What’s in the drill
The Long Words challenge keeps only the words of seven letters or more from our 1,000-word English list: 253 words, from “because” and “through” to “information” and “international”. As the drill draws them, they average about 7.8 letters, two-thirds longer than the list as a whole, which averages about 4.7.
This drill uses the 1,000-word list on purpose. The 200 most common words contain only eight words of seven letters or more, too few to practice with.
Why long words are hard
- More chances to slip. Every extra letter is one more keystroke that has to be right.
- More to lose. A word with one uncorrected mistake earns no credit. Here each word is worth about nine characters with its space, against about six in the full list.
- More to hold in mind. You can’t take in a long word at a glance the way you take in “the”; you read it while you type it.
WPM itself doesn’t penalize long words, because it counts characters, five to a word. If your speed drops here, it’s the typing, not the math.
Technique
- Read ahead. Skilled typists read ahead of the key they are pressing, and when experiments block that preview, their advantage shrinks almost to the level of novices (as reviewed by Keith and Ericsson, 2007). Start reading the next word while you finish the current one.
- Prepare the next keystrokes. Researchers who motion-captured everyday typists found that fast typists prepare upcoming keystrokes and keep their hands still while the fingers do the moving (Feit et al., 2016).
- Keep an even rhythm. Don’t rush the familiar start of a word and stall in the middle. Your consistency score and the experimental Flow Score both show how even your rhythm was.
- Watch doubled letters and swaps. Long words are full of doubled letters, as in “different” and “account”, and of letter pairs you can type in the wrong order. The keyboard heatmap shows which keys trip you up.
How to read your result
- Characters: the missed and extra counts show letters you skipped or added inside words, the slips to watch for in long words.
- Peak word: your fastest single word. In this drill every word is long, so it shows how quickly you can move through a long word, not a two-letter one.
- Consistency and the experimental Flow Score: whether your rhythm held from word to word or stalled partway through.
A short routine
- One drill at your normal pace.
- Two drills aiming for an even rhythm rather than speed. Compare your consistency score with the first run.
- One 2-minute test on normal text, to see whether the steadier rhythm carries over.
For the other end of the vocabulary, the common words drill works on the short, frequent words that fill everyday text. If mistakes are the problem rather than rhythm, start with the accuracy drill.