Long typing practice texts
163 to 194 words each. Long enough that concentration, not burst speed, decides how it goes.
| # | Text | Year | Words | Letters / word | At 40 WPM | Going |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | O Pioneers! Willa Cather | 1913 | 180 | 4.4 | 299 s | gentle ✓ |
| 2 | Anne of Avonlea L. M. Montgomery | 1909 | 169 | 4.8 | 299 s | ordinary ✓ |
| 3 | Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Harriet Jacobs | 1861 | 174 | 4.6 | 299 s | ordinary ✓ |
| 4 | The Last of the Mohicans James Fenimore Cooper | 1826 | 168 | 4.8 | 297 s | ordinary ✓ |
| 5 | The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett | 1911 | 194 | 4.0 | 297 s | gentle ✓ |
| 6 | The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Robert Louis Stevenson | 1886 | 176 | 4.4 | 297 s | ordinary ✓ |
| 7 | Frankenstein Mary Shelley | 1818 | 174 | 4.6 | 296 s | gentle ✓ |
| 8 | The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes Arthur Conan Doyle | 1894 | 179 | 4.4 | 295 s | gentle ✓ |
| 9 | Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift | 1726 | 183 | 4.2 | 293 s | ordinary ✓ |
| 10 | The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin | 1791 | 176 | 4.4 | 293 s | gentle ✓ |
| 11 | Moby-Dick Herman Melville | 1851 | 172 | 4.5 | 292 s | ordinary ✓ |
| 12 | Les Miserables Victor Hugo | 1862 | 178 | 4.2 | 290 s | ordinary ✓ |
| 13 | The Turn of the Screw Henry James | 1898 | 181 | 4.2 | 289 s | gentle ✓ |
| 14 | The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde | 1890 | 163 | 4.7 | 287 s | gentle ✓ |
| 15 | Up from Slavery Booker T. Washington | 1901 | 180 | 4.1 | 287 s | ordinary ✓ |
| 16 | The Call of the Wild Jack London | 1903 | 163 | 4.7 | 287 s | ordinary ✓ |
| 17 | Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass | 1845 | 169 | 4.5 | 285 s | ordinary ✓ |
| 18 | The Jungle Upton Sinclair | 1906 | 169 | 4.4 | 284 s | ordinary ✓ |
| 19 | The Mysterious Affair at Styles Agatha Christie | 1920 | 166 | 4.5 | 284 s | demanding ✓ |
| 20 | Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain | 1884 | 187 | 3.9 | 283 s | demanding ✓ |
| 21 | The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Washington Irving | 1820 | 171 | 4.4 | 283 s | gentle ✓ |
| 22 | The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoyevsky | 1880 | 170 | 4.4 | 283 s | gentle ✓ |
| 23 | A Room with a View E. M. Forster | 1908 | 171 | 4.2 | 281 s | demanding ✓ |
| 24 | Walden Henry David Thoreau | 1854 | 172 | 4.2 | 278 s | ordinary ✓ |
Sorted by length, longest first. At 40 WPM the longest takes about 5 minutes. The full list of 111 texts is on the practice texts page.
Other shortlists
Keep going
Typing test
Gross and net WPM, accuracy and keystrokes per hour — the figures typing exams use, at eight lengths from 15 seconds to 15 minutes.
Typing lessons
Fifteen short lessons, two new keys at a time, with the keyboard showing which finger goes where.
Key drills
A drill for each row, hand, finger and kind of character — and how much of English prose each set of keys actually carries.
Every key
One page per key: the finger that owns it, how often it is really pressed, and the letter pairs it lives in.
Typing speed
What a speed means in characters, keystrokes per hour and minutes per page — and a test paced to the number you are aiming at.
Weak keys
A drill built from the keys you miss most, worked out from your own tests.
Times tables
Each table with its patterns, a drill that returns to what you got wrong, and a 60-second speed test.