FluencyLesson 13 of 20 · Prose
Prose with full punctuation
Paragraphs with dialogue, questions, colons and semicolons, at speed. Punctuation stops being a place where the rhythm breaks.
- New keys
- No new keys
- To pass
- Done when the check reaches 94% accuracy and 36 words a minute.
Lesson 13 is locked
It opens when you pass the check in lesson 12 (Reaches: putting it together). Lessons open one at a time, in order.
Punctuation is the most common place for a fast typist's rhythm to break, and it is worth understanding why. A letter is one decision: which finger. A punctuation mark is often three: which key, whether it needs Shift, and which Shift. At speed those extra decisions cost time unless they have been made so often that they are no longer decisions. This unit is about making them that often.
The marks you will meet are the ones you learnt in Foundations: comma, full stop, apostrophe, quotation marks, question mark, colon and semicolon. What is new is density and speed. The passages here have dialogue, which means quotation marks with commas and full stops inside them; questions inside quotations; and lists introduced by colons. They are written the way ordinary prose is written, and the target is thirty-six words a minute through all of it.
Reading ahead matters more here than anywhere else, because the punctuation tells you where the Shifts will be. If your eyes are on the word before a question mark, the left Shift is already on its way. If your eyes are on the question mark itself, it is too late, and there is a stall.
"Really?" she said. "I'd have thought so; it's the usual thing."