I don’t know about you, but as an elder millennial, I think fondly back to Mario Teaches Typing sessions at the computer lab as I learned to type.
Anyone have any current-day thoughts to share about typing accuracy, tools, or ways to use TextExpander to improve typing accuracy?
Few of my favorite TextExpander public snippet groups that help with this:
- 
TidBITS Autocorrect Public Snippet Group
- ★ ™ £ Symbols Public Snippet Group: The currency ones are really helpful
The standard advice you hear is to focus on accuracy before speed, which is true of anything involving muscle memory, like playing the guitar.
But what do you do if you get fast before you get accurate?
What worked for me was self-punishment. If I mistyped a word, I deleted it and typed it again. And if the typo a few words back, I would delete everything back to that point and type out the entire section again. Thankfully, the Option-Delete shortcut (Mac) makes this somewhat less painful by deleting an entire word at a time.
It worked, though, and today I make very few typing mistakes (just grammatical ones).
I can’t say that I have any modern day tips to improve typing speed, but this post does make me want to go find a typing test to see what my current WPM is.
I use TextExpander as my own personal auto-correct. I have certain words that I fumble each time. (Some of them make really embarrassing typos.) I’ve added the mis-typed versions of these to my personal Snippet group so I can make sure my worst typos never see the light of day.
I remember learning typing on Mavis Beacon - brings back memories of WPM challenges with classmates.
I’ve always been a fan of typing speed games. Which inherently measure accuracy.
Recently, we did a fun hack-a-thon at our TextExpander offsite. The mission was pretty open-ended - using AI tools to build anything. What did I decide to build!? A typing game with elements of my favorite productivity tool!
Disclaimers/Caveats: I know there are quirks and bugs, and you can copy and paste to troll the leader board. However, you can also have fun and compete against yourself, unlock some snippets, and practice typing! I may need to take it down at some point because there is a small fee for hosting. Also this is entirely my little creation with a bit of TextExpander flair, but not official TextExpander software.