can't pass the 75 wpm limit

By unknownbeing - updated: 4 years, 11 months ago - 18 messages

i have been practicing for about 1 month and 15days, 2hours a day....

using various sites (10fastfingers, keyhero, typeracer)

but I seem to have hit the limit of 70~80 wpm for this whole period.

(i used to be in the 60~70wpm without much practice)

only very occasionally (1 in 50 ) would i sometimes be in the 80s wpm,

but i have never been higher than 90 wpm,

and 100 wpm even in the basic 10fastfingers seems to be

unreachable to me.

is there some kind of physical limit (finger, hand?

reaction time, muscle memory or brain speed whatever)

to each human, such that they hit their limits inherited to them,

because I often see younger people (kids?) with less practice hitting over 100wpm

within a short time, which seems typing speed requires some kind of talent
By mothertrucker - posted: 4 years, 11 months ago

Yeah, if you started typing early on in your life, it's more likely you're gonna reach greater speeds without much effort at all. For example, I was already around 80-90 wpm when I was 11 or 12. Now I average about 130 WPM.
By aceisthatguy - posted: 4 years, 11 months ago

I started typing when I was 18. Could barely touch type at all. I would average around 18-20 wpm. Nowadays I average 80-90wpm. A lot of times I am over the 90's. Rarely I hit the 100's as well. It's all about your word accuracy. If it is less than 95 you won't go over 80. That is where the trick lies. Focus on your accuracy first. Try to get 100 percent. You will slow down at first, but after a while you will see your speed shoot upwards. That's how it works
By bayonetta - posted: 4 years, 11 months ago

Agreed, improving your accuracy is key, any fumbling will really plummet your score. I used to type on average around 90-100 but with high accuracy I can occasionally hit 130-140.
By user751476 - posted: 4 years, 11 months ago

We have the same problem. I've been on here for almost a year now and I still can't seem to regularly hit 80s, always stuck in 70s. I can count on 1 hand how many times I've hit 90s.
By kevint - posted: 4 years, 11 months ago

When I was in college and typing real papers and notes and things like that that really required a lot of typing per day I was a very fast typist (probably 110 wpm). Since I have transitioned to a desk job where I only type about 1000 words per day, I would say that my typing speed has slowed to around 55-60 wpm. When I started doing the keyhero, I think that my scores reflected that. Now after about a month of practice, I can type in the 100s on the right tests, but for the most part, I am somewhere between 65 - 85 depending on the complexity.

Based on what I know about you from what you stated above, I don't think that you and I are that different from one another, however, I am just a little further down the track. Over the course of about 7 weeks, I have typed somewhere around 1100 tests and I think that my score has increased by about 10-20%, which is quite a bit really. I am sure that if you continue, you will be breaking through the 80wpm barrier soon and then probably into the 100s some in the next month or so, just like I am now.

Finally, it is not how fast you type, it is how well you compose what you are saying. That is by far the most important thing. Secondly, if you are typing 60wpm, that is faster than ~57% of the typists on keyhero that have typed at least 100 tests. That's pretty good. And that is probably faster than 75-80% of all typists in the world, so I would not worry about it that much. At this point it is about self gratification, and nothing more.

Regards,

KevinT
By boi - posted: 4 years, 11 months ago

I get where you're coming from.
Sometimes, I get in these stages where I can't type any faster, which I like to call "typing blocks" (is that an actual term?), and it's certainly very frustrating. One time, a typing block had lasted so long that I pretty much quit typing for a solid week in my annoyance.
Eventually, though, I decided to come back after that typing block, and the results were scary. I had increased by about 10 WPM, in the week that I had literally done nothing. Weird, right? I might be young, but 10 WPM is still a lot.
Ever since then I've been trying to find ways out of typing blocks. So far, the best way to get out of typing blocks for me, at least, is to spend a couple days focusing entirely on accuracy- and not the least bit on speed (You can log off of your account if you like, so it doesn't effect your WPM chart. That's what I do.). Then, when I've gotten a pretty good accuracy percentage going, I'll take a break for a couple days- then come back on KeyHero and start typing again, but focusing on speed. Usually, I'll increase by a couple WPM after the process.

I think your main problem is that you're spending so much time typing, and not taking breaks. Sure, the more practice the better, but you've got to rest. Change it up a little. Experiment with different ways to get out of typing blocks (like I did!). I might be young, so my advice might not be totally legible for you, but trying won't hurt.
Hope I helped!
By roxiun - posted: 4 years, 11 months ago

I never practice typing but I can average over 110WPM (on my personal computer).
I would reccomend coding because it improves your typing speed.
Updated 4 years, 11 months ago
By vinicui - posted: 4 years, 11 months ago

Everyone improves at different speeds. If you are really putting in all this practice, I'd say stick to less websites. Believe it or not, the font, background, and the way they calculate wpm(sometimes different) can effect your status of wpm rather substantially. I myself just turned 14 and have been casually typing for around a year. For 1 month of practice, I think your off to a great start in terms off improvement. What makes a good typer is normally the small things like, posture, how well you remember the layout, or the way you focus(more of a me thing). Remember not to beat yourself up as you really are doing great if your statistics are correct. I was stuck at 75ish wpm for a while, and only recently broke the barrier. Be consistent. Practicing 20 minutes a day for the whole week is so much better than practicing for 2 hours 1 day a week. I don't think anyone who doesn't have disabilities is limited to 75 wpm. Don't practice in suboptimal conditions. That means that if you were doing great in the morning, and then later in the afternoon you're not beating your average, take a break for a few hours and come back. There's no point in typing when you're doing bad unless you know what you're doing bad AND have the ability to improve on it. Happy typing boys and girls.
By vinicui - posted: 4 years, 11 months ago

Coding is controversial; it can help improve typing coordination, which could lead to an increase of wpm, but only really on difficult quotes that require characters such as "(" or "~". In the long run, it's not very useful mate.
By vinicui - posted: 4 years, 11 months ago

Most of these factors are 100% true. Good read boi!
By nilsthebest - posted: 4 years, 11 months ago

"(" Isn't that hard to type. It's just right above T.

Regarding coding to improve WPM, I 100% agree. I've recently started learning python, which is a strongly typed programming language. With just that, I increased my avg WPM by ~15 in the past month.
By unknownbeing - posted: 4 years, 11 months ago

Thanks for all the helpful comments,

I think I should give some days of rest (which i can't? (maybe addiction?)), since

I think my sense of typing is kinda numbed from typing too much.

and also reduce my mistakes, I seem to have developed strange habit of making similar mistakes

(like "enought" instead of enough, etc) and focus more on accuracy.

thx for the advice for programming (some time later will try learning)

Any more tips for not only me but also for others in similar situations would always be welcomed~!
By seinfeld - posted: 4 years, 11 months ago

I can't pass 200.00 WPM! Don't trust this website's logic... too buggy. Who developed this POS? Actually, I think you might be doing well over 75.
By speciality - posted: 4 years, 11 months ago

If you are a fast typer move to typeracer they allow over 200 because they realize people can actually type insanely fast
By user73073 - posted: 4 years, 11 months ago

All comments have really been helpful. I've been stuck around 50 to 60WPM for many years. My maximum speed on this app is 75 with an average accuracy of 95%. My target has been to get a consistent 80WPM. I have tried many of the cues given previously but I have reassurance reading all these posts especially with the idea of improving accuracy. Although I have also noticed that when I try to focus on accuracy and type slower than my usually speed, I tend to make even more mistakes unless I speed up.
Updated 4 years, 11 months ago
By boi - posted: 4 years, 11 months ago

That's awesome! You're right- people are giving a lot of good tips on this forum.
As for the part concerning your accuracy and how if you slow down, you make more mistakes, that probably means that you're used to typing words on the keyboard rather than fully remembering the actual words/letters. That's one of the things I really dislike about KeyHero, in that sense.
Because you probably are used to typing words instead of characters, I would suggest that slowing down is even more necessary for you. It doesn't matter if you're making mistakes- you're still learning. I'd also recommend trying out other typing websites, since KeyHero doesn't really offer any typing tests that aren't just words.
Good luck!
By user263053 - posted: 4 years, 11 months ago

When I was typing at 60-75 wpm, I thought 85 was the limit. When I was typing at 85-90, I thought 100 was the limit. Etc. You've been typing for a month, that's nothing. Think about how it's really easy to double the number of computers you have when you only have one, but it's much harder to double it when you already have 10. It only took me 2 weeks to go from 40 to 60, then one month to go from 60s to 70s. From 70s to 80s it took me 4 months. 6 months to go from 80 to 90. And so on. I'd say every healthy (without any joint diseases for example or a damaged wrist/finger, etc) person should be able to reach at least 100 wpm if they put in the work (which is hundreds of hours, so not easy). Pretty sure 70s isn't your actual limit. You just have to keep going at it.
By thegiraffian - posted: 4 years, 11 months ago

-- tl;dr --
If you're typing with a good accuracy (around 97%), try doing drills that push your maximum WPM, or the fastest you can type (somewhat disregarding accuracy). If you aren't getting that accurate, try getting more accurate.
---------

To be honest, I'm quite a bit rusty; due to school and other circumstances, I haven't been able to practice typing for about half a year. I'm back down to averaging around high 110's, but I used to type in the 130's consistently, often scoring in the 140's. In my experience, I found that there are three major walls to break in typing speeds: one at around 60 WPM, 80 WPM, and another at 120 WPM.

At 60 WPM, you'd be considered a good beginner -- to break this wall, I just did typing drills and the like, which got me up to around mid 80's. From around 80 WPM, you need to stay accurate to break into the 100's. It's important to get into the groove of consistently getting around 97% accuracy at this point; you'll see why later. Once you break the 100 WPM wall, I found that it's really easy to get up to the 120's with enough practice. But from there on, it was a significant struggle to break through to 130's, and that, I believe, is due to a large misconception that I had regarding how to get high WPM.

While it's true that the vast, VAST majority of people typing above 130 WPM have accuracies ranging around 98%, simply improving my accuracy when I was typing around 120 WPM simply did not help. In fact, I think the pursuit of higher accuracy actually caused me to slow down. So I did some googling.

There are two "kinds" of WPM you should be keeping track of. One is your "consistent WPM", measuring how fast you can type with reliable accuracy at any time. The other is your "max WPM", which measures your maximum WPM, not putting so much emphasis on how accurately you can type, but rather when you're really just flying your fingers across the keyboard.

Upon trial and error, and based on the results I got, I think the best way to increase WPM is this: Try your best to get up into your maximum WPM as much as you can, and when there are harder words coming up, default back to your consistent WPM speed.

The thing about that approach though, is that it's useless if your maximum WPM is slow. This is where you change up your practice.

The only way to increase your maximum WPM is to let your fingers and brain get used to typing that fast. You shouldn't put as much emphasis on accuracy when practicing like this, focus only on how fast CAN you type. This is where the accuracy base established at the 80 WPM wall is going to become important -- if you have a good foundation, it will be easier to maintain higher accuracy while sprinting your fingers across the keyboard.

Now, I hit this major WPM wall at 120 WPM, but it still may be relevant to you. If you're typing with good accuracy (around 97%) and still scoring around 75 WPM, I'd say that's an issue with not having the maximum WPM. Try the method I used, see if it helps. I started getting tangible results at around 1.5 weeks in, but I am a student, so I may have had an easier time.

Good luck and have fun, no point in getting frustrated.