For any professional transcriptionist, having a high, accurate word count is essential. But touch typing is useful for other careers as well. For most office and admin workers, accurate typing is essential and for school children, confidence in typing can help build their skills in other areas.

In this article, we’ve compiled some of our favourite apps and services for improving your touch typing. Whether you’re starting out and need an introductory starter or you’re a seasoned touch typist looking for tools to keep you sharp, these excellent web-based services are sure to improve your touch typing ability.

General touch typing tips

But first, here are a few things to keep in mind when touch typing:

• Keep good posture – this is essential for fast, accurate touch typing and will prevent injuries down the track. Make sure you have a good desk and chair and don’t slouch over the keys.
• Keep it short – avoid spending long hours practising your typing, as sitting at a keyboard and staring at a screen for too long is bad for your posture and your eyes.
• Try not to look at the keyboard – touch typing is about typing quickly and effectively without looking at your keyboard. Practice makes perfect, so don’t cheat and with practice you’re guaranteed results.
• Return to the default position – those little nubs on the F and J keys are there for a reason. When you need to return to the default position with your hands, they can help orientate your fingers. The index finger of each hand should rest on one of the nubs.
• Take your time – your typing speed will improve with practice, so don’t rush the process. Concentrate on avoiding mistakes and only speed up as your fingers start hitting the correct keys out of habit.

Touch typing courses

Now here are our favourite courses teaching touch typing online.

1. Speed Typing Online

This is a great resource for improving your keyboard typing. Starting with simple finger placement exercises, these courses will help you progress from amateur to pro with fast, easy-to-complete typing lessons.

2. Typing Club

Typing Club hits all the marks for an excellent typing service. It’s a free web-based resource where you can hop on for a quick lesson or two or create a profile and track your progress.

3. Touch Typing Certificate

A 30-hour course for typists looking for accreditation and coursework. Provided by Australian Online Courses, it includes 7-day access to tutorial and administrative support and costs just $199.

4. Good Typing

This is a web-based service with 27 guided lessons and the option to choose between 23 different keyboard layouts. Sign up is free, but you’ll need to join if you want to access the coursework.

5. Typequick

10 fingers, 10 lessons, 10 hours. That’s the catch call for Typequick, a set of tailored online tutorials designed to help you achieve accurate and fast WPM.

6. typing.com

typing.com offers lessons and games for students and teachers and features free grading, classroom management, a multi-graded typing curriculum, single sign on and classroom roster syncing.

Touch typing websites & apps

These websites and apps will help to hone your touch typing skills in fun and entertaining ways.  

7. Key Hero

A simple typing test aimed at touch typists who want to stay sharp. Offering measurable goals and fast access to typing tests, it’s great for idle time when you want to push yourself to be better.

8. typeracer

A fun game for testing your typing speed while you race against others, it features a leader board, choice of languages and an ‘Instant Death’ mode.

9. Keybr.com

Keybr.com generates typing lessons matched to your capabilities and capacity. It skips the character repetition tests and instead generates readable, pronounceable words using the phonetics of your language.

10. Tux Typing

A cool game where letters fall from above and you must use your typing skills to help the penguin catch them. As you progress, the speed increases, making it harder to catch and destroy the letters with the laser beam.

11. Ratatype

A web-based typing app that employs a reward-based scoring model to encourage you to type faster. The tests are easy and help improve your accuracy by alerting you when a typo is made so you can correct it.

12. The Typing Cat

This is a web app that offers fun and intuitive games, exercises and tests. You can start using it right away, register a free account to save your progress or pay to become a Pro user and get access to advanced lessons.

Get the best touch typists working for you

At Syberscribe, we only employ the best medical transcriptionists. We pride ourselves on fast, accurate turnarounds so you’re never left waiting. Got a job that needs doing? Call Syberscribe today about your transcription needs on 1300 764 482 or contact us online.