10 Typing Habits to Fix, and the Evidence Behind Each

Ashiqur Rahman··7 min read

The typing habits most worth fixing fall into three groups: how you type (looking at the keys, inconsistent fingers, rushing, ignoring errors, practising without a plan), how you sit (bent wrists, a badly placed keyboard, poor posture) and how you work (no breaks, typing through pain). For each one below we say what the evidence supports and what is only our suggestion, because the two are easy to mix up in typing advice.

Where we cite research, it is mainly the large typing study Observations on Typing from 136 Million Keystrokes (Dhakal, Feit, Kristensson and Oulasvirta, CHI 2018, 168,960 volunteers) and the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration's computer workstation guidance. These studies describe what fast typists do and what a neutral workstation looks like. They cannot prove that any single habit is the cause of slow typing or pain.

Technique habits

1. Looking at the keys

Evidence: In the University of Cambridge's write-up of the study, the researchers advise learning to type without looking at your fingers, because the motor system then picks up fast sequences for common letter combinations on its own. Instead: keep your eyes on the text. The live keyboard in the lessons shows the next key so you do not need to look down, and slowing down helps you resist the urge.

2. Using your fingers inconsistently

Evidence: In the study, participants who reported using more fingers tended to be faster (correlation r = 0.38), and fast typists reported about 8.4 fingers against 5.3 for slow typists. The same Cambridge write-up notes that some self-taught typists with fewer than ten fingers are as fast as touch typists, so the real issue is consistency, not a magic number. The authors also hypothesise that the many wrong-letter errors among slow typists come from being less consistent and having a weaker mental map of finger positions. Instead: pick one finger per key and stick to it. The keyboard guide shows the standard map.

3. Rushing past your accuracy

Evidence: Across the study, faster typists made fewer mistakes: speed was negatively correlated with uncorrected errors (r = −0.21), error corrections (r = −0.36) and keystrokes per character (r = −0.4). Speed bought with errors is not how the fast typists got there. Instead: ease off until you can finish runs at 95% accuracy or better. That 95% bar is our suggestion. More in how to improve typing accuracy.

4. Not noticing or fixing errors

Evidence: Slow typists left significantly more errors uncorrected in the study, which the authors suggest could mean they are less able to detect their mistakes, and they note that correcting errors is costly because you have to find them in the text. Instead: fix mistakes when you notice them, and look at your weakest keys on the progress page so you can work on the cause.

5. Practising without a plan

Evidence: The researchers advise practising deliberately, because people can slip back into less efficient habits. Instead (our suggestion): short sessions of 10 to 20 minutes on most days, mixing lessons, practice and the occasional speed test, and checking your trend over weeks.

Setup habits

6. Bent or anchored wrists

Evidence: OSHA's keyboard guidance says wrists should be straight and in line with the forearms and should not bend up, down or sideways while you type. Its guidance on wrist and palm supports says hands should move freely and stay above the rest while typing, and that the pad should touch the heel or palm of the hand when you pause, not the wrist itself. Instead: let your hands float while you type, and rest them between bursts.

7. A keyboard that is too high or too low

Evidence: OSHA says elbows should be about the same height as the keyboard and hang comfortably at your sides. A keyboard that is too low tends to bend the wrists upward, and one that is too high pushes the shoulders up. OSHA adds that the keyboard feet may need to be raised or lowered to keep wrists straight, but should not be used if they increase wrist bending. Instead: set the chair and desk height so your elbows meet the keyboard.

8. Poor seated posture and screen height

Evidence: OSHA's checklist asks for thighs roughly parallel to the floor, feet flat or on a footrest, the back supported by the chair, and the top of the screen at or below eye level. Instead: work through that checklist once. Our posture and wrist pain guide turns it into a five-minute setup.

Working habits

9. Sitting and typing without breaks

Evidence: OSHA's checklist asks whether you can alternate between sitting and standing and vary keyboard work with other tasks or micro-breaks. In the pages we checked it gives no fixed interval. Instead: pick a rhythm you will keep, such as standing and shaking out your hands when you finish a task.

10. Typing through pain or tiredness

Evidence: The UK's National Health Service advises seeing a GP if symptoms of repetitive strain injury or carpal tunnel syndrome are not going away or are getting worse. Instead: stop when you notice pain, numbness or tingling, and get it checked. When you are merely tired, our suggestion is to stop practising once accuracy drops sharply, since you are mostly rehearsing errors by then.

Advice with weak support

Some familiar typing advice we could not back up with the sources above:

  • "Don't hit the keys so hard." It sounds sensible, but the OSHA keyboard page we checked gives no guidance on typing force, so we make no claim either way.
  • "Typing causes carpal tunnel syndrome." Two systematic reviews describe the evidence as limited or insufficient. See our posture guide for the details.
  • "You must use all ten fingers." The research suggests consistency matters more than a specific count, though a fixed finger map is the easiest way to get consistency.

How to check your own habits

  • Look at your progress page: the heatmap and weakest keys point to technique problems.
  • Take three speed tests of the same length and compare accuracy as well as WPM.
  • Run through the posture checklist above once.

To go further, read how to type faster and touch typing for beginners.

Sources

Written by Ashiqur Rahman. Figures attributed to a source were checked against that source. If you spot something wrong, tell me and I will correct it.

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