
Sex: ♀️
10FF: s0phie
Typeracer: sophiee
Nitrotype: N/A
Keyboard: VARMILO VA88M (she loves Varmilo)
_____________________________________________________________________

Sophie is quite a special lady in many aspects. One is that she’s probably done less
typeracer than everyone else I’ve talked about, but instead mains
10FF/monkeytype/typettest.io, where she only does the normal English test and has hit
210, 220 and 214 WPM respectively. Judging by monkeytype, she is (one of) the fastest
female and also the second fastest alternative keyboard layout typist, after Viper. She’s
quite active on discord and has been a lead moderator of the 10FF server for a long while
now.

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She started as a 170 WPM QWERTY typist in the #indexspacergang and eventually
picked up Colemak, before vanishing from the surface of the Earth for a year or so.
Curiously, a while after she disappeared, a fast typist named “Katja” became active in the
Colemak server. Upon finally hitting 200 WPM, katja revealed herself to actually be
“Sophie”. A surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one.

😏
The British woman has an interesting sleep schedule and an unhealthy love for Monster
Energy Drinks She’s a controversial figure and has been criticized and flamed more
than anyone I can remember (except for trolls and immature kids) for being among other
things “impulsive, biased, unfair”. However, I’ve never really had a problem with her and
I do like her very very much and have always enjoyed her company.

__________________________________________________________________

Correlation/Causation
So this section is not important for typing improvement, but nevertheless I find it quite
intriguing.

Over the last years there’s been some discussion about how/if activities and other factors
outside of typing influence your progress and abilities, and sadly I lack any evidence or
numbers and can virtually only theorycraft: Does this activity better your typing or does it
not? Does it cause improvement, or is it just a random relation?

I’d like to frustratingly inconclusively and briefly cover all topics and would be thrilled if
people could contribute their opinions and knowledge as this is only in the early
stages and quite possibly biased:

10.0 Music

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I haven’t found that music makes me a better typist, as I’ve done many PBs with and
without music. However, many typists have music specifically for typing, and it seems to
work out for them. Also, if listening to your favorite music puts you in a good mood, then
I think that’s inherently great.

I think listening to motivational music (like I have done in 1v1 matches) or hype music
can definitely help you. For example, in my 219 WPM video, I seem to have sped up due
to the rising intensity of the music, and it worked out! But I can also see (or should I say,
hear) music as being detrimental: If it has a certain beat, it might cause you to type in a
certain suboptimal rhythm that is too fast for you and thus cause you to make many
mistakes, or too slow and thus cause you to drop in speed.
In any case, definitely do try this out for yourself :)

Please answer this relevant poll: Does listening to music help with your typing?
http://www.strawpoll.me/20432827

10.1 Instruments (Piano)

Instruments are very popular, and there’s plenty of good typists who play instruments like
the Drums (Taran) or the Guitar (e.g. Danjo, a 10FF mod, Viper, Adamsky, Conspyre).

I don’t want to touch on them though, because there’s one instrument that is particularly in
question here: “Does playing the piano make you a better typist?” has been a very
frequently asked question on Discord and is a regular topic of debate.

And it makes sense, because a computer keyboard and a piano keyboard are very similar
in many ways: You ideally use all your fingers, speed as well as accuracy is a thing, it
mostly comes down to muscle memory, fingerings are very important, you can write or
play something prewritten or improvise yourself… there’s a lot of parallels and thus I’ve
always found this to be an interesting question.

Now, there’s some good, even top typists that are or were pianists: I’ve been playing the
instrument since I was around 6, eiko is a very advanced pianist, so is Thomas, Nico Borst
(organizer of the biggest online tournament ever) is, Linsk, who is basically THE
10fastfingers authority teaches professionally, and Michael Deroche is as mentioned a

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child prodigy. There’s certainly many more pianists that I haven’t included or don’t know
about.

Note:
Since this guide was released. a number of (excellent) pianists have joined our community,
many of them top typists themselves. These include colby, Helen, Eugene/egg,
penguinparadise/radioACTIVE, typos_z/Alternator, gennocide...

That’s a decent number and it’s a strong indication that piano does help with your typing
(I’ve heard numerous times that most top typists are pianists or have played it at some
point, though I’m not sure if that’s true and who qualifies as “top typist”), but piano is also
a really popular instrument, so the question of correlation or causation is difficult to
answer.

Some typists like Foggy don’t think playing the piano helped with their typing/ help with
typing in general (nor did Osu!, a rhythm game), others like CRDM, Michael Deroche and
thefatninja69 think it did, and vinni says that playing a rhythm game helped him.
I personally can say that playing the piano for a decade before even taking typing
remotely seriously most likely helped me with my finger agility, and I probably wouldn’t
be able to type this fast if I wasn’t a pianist, but I can’t say for 100% sure.

typos_z is a little below world-class in both typing and piano

So does playing the piano help with your typing? My bet would be yes, but it mustn’t
necessarily be the case for everyone. And of course, being good at the piano doesn’t make
you a good typist: My mother is a professional pianist, teacher and composer, and she
hunt-and-pecks.

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Is it worth learning the piano in order to improve your typing though? No, I don’t think so.
Firstly, I think improving at a skill indirectly through another skill isn’t really effective,
you’re better off just practicing typing directly instead. If you play the piano, you should
do so to enjoy that activity, improve at it and hopefully (re-)kindle your love for music.

And secondly, I will freely admit that I hold piano in a much higher regard than typing and
consider it a diverse and deep art with a much, much higher skill ceiling than typing letters
on a keyboard.
There’s so many elements: rhythm, melody, harmonics, notes, improvisation, pedaling,
feelings, technique, genres and eras, accompaniment, even solos in orchestras etc. that
aren’t a thing in typing and that ultimately makes them, despite their similarities, very
different disciplines; and you can without a doubt become world-class in either without
doing the other.

Here’s another relevant poll: Do you think playing the piano helps with typing?
http://www.strawpoll.me/20432971

10.2 Sports

Ok, I’m pretty clueless here. I think being healthy and fit helps you to be better at any
activity, and as an avid chess player who follows the elite scene, I know that most of the
top players are also sporty, although the game itself doesn’t involve a lot of physical
activity (although you shouldn’t underestimate the calories you can burn, chess can be
extremely taxing on your brain).

With how universal sport is - even among typists/computer nerds ;) - , the question of
correlation/causation is even harder to answer. I’ll just say that while there’s some very
best typists whom I wouldn’t exactly consider to be fit, at least as far as I can judge (which
is not far), there’s also a bunch of amazing guys: Vishy runs track, John is a swimmer,
shazzy and Alpha Panda (who achieved 208 WPM on the 10fastfingers 10 minute test) are
REALLY ripped and top bursters, and that’s just a very small portion of people in the
typing community.

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So quite evidently, you don’t need to be very physically active to be a great typist, and I
certainly do not exercise much, but it should help. Some typists seem to perform best
when they’re a little exhausted, and that makes sense due to higher blood pressure,
body temperature, alertness, more adrenaline and more oxygen intake.

10.3 Talent, Age & More

Well, there’s no denying here that typing is not exempt from the fact that innate talent -
which I can’t precisely grasp - can significantly determine how quickly you progress. But
it is also not exempt from a very nice quote: “Hard work beats talent if talent doesn’t
work hard”; meaning that you can be as talented as you want, but if you don’t go practice,
you won’t see much progress at all.

In every sport and discipline, there’s also the concept of age: generally, the younger you
start training and dedicating your life to something, the better your chances are of
becoming elite at it. Chess players generally need to start playing the game before the age
of 9 if they want to have a reasonable chance of becoming a Grandmaster.

Typing is no exception here, and the majority of “good” typists are somewhere in their
teen years.
However, it’s not obvious to me if that’s not due to the natural stronger curiosity that
younger people have towards “new” technologies (modern typing as we know it isn’t
really that old) and the time they spend on them, while older middle-aged men and women
are less likely to be interested in learning to type fast.

Although some top typists belong to the older generation, like Sean and mako, and more
that aren’t in their teens anymore, like Taran, mcaso, Kathy, Izzy, and - if I qualify - me as
well, they all started typing when they were very young; some as early as 3, like Sean.

Still, although surely it’s better to develop the muscle memory for typing when you’re a
kid, I also think that - due to the rather low skill ceiling that is innate to typing - you can
become a good typist when you start to learn typing in, say, your 20s.

While I think that every able-bodied person should theoretically be able to reach say 2
Words per Second, I have a very hard time believing that anyone can hit 200 WPM as

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some people claim, as in reality, there’s been a plethora of people who have tried and are
still not there.
You can ascribe that to laziness and lack of time or determination and such, but most
people just don’t seem able to reach the admittedly very very fast speed of 200 WPM or
even 3 WPS. They reach their ceiling somewhere prior to that and don’t seem to be able to
break through anymore.

I want you to help you as much as I can and generally wish you the best, but I consider
myself a realist rather than an optimist and won’t go around spreading encouraging lies.

Years of diligent training may eventually lead you there, but I’d say it’s also just not worth
it for most people, and I can only agree that there’s better things to do in life than reaching
a certain unnecessarily high, albeit amazing typing speed. That’s just the sad and brutal
reality as I see it (as sad and brutal as it can be not to be able to hit 200 WPM, so… not
really, at all).

Also, while many people don’t seem to like the concept of IQ and IQ tests, I’d assume
your intelligence also has direct influence on your rate of progress and muscle memory
development, though I doubt that it matters a lot with a rather straightforward activity such
as typing.
Genetics may also play a pivotal role as it does in very physical sports, though I don’t
know to what extent.

My conclusion is that everyone physically and mentally able should be able to reach a
decent typing speed, but talent and intelligence and a young age (the more, the better) help
you massively. It’s probably not too bold to say that every typist in the Top 20 is
extraordinarily talented, intelligent, or both. Some are very obsessed and dedicated to
typing, others almost couldn’t care less and became world-class almost involuntarily. If
you’ve read the descriptions of all notable great typists, you’ll know what I mean. I quite
obviously am not a neuroscientist though, so if you can irrefutably disprove my
conclusion, you are more than welcome^^

Do talent and intelligence play a role when it comes to typing progress and
maximum potential? http://www.strawpoll.me/20433096

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10.4 Brain Practice

One thing I’ve thought about is the mental practice of typing. For me, it’s possible to
practice chess in my mind aka blindfolded, to practice piano fingerings and recall entire
pieces, and I also sometimes think of typing when I don’t have a physical keyboard in
front of me.

Sometimes it’s purely imagination, but it’s likely better if you move your fingers, too. I’ve
used this to try to retain the muscle memory and key locations of layouts, especially
Dvorak. If I couldn’t recall where a certain letter was in my head anymore, I knew I had to
shake off my rust again.

I suppose it can’t hurt to try this for yourself, especially at times when you’re bored and
have nothing else to do, or can’t get around to practicing typing when you’ve already
reached a decent level.
I find that a good opportunity is when other people talk, in which case you can try to
mentally type out part of, or even everything that they say.
This also works wonderfully with subtitles in movies, shows, videos etc. and this mental
workout also helps me to focus and not lose myself in daydreams, which is something I
really have problems with. If you wanna get real crazy, lucid dreaming is also a thing.

I’d say that while “real” physical practice is still superior and should constitute almost all
your practice, this mental practice is quite fascinating and can also work to an extent. I
haven’t quite figured out how much of typing is in your head and how much is in your
fingers, so who knows, it might work amazingly well for you?

Do you think this kind of mental practice helps with actual typing?
http://www.strawpoll.me/20433187

10.5 Language Knowledge

I think that being able to understand, speak, read and write a language helps only
minimally with your typing prowess in that respective language. While knowing the
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language allows you to make sense of the words (since you’re familiar with them) and
perhaps complete sentences in your mind (which can also backfire if you say predict a
phrase wrong on typeracer), you still need to learn and practise the actual muscle memory
of the words on the layout.

You get good at whatever language you practise. For most of typeracer, that’s gonna be
English, as it’s their native language, the dominant and most important language in online
typing, and the one they’re most interested in.
Is my high score of 209 WPM in German due to the fact that I’ve lived here for all my
life? That might be a small factor, but I’d say it’s because I’ve also typed this language
most after English, on 10FF and probably in real life too.
If I had typed and practiced a similarly easy language, maybe a Germanic language like
Danish or Norwegian to the same extent, I would probably be getting 200+ scores in that
language and be doing just ok with German. I can’t say for sure, but it’s what I’d bet on.

Does knowing a language help with your typing ability in that language?
http://www.strawpoll.me/20712686

10.6 Mobile Typing Skills

Like above, I believe that having great mobile typing skills has only a marginal effect on
your computer typing skills. While you probably use the same layout for both and deepen
your understanding of where the letters are that way, the difference between typing on a
touchscreen with two thumbs/whatever (assuming you don’t swipe or send voice messages
all the time) and typing on a physical, much larger keyboard is so huge that I’d consider
them two entirely different disciplines.
Competitive mobile typing is a niche activity within the niche of competitive typing.

I’ve installed both Dvorak and Colemak as well as many language layouts on my mobile
phone in order to help me learn the new layouts, and I’d say neither one really helped
beyond perhaps imprinting the mental image of them.

I’d argue that you can use different keyboard layouts on mobile and PC without any
interference in muscle memory; in fact for example, I think people usually lose their

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QWERTY muscle memory on the PC keyboard when they learn Dvorak, but usually retain
their mobile QWERTY skills without problems.
I fear that keeping QWERTY on your phone in order not to forget it when you switch to an
alternate layout may not work out: Chances are your QWERTY muscle memory on a
physical keyboard is going to decay and eventually vanish if you don’t refresh it regularly.

__________________________________________________________________

Check Out These Links

if you’re interested

Elite Typers explain how to type faster:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wHOBehSfB8 by Titanium Tendons (unavailable at
the moment)
Sean’s webpage about himself and typing tips: Typing
Sean’s Reddit AMA featuring some advice: I'm Sean Wrona, Ultimate Typing Champion,
releasing my first book on the history of competitive typing. AMA : IAmA
Some of Kathy’s tips: About laani
A Reddit guide by Foggy: My tips and outlook on the typing community after improving
from 40 - 200 wpm. : learntyping
A Speedtyping Guide by Viper: Viper's Speedtyping Guide - General

😎
Thank you to:
-https://emojikeyboard.io/ and https://emojipedia.org/ for providing me tons of emojis
-Everyone that answered my questions when I was doing research for this guide
-Linsk, Noah Horn, Keegan, Christian Strang, and Vishy for providing useful info sources;
furthermore also everyone I mentioned in my 221 WPM video for being who they are.
-to the monkeytype community and especially miodec

__________________________________________________________________

All That Is Good Ends

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And that just about wraps it up, thank you so much for reading this small book!
Hopefully you can take away a lot from this guide :) If you learnt something, that will
have made my sleepless nights and probably 100+ hours spent on this document worth it
xD

I wish you all the best on your typing journey and may all your ambitions come true.
Realize that progress it not linear, that virtually everyone experiences frustration and
tilt, plateaus and dead ends at times, and that hitting high goals like 200 WPM are not
easy at all and will not be doable by everyone, but that milestones such as reaching 100
WPM are very much realistic, especially with some dedication, grinding, and passion!

If you have questions, feedback, grammar police instructions (more than welcome, I
wasn’t very awake during some of the nights), constructive criticism, anything of
value; or feel like you or something you made deserves a shoutout, you can message
me directly on Discord: Jashe#2000
I’m not in need of money, but if you want to express your thanks financially you can
probably send some to [email protected]

I’ll leave one ultimate tip from Taran:

If you read this, DM me that tip on

Discord :^). If you’ve read the guide fully, tell me some of your favorite and
least favorite parts and I’ll add you below

__________________________________________________________________

I just wanna say I’m incredibly grateful for the extremely positive
feedback and the popularity my guide has received in the typing
community. The fact that plenty of people benefit from the abundance of
information on this guide really makes all the work worth it. I’m glad I
went ahead and wrote something that was needed! =)

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Appendix
People who have finished reading my guide in full (be honest!):

-Josasim Samuel Karen

-Foggy Battea Batty
-richa
-Izanagii Shinryakuu retrolyze
-vulture
-Poltergeist
-legac3e Jake
-Verexus
-Octahedron
-potato
-tesseract
-nyfee
-monsterchan
-awnmp!
-HerbM
-Lithox
-maybe zarif, ze_or, glacier, Java Cuber, corey, quaranite, imaslap, raelo, Fruit, NotGate,
christopher
-a few more people whose names have eluded me
-and a lot of unknown people

Changelog or rather Major Updates:

7th July 2020:

-added available discord emotes to the corresponding typists :)
- I reduced the side distance to 1.5cm and gave up the “principle” that every chapter HAS to start on a
new page, I added a borderline between each chapter instead. I add and remove text all the time, and the
constant re-formatting was getting very annoying.
Imo this reduces the aesthetics but allows for a more fluid reading experience.
I will probably make way more formatting changes and may change the entire font.

12th July 2020:

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-So the shorturl link in all discord servers broke a few days ago and I fixed it; also I re-read the guide and
corrected some text, I've also added some more info I've thought of in the last days (especially in 7.1)

25-26th February 2021:

-So my plan was to wait until miodec implements language leaderboards for other languages in
monkeytype. But seeing that that will still take a long while and that my guide was in need of an update, I
cancelled that plan and finally got back to this :D I removed some imo cringy or incomprehensible text,
edited and added a lot of links, heavily edited the section about the typing websites, updated the layout
section, and will most likely add Smarties and Joshu to the Notable Great Typists.

9th March 2021:

-Now that I have pretty much finished updating my guide (I was slacking off quite a bit, sorry), I also
removed the suggestion feature. While some good changes came out of it, most of the suggestions were
just spam and were subsequently declined by me. I think by now, I have given people enough time to
attempt to improve the quality of the guide, and I’m quite happy with the content as of now.

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