FluencyLesson 5 of 20 · The words that carry English

Carrier words, first hundred

The hundred most frequent words in English, at volume. If your hands know these as shapes, half of every text is free.

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To pass
Done when the check reaches 94% accuracy and 27 words a minute.

Lesson 5 is locked

It opens when you pass the check in lesson 4 (Rhythm: putting it together). Lessons open one at a time, in order.

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Foundations introduced the idea that about a hundred words make up half of written English. Fluency takes it seriously. This lesson and the next are nothing but those words, and the hundred after them, typed in mixed order until they stop being letters and become shapes. It is the least glamorous practice in the course and the most effective, because these are the words you will type most for the rest of your life, and every fraction of a second saved on the word the is saved thousands of times a day.

The order below is not alphabetical and not by length; it is roughly by frequency, so the first line matters more than the last. Type them as words. Do not spell them. When you see with, your hands should already be moving before you have consciously read the letters, and if they are not, that is the word to repeat until they are.

qwertyuiop{[}]|\asdfghjkl:;"'zxcvbnm<,>.?/
The, of, and: nearly a tenth of all written English between them.

These drills do not block on errors. They are meant to be typed at a steady pace with your eyes ahead, and an error should be fixed in one stroke. The check target rises to twenty-seven words a minute; on these words that should feel like a walk.