English · Beginner 1(a)
Learn to type in English
Home row anchors
Settle both hands on the home row: A S D F for the left, J K L ; for the right.
These are the keys you press, and in English they produce exactly the letters printed on them — nothing is remapped and nothing is hidden behind a modifier.
Learning to type in English
English is written in the Latin alphabet. Every practice word here stays inside it: 26 letter keys and nothing beyond them.
English makes no demands of your hardware at all. No layout to install, no dead keys, no modifier chords — 100 common words spelled entirely from the letter keys. If you have never touch typed before, this is the sensible place to start, and the sensible thing to start with is accuracy.
Progress is measured in clean passes, not time spent. Nine stages, a few drills each, three accurate repetitions per drill by default — and the counter does not move for an attempt with errors in it. The speed test and the games draw on one bank of 100 common English words — 22 distinct characters in all, averaging 3.4 written units per word.
Of the 22 characters these 100 words use, one alone accounts for roughly 12%. Frequencies like that are why touch typing can be learned at all — you are not memorising 22 equally important characters, you are automating a handful and filling in the rest over time.
Accuracy first is not a slogan, it is the ordering that works. Typing English quickly at a 90% hit rate is slower in practice than typing it steadily at 99%, because every error costs a backspace, a re-aim and the rhythm you had.
- Writing system
- Latin
- Keyboard layout
- US QWERTY
- Direction
- left to right
- Practice words
- 100
- Distinct characters
- 22
- Average word
- 3.4 units
Characters you will press most in these English words
- e40
- o34
- t30
- a27
- h27
- i22
- n19
- w18
- r17
- s15
- d13
- l13
Counted across the 100 practice words — the characters worth getting right first.
the of and a to in is you that it he was for on are as with hisThe layout everything else is measured against
English is the reason QWERTY looks the way it does, and it is the only major language whose alphabet the standard keyboard fits exactly. Twenty-six letters, twenty-six keys, no diacritics required — a coincidence of history rather than design, and one that makes English an unusually gentle place to learn touch typing.
US and UK QWERTY differ, though only around the punctuation. The UK layout gives the pound sign its own position, moves the at sign and the quotation marks, and adds a key next to the left shift. Programmers notice; most other people never do.
Worth knowing if you will type other languages later: almost every Latin-alphabet layout in the world is QWERTY with additions or small swaps. Learn the finger positions here and the great majority of them cost you a few keys rather than a fresh start.
Questions about typing in English
Do I need an English keyboard?
No. Nothing in these English practice words leaves the 26 letter keys already printed on your keyboard, so there is nothing to install or configure.
Which English keyboard layout do these lessons use?
US QWERTY. The 100 practice words between them use 22 of those 26, so 4 characters never come up in the practice text — these are the commonest words rather than an even sweep of the layout. The keyboard guide below the typing area shows the keys you actually press, which for an input method are the Latin ones already printed on them.
What will I actually be typing in English?
Sequences of the keys each stage has introduced — single letters first, then pairs, then short chunks — written in the US QWERTY layout. The point of the course is the position of a key rather than the vocabulary. The 100 common English words in the practice bank are what the speed test samples and what the games pull from, once the positions stop needing thought.
Why does a drill need three clean passes?
Because one correct attempt proves you can do it and three prove you can repeat it, which is the thing that eventually becomes automatic. Attempts with mistakes in them do not count towards the three — not as a punishment, but because practising an error is how an error becomes a habit. Three is the default rather than a rule: Settings will take it down to one or up to ten.
Do I need to know English to use these lessons?
No. The material here is typing practice rather than a language course — you can work through it without understanding a word, and plenty of people do exactly that when they need to type a script for work. If you do speak English, you will simply predict what is coming sooner, and prediction is most of what typing speed is.
Should I look at the keyboard while I learn?
No, and this is the one piece of advice worth being stubborn about. A glance down is not just a pause — it rehearses the habit of reading the keys instead of remembering them, which is precisely the habit the course exists to replace. Covering your hands for the first fortnight is unpleasant and works.
Is English hard to type?
No — English is about as gentle an introduction to touch typing as exists. No accents, no layout change, a fairly compact inventory of 22 characters across the practice bank, and every key already under your fingers. Whatever difficulty you meet is the difficulty of touch typing itself, not of this language.
Do I need an account, and is it free?
No, and it is free either way. Every lesson, drill, test and game works signed out, with your progress kept in this browser. An account adds three things only: your progress and settings follow you to another device, your streak survives clearing your browser data, and you can appear on the leaderboards under a name you choose.
Also in English: the speed test and typing games.
Other languages written in Latin: Esperanto, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, German. Or browse all 86 by writing system.
Further reading
- Typing accented letters and symbolsDead keys, AltGr, Option, compose and the Unicode escape hatch: the five ways to type é, ñ, ü or ß, and which one is actually worth learning.
- Does your keyboard matter?Mechanical against membrane, laptop against desktop, split against straight. What genuinely changes your typing, what only changes how it feels.
- How long a typing test should beFifteen seconds, one minute and five minutes measure three different things. Which length to use, and why comparing results across them is meaningless.