Precision run

This lesson turns the usual target on its head. The check asks for ninety-nine percent accuracy and only thirty words a minute, and most people find it harder than the five-minute run. Ninety-nine percent means one wrong key in a hundred: on a passage of five hundred characters, five errors fail it. That is a standard a professional typist meets routinely and a fast amateur almost never does, because the amateur's speed has been bought with errors they correct as they go.

The way to type at ninety-nine percent is to slow down until you are certain of every key, and then to notice how little slower that actually is. Most errors are not caused by a finger that does not know where to go; they are caused by a finger that goes before the previous one has finished. A pause of a few hundredths of a second between keys is enough to fix that, and it is invisible in the words-per-minute figure. It is not invisible in the accuracy figure, which is why this check exists.

Backspace is allowed but every wrong key counts, corrected or not, so a correction does not rescue the accuracy figure. Read ahead, keep the pace even, and when you feel a key is uncertain, wait for it. Thirty words a minute is a generous floor; use the room.