FluencyLesson 7 of 20 · The words that carry English
Pairs and triples
The letter pairs and triples that English reuses constantly: th, he, in, er, an, ing, ion, ent. Know them and every word gets shorter.
- New keys
- No new keys
- To pass
- Done when the check reaches 94% accuracy and 29 words a minute.
Lesson 7 is locked
It opens when you pass the check in lesson 6 (Carrier words, second hundred). Lessons open one at a time, in order.
Below the level of words there is a level of pairs. A few dozen two-letter sequences account for a large share of all the letters typed in English: th, he, in, er, an, re, on, at, en, nd, ti, es, or, te, of, ed, is, it, al, ar, st, to, nt, ng. Three-letter sequences follow the same pattern: the, and, ing, ion, tio, ent, ati, for, her, ter. A hand that knows these as single movements can assemble almost any word out of two or three of them.
This is the mechanism behind fluent typing. Fluent typists are not faster on individual keys; they have a larger vocabulary of movements, and most of that vocabulary is these pairs and triples. Practising them directly, first in nonsense strings and then inside real words, is one of the few kinds of drill that transfers to everything else.
The nonsense drills will feel odd. That is fine. The point is to type the pairs as movements without the distraction of meaning, so that when the real words arrive the movements are already there. The check is ordinary prose, dense with the pairs you have just practised.
th he in er an re on at en nd the and ing ion ent