Chris McKeon wrote:So here I am this morning ... I get to type ...
TYPING: MY TYPING SPEED:
So, I have My checked My Typing Speed. But suffice to say it is under Sixty words a Minute.
The U.S. Hawks has a typing program that will help you to improve your speed and accuracy. Here's the link:
https://ushawks.org/typing/It will look something like this:
- quick_brown_fox.gif (2.42 MiB) Viewed 995 times
The program has a lot of buttons, but don't let them scare you. The easiest thing is to just start typing by pressing the key (on your physical keyboard) corresponding to the key that's highlighted (with a yellow border). That will also be the key highlighted in white along the top.
As you type each key, that key will light up in yellow on the screen. If the key is correct, then the white highlight (at the top) will advance to the next letter to type. If the key is not correct, it will show you the incorrect key (in red) and refuse to advance until you type the proper key (and in the proper upper or lower case). As you type, the statistics will be updated as shown in green just below the space bar. It shows how many correct out of how many attempts and gives a percentage correct. It also shows the elapsed time (in seconds) and shows how many keys you have typed per second. The timer starts when you press the first key after pressing the pink "Load" button.
The default text to type is the classic:
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
That sentence contains all of the alphabetic keys, and you can type it over and over as long as you like. The program keeps track of your accuracy and speed (as mentioned above).
I just ran through "The quick brown fox ..." one time and my results are:
44/44 = 100 % over 9.217 sec ... 4.77 keys/sec
That means I typed all 44 letters with no mistakes (44/44) which is 100% accuracy. It took me a total of 9.217 seconds to type that sentence, and my average speed was 4.77 keystrokes per second. According to
Wikipedia:
Since words vary in length, for the purpose of measurement of text entry the definition of each "word" is often standardized to be five characters or keystrokes long in English, including spaces and punctuation.
By that definition my "words per minute" would be about 57 words per minute:
4.77 (letters per second) x 60 (second per minute) / 5 (letters per word)
Of course, that's a sentence that I've typed many times, so my "normal" typing isn't anywhere near that speed. And that brings me to some of the other features of the program.
You'll notice a white box at the bottom of the page that starts off with "
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.". That is the text that the program will want you to type. When you press the pink "
Load" button, whatever is in that white box will be loaded into the program for you to type. You can easily load a few other texts to practice by clicking the blue buttons to the right of the pink "
Load" button. For example, if you click the "
Declaration of Independence" button, that text will appear in the white box. Then when you click the pink "
Load" button, the program will begin prompting you to type the Declaration of Independence. The same is true for the other blue buttons (
Constitution/Bill of Rights and
Gettysburg Address). Note that some of these are shortened versions of the full documents.
So, if you want to practice by typing the Gettysburg Address, just click the "
Gettysburg Address" button, then click the "
Load" button, and start typing.
The really nice thing about this is that you can also copy and paste other text into that white box and load it for typing. So if you wanted to read something (maybe a newspaper article or a post on U.S. Hawks), you can copy and paste that text (any text) into the white box, press the "
Load" button, and you'll be reading as you type. This makes practicing your typing at least a little more interesting.
There is also a row of green buttons (below the pink and blue buttons) that contain some more specific practice texts. The "
Quick Brown Fox" button, of course, loads that text. The "
Home Keys" button loads the home keys for each hand. There are also green buttons for random alphabet characters, random numbers, and random characters of any kind.
The last row of gray buttons (below the green buttons) will load sequences for exercising one finger at a time. They will show you the "standard" key assignments for each finger and help you practice typing the keys for each finger.
It's not a perfect typing program, but it's pretty easy to use and you can practice by typing any text that you can copy and paste into the white box. If you give it a try, please let us know how you're doing.
Home
