What’s in the drill
The text is built from sentences of 4 to 12 common words, each starting with a capital. In a large sample of drill text, about 30% of words carried a punctuation mark. Per 100 words there were roughly:
- 10 commas;
- 12 sentence endings, three-quarters of them periods and the rest question marks or exclamation points;
- 4 hyphenated word pairs;
- 1 or 2 semicolons and about 1 colon;
- one quoted phrase and, less often, a parenthetical.
These figures describe how this drill generates text, not English in general. The words come from our 1,000-word English list, the same list as the 1-minute test, so the only new skill here is the punctuation.
Which marks need Shift
On a standard US keyboard, the comma, period, semicolon, apostrophe and hyphen are typed without Shift. The question mark, exclamation point, colon, double quotation mark and both parentheses all need it, and so does every capital. In this drill that adds up to about 20 Shift presses per 100 words: one for each sentence, plus about one mark in four.
A slash where a question mark belongs is a Shift timing error, not a wrong key: on a US keyboard the question mark is Shift plus the slash key.
Marks are part of the word
A word earns credit only when it matches exactly, marks included. Type “however” where the text says “however,” and the word earns nothing until you add the comma. Each mark counts as one character toward your speed, and every wrong mark counts against your accuracy, even after you fix it.
Technique
- One finger per mark. In a motion-capture study of everyday typists, pressing each key consistently with the same finger was one of three markers of high performance (Feit et al., 2016). Decide which finger owns each mark and stick to it.
- Prepare Shift early. The same researchers advise preparing upcoming keystrokes, starting with special keys such as Shift. Start the Shift press while you finish the previous word.
- Use the opposite hand’s Shift from the key you are typing, so the typing hand stays in place.
- Read to the end of the sentence before you reach it, so the closing mark doesn’t surprise you.
A short routine
- One drill at your normal pace. Note your accuracy against your plain-text accuracy.
- Two drills focused only on clean marks, even if they are slower.
- One more at normal pace. When your accuracy here matches your plain-text accuracy, move on to the 3-minute test, which uses the same kind of text for longer.
Capitals giving you trouble on their own? The capital letters drill isolates them. For digits, years and prices in running text, use the numbers drill.