The Declaration of Independence

This text as typing material

Length

106 words

Characters

618

At 40 WPM

185 s

Letters per word

4.7

Shift presses

13

Punctuation marks

14

618 characters count as 124 exam words, so 40 WPM finishes it in about 185 seconds and 60 WPM in 124. Its words run 4.7 letters long, 68% of its letters need a finger to leave the home row, and it asks for 13 capitals and 14 punctuation marks (commas, apostrophes, periods, hyphens). The longest word is “self-evident”, and the less common letters K, Q, V all appear. Among the 111 texts here it comes out harder than 81 of them and easier than 29 — demanding going, by word length, punctuation and reaches together.

Public domain: The Declaration of Independence was first published in 1776, and everything published in the United States before 1930 is in the public domain there. The passage is cut by script from Project Gutenberg ebook #1, source file pinned at SHA-256 8fc748341351. Project Gutenberg's own header, footer and trademark are not reproduced.

Where to go next

• Bram Stoker · 1897

  Dracula

  One step harder

• Wilkie Collins · 1868

  The Moonstone

  A gentler one

• Edith Wharton · 1911

  Ethan Frome

  Next in the list

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.