How to Use This Practice Typing Test
Fast, accurate typing is an essential skill for many jobs. The practice tests on this website were designed to help adult job-seekers develop their typing skills.
Can't find a page?
We have transitioned to new server and changed our pages to be .html instead of .php in the process. You can find tests at the same web address if you change .php (and anything after that) to .html. We are fixing our broken links as fast as we can.
Starting the Test
After the page loads completely, type the text you see in the box. Scoring starts when you start typing. Untyped text will appear greyed out and turn black as you type it. Errors are shown in red.
Completing the Test
When you complete the text, you will see a final score along with your weak keys and links to drills to improve those keys. Many of our tests have a trailing space at the end of the test, which may make it appear as if you have finished with no errors, but not give you a final score. If you don't see your errors displayed, then please let us know so we can fix the page!
If you want to save your score, fix your errors!
Most typing courses recommend focusing on your accuracy over speed. Because of this, we chose to require 100% accuracy to complete a test. Speed will come with practice. You can use the backspace key to correct as you go, or correct your errors after you finish just like you would on the job. It is intended to give you a more accurate idea of how fast you type in a work setting where errors must be corrected. Only tests completed with 100% accuracy are included in the high scores table.
NEW!! You can now view your accuracy as well as your speed
If you prefer not to fix your errors you can view your speed and accuracy at any point when you stop typing. The timer does not stop, however, so you will have a time penalty if you stop in the middle of the test and then resume typing.
The tests will not allow you to keep typing if your speed falls below 75%, this can be especially bothersome on the first word or two. Unfortunately, there are a number of people who try to cheat the test by typing garbage and then copy and pasting the correct text to get impossibly high scores. the accuracy requirement prevents this method of cheating. (We are working on blocking any others as they are discovered.)
What if a symbol is not on my keyboard?
Occasionally, you may get a symbol that is not present on your keyboard. This happens frequently on the typing exercises for languages other than English. It is assumed that those practicing these languages have a keyboard with those characters, or are familiar with how to type the special characters of that language. The only way to type a key not present in your keyboard layout is using the numeric pad with the ALT key + the code for that character.
Once in a while a special character will be overlooked in the text for typing exercises (such as the hyphen or quotes which are often 'autocorrected by word processing software). If you run into one of these characters while taking one of our tying tests, please let us know by sending an email with a copy of the passage you are typing and the exercise you found it on to testing@microacademylabs.com so that we can fix the text.
In the meantime, if you encounter one of these characters you can either copy and paste (one or two characters at a time) or refresh the page to get a different test to type.
How to switch between Dvorak and Qwerty keyboards?
First, you need to add the Dvorak keyboard layout in your system preferences. Open the system preferences and select the keyboard.
You will see a list of current keyboards you have setup. To add a new keyboard, press the '+' key under that list. From there you can find the Dvorak layout.
We are using the standard/generic Dvorak layout with our lessons.
Finally, to toggle between keyboards, use the control and spacebar.
The backspace key is sending me to another page!
This is a 'feature' of Firefox (and possibly Internet Explorer). They intended it as a shortcut key, but it can be annoying as well. If you would like to turn this shortcut off in Firefox you can type 'about:config' into your browser address bar. There is a scary message about voiding your warranty, ignore it. There is a huge list of features and you need to find the one that is called: 'browser.backspace_action'. The default value is 0, double-click on the 0 and change it to any number 3 or higher, then the backspace will not do funny things to your browser. (1 will make it scroll and 2 will do other stuff, but only in some versions.) BE CAREFUL NOT TO CHANGE ANYTHING ELSE.
All other problems or suggestions
Sometimes our tests break. This is usually caused by the high score data becoming corrupted. If you encounter a test that does not load, please drop us a line at testing@microacademylabs.com so we can reset the test scores and get the test back up as soon as possible.
