Typing Test with Punctuation & Numbers
Plain lowercase word tests flatter everyone. Turn punctuation on and most typists lose 10–20% of their score — which makes the punctuation test the honest one, because real writing is full of commas, capitals, and apostrophes.
Where the lost WPM goes
- Shift coordination. Every capital letter and most symbols need a two-key chord. Typists who Shift with the same hand as the letter (instead of the opposite hand) pay double.
- Sentence starts. The capital after every period is the most frequent punctuation cost in English — period, space, Shift, letter is a four-step sequence you type hundreds of times a day.
- Apostrophes mid-word. "don't", "it's", "you're" interrupt the middle of a word with a right-pinky reach, which is why contractions show up disproportionately in missed-word lists.
- The number row. Numbers force your hands off the home row entirely. Even good touch typists often hunt for 5 and 6, the two keys furthest from either index finger.
The marks that cause the most errors
| Mark | Typical error | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Comma vs period | Hitting one for the other at speed | They belong to different fingers — middle vs ring. Slow drills separate them for good. |
| Apostrophe | Skipping it or breaking rhythm | Type contractions as single memorized units: "dont" is wrong 100% of the time, so practice "don't" as one gesture. |
| Quotes | Forgetting the closing quote | Type both quotes first, then fill — or practice open-content-close as one rhythm. |
| Colon / semicolon | Shift confusion | The semicolon is a home key; the colon is just Shift+home. Drill them back to back. |
| Hyphen | Long reach breaks flow | Assign it firmly to the right pinky and practice "well-known"-style compounds. |
Proper Shift technique
One rule fixes most capitalization pain: always press Shift with the hand opposite the letter. Capital T (left hand letter) takes right Shift; capital P (right hand letter) takes left Shift. Same-hand Shifting contorts your fingers and drags accuracy down at speed. If you learned the same-hand habit, expect one uncomfortable week of retraining — it pays back permanently.
When to make the switch
Practice with punctuation off while you are building basic letter flow. Once you hold roughly 50 WPM on plain words, turn punctuation and capitals on and leave them on — from that point, your plain-word score is a vanity metric. Employer typing tests, emails, and documents all include full punctuation, and the WPM requirements employers quote assume it. Programmers should go one step further: the coding typing test adds brackets and operators on top.
Expect your score to drop the day you switch. It recovers within two to three weeks of daily practice, and your real-world typing — the thing the test exists to measure — comes out faster than before.