In this guide
Train accuracy first. Speed follows from it. Doing this the other way round is the most common reason people practise for months and go nowhere.
Here is why, in numbers rather than platitudes.
A mistake costs about five keystrokes
Type a wrong letter and you have to: notice it, stop, press backspace, retype the character, and restart your rhythm. Call it five keystrokes and a stumble for one wrong key.
So compare two typists producing the same text:
| Typist A | Typist B | |
|---|---|---|
| Raw speed | 70 WPM | 55 WPM |
| Accuracy | 90% | 98% |
| Errors per 500 chars | 50 | 10 |
| Keystrokes wasted fixing | ~250 | ~50 |
| Finished text, realistically | slower | faster |
Typist A is 27% faster on paper and loses. This is not a thought experiment — it is what most self-taught fast typists actually look like.
Errors are subtracted from your score directly
Net WPM has the penalty built into the formula:
Ten mistakes in a two-minute test costs you five WPM off the top. There is no way to out-run it — the arithmetic is in how WPM is calculated.
The deeper reason: you are training something
Every time you type a word wrong, you have practised typing it wrong. Motor memory does not distinguish between the version you meant and the version your fingers performed — it reinforces whatever actually happened.
How to actually train accuracy
Set a floor and hold it. Pick 97%. Any run below it does not count, no matter how fast it was.
Slow down until you stop missing. Usually 60–70% of your comfortable speed. It will feel absurdly slow. That is the correct feeling.
Never race a word you are unsure of. Hesitating is fine. Guessing is not — a guess is a coin flip that trains the wrong movement half the time.
Watch which keys fail. Errors are not evenly spread. Most people have five or six problem transitions doing most of the damage — commonly ct, br, mn, ol, and anything involving the little fingers. Drill those specific pairs, not the whole alphabet.
Do not backspace during practice runs. Finish the sentence wrong. You are measuring, not producing — and the habit of instantly correcting hides how often you are wrong.
When to start pushing speed
When you can hold 97%+ accuracy for a full three-minute run, start letting speed rise. Push until accuracy drops below 95%, then back off. Sit just under the edge.
That boundary moves outward on its own over weeks. Chasing it is what improvement actually is.
The exception
If your accuracy is already 99%+ and your speed is stuck, you are being too careful — over-checking, correcting things that were not wrong, refusing to commit to a word. That is its own plateau and the fix is the opposite: push speed until you start making mistakes again.
99%+ accuracy at a slow speed is not mastery. It is caution.
Run a test and look at both numbers. Whichever is worse is the one to work on — and for most people, that is accuracy.
Common questions
- Should I focus on typing speed or accuracy first?
- Accuracy. A single mistake costs roughly five keystrokes to notice, delete and retype, so errors erase speed gains faster than they can be earned. Aim for 97% accuracy before pushing for speed.
- What is a good typing accuracy percentage?
- 97% or above is a good working target, and 95% is the minimum worth accepting. Below that, correction time cancels out most of your raw speed.
- Can accuracy be too high?
- Yes. Sustained accuracy above 99% at a slow speed usually means over-checking rather than mastery. If speed has stalled while accuracy is near perfect, push faster until small errors reappear.
Read next
- TechniqueWhich Finger Types Which KeyThe full map, and the single rule underneath it that means you barely have to memorise anything.3 min
- TechniqueHow to Stop Looking at the KeyboardThe glance down costs more than you think — and the fix is uncomfortable on purpose.3 min
- Technique9 Typing Habits That Are Holding You BackMost people are not slow because they lack practice. They are slow because of two or three specific habits.3 min