Let words and commands flow through your hands like water
By: Cobbi Liu
Tags: School, Computer, Keyboard, Productivity, Typing

According to studies, the average writing speed of a secondary student is around 15 words-per-minute (WPM), which is reasonable. Then, logically, their typing speeds should be at least double. Experts recommend middle schoolers to have a range of around 30–45 WPM, and for them to have memorized the entire keyboard alphabet. This increases to 45–60+ WPM for high school. For my standards (which should soon be yours 😉), however, these are the minimum requirements, and I’ll explain why.

Most researchers do not incorporate punctuation and symbols, much less other keys, into their estimates, and often simply discuss pure words or letters. However, once a child moves past primary, it would be simply wrong to leave out proficiency of the other two dozen keys. Let’s start with a standard Apple Magic Keyboard layout.

These are the alphanumeric (letters and numerals) keys, and they’re what make up most of your keypresses. Pretty straightforward.

These are the navigation keys, usually as a supplement to doing things on the screen with the mouse. For example, you can press enter to save a file when the button is highlighted.

These are the editing/toggle keys. Enter and tab are in a weird spot because they are both used in text editing (tab indent, enter for next line), and navigation (tab for next item, enter for confirmation).

These are the function keys. Most people rarely go into the top row, but for keyboard shortcuts and special controls on Mac, they’re quite handy. For example, you can set F9 as a function to show your desktop without hiding a window or creating a new desktop.

Last but not least, these are the modifier keys, otherwise known as the keyboard shortcut enablers. I’m sure you’ve used command/control c or v to copy.

Why is all this important?

The computer makes us do things faster than usual, do we need to be EVEN faster?

Yes.

All students are busy with a bunch of things, not just schoolwork, but maybe projects, competitions, sports, so they must learn to save time wherever they can. If, instead of spending 2 hours on an essay-only because you type slow-, you can spend 1 and go rest for an hour, why won’t you do it?

Plus-and I do not condone procrastination-if you really get in a pinch, and have to meet a deadline, you will have the skillset to at the minimum not be doomed. Two years ago, I had a deadline due at 8am, but I got home at 3am due to an airplane delay. One of my classmates would probably have given up by then, but I was able to finish the entire research process and write up a 1500 word essay within 3 hours, and even got 2 hours of sleep. But, do not try this at home.

But, being fast on the keyboard doesn’t just mean you write faster. You will open and use applications faster, be able to multitask, program like a pro…Wanna be like those movie hackers who open, move, and close windows without going near the mouse? You got it! The options are endless, and you might even invent some yourself!

Wow! So how can I learn?

​ The easiest way to learn is through practice, either through writing essays, notes, or reports. However, there are many sites that can help you get warmed up and/or pinpoint your weak spots.

This site is great for practice with specific letters or symbols, but it is generally less intuitive since the words are randomized. There are also high-scores and multiplayer options which makes the experience more dynamic.

This site is good for a wide range of typing skills from timed to number practices. I suggest doing “quotes” when you become proficient enough, as they’re the most realistic for schoolwork scenarios.

Typing.com is one of the more commercialized typing tools. It has a lot of analytics, courses, tests, games, and resources if you are willing to pay, but most of it is free for our purposes, so I do not recommend paying. It requires an account and is a lot slower to load, so once you get good enough just start practicing real texts on other sites.

Once you are sufficiently comfortable with your abilities, you can go on typeracer to race international people or your friends. They’re some really fast people up here but don’t get discouraged, they got years on you.

You can choose how you want to spend your time on these sites, but I recommend mastering all of the alphanumeric keys, then punctuation and symbols, and then slowly increasing your speed after that either through constant writing or fun racing competitions. There are the odd sites which allow practice of modifier keys for keyboard shortcuts as well, but I preferred just learning by doing in the real. Once you get the hang of alphanumeric keys, there are only so few left to learn.

​ Now that I have brainwashed you with keyboard information, I would like to propose a few guidelines for keyboarding goals.

For G6–8

Mastery of QWERTY keyboard letters.

Note that there are other layouts like “Colemak,” and “Dvorak,” which if you’re interested in learning would really help increase your speed and reduce finger-tiring. QWERTY was designed for the typewriter, which is now beyond “dead,” so though it is the most common layout it is also quite problematic for the digital age.

Achieve a minimum speed of 40 WPM (without punctuation). For context that would be a 1200 word punctuation-less essay in half an hour if you can keep it up.

Start to touch-type periods and commas.

Mastery of basic keyboard shortcuts like: Cmd/Ctrl + C/V/A/N/T (copy, paste, select all, new file, new tab...). A quick google search will give you a dozen more.

For High School

Achieve a minimum speed of 50WPM with punctuation. For context that would be a full-fledged 1200 word essay in 24 minutes if you can maintain it.

Ability to touch-type all major alphanumeric characters (including numbers) and symbols: ,.=-+/?:;"!()#*@[space] ...

You may not get a rarer symbol not the first try, but you should know its position within a 1-key radius.

Mastery of all common keyboard shortcuts within each of the main apps you use (pages, chrome…). Here’s a link to MacOS’s System Shortcuts. Usually you will be able to find keyboard shortcuts for an app within its help documents or preferences. Additionally, you can download Cheat Sheet on Mac to help.

Mastery of all editing, toggle, and navigation keys- command/control , tab , capslock , delete , enter , esc . (Using keyboard shortcuts fluently requires you to master all modifier keys as well: command/control , option , shift (both sides), alt/option (both sides), fn )

However, once you hit Grade 11, or freshman year, I would highly suggest going even further to make you a productivity master on the keyboard, or throw all you’re turtle friends behind.

Achieve 75+ WPM with punctuation and symbols-As of the start of G12. Me and Uzen both sit around 100 [monkeytype.com-quotes-medium], me on QWERTY and him on DVORAK.

If you would like to make yourself feel better, you can also test your speed with pure words, though practically it amounts to nothing. I achieve 138 WPM max under such conditions.