I’ve always been a touch typer. That’s the typing method I was taught in grade school. They put a wooden box over our fingers so we couldn’t cheat and it worked. I’ve felt pretty comfortable with my typing abilities since then but I suppose there is always room for improvement. After all, I know someone who can PROGRAM through touch typing…
I saw a post on Lifehacker about Typing Web, one of the many services for improving typing skills. I’ve checked out many of these services and have been impressed by the tests/drills/feedback that Typing Web offers. I’m on my way through the courses (it’s free) and plan to post my progress. They test you before you start, to track progress (speed & accuracy). I weighed in at 73 wpm.
So I couldn’t resist, I had to see who had the record for fastest typing speed. According to WikiAnswers:
Miss Barbara Blackburn holds that record. Her top speed is 212 wpm. She also maintained 150 wpm for 50 minutes once!
thanks to alcomm on Flickr for the photo
2 Comments
dan
October 18th 2009 @ 11:52 AM #
I got 94 WPM!! Really exciting stuff here. Like a lot of other things, there is an art to taking the typing test—whether it goes against the test itself is something open to interpretation. With a high accuracy percentage, it is technically not necessary to go back to correct errors. There is an acceptable error percentage and anything above that does not impact the result of the test.
The strange thing about all of this is that, with real life typing I go for 100% accuracy, right? I don’t use the spell checker for a speed increase, I use it to check my spelling. I wonder what the data entry people would say…
Erin
October 20th 2009 @ 05:03 AM #
I’m pretty sure the data entry people view themselves as another species…. that which does not make any typos and at super human speed. If spell check was meant for speed instead of correcting spelling errors I am not sure how much use the delete button would get.