Michelle Czajkowski is a language assessment specialist and current PhD researcher exploring how the writing process shapes writing quality. Her research focuses on diagnosing and improving how students write, not just what they write. In this blogpost, Michelle shares how language, typing, and cognition all feed into one another, connecting our minds, mouths, and hands in the act of writing.
Typing: A Lost Art or a Universal Skill?
My mother went to secretary school in the 60s. To this day, when she types, she uses all ten fingers and never looks at the keyboard, a method known as touch typing. My father, on the other hand, rarely needed to use a keyboard. He types with two fingers, slow and deliberate, like two chickens pecking at the ground, a style affectionately referred to as hunt and peck. These days, few people are trained to type like my mom, yet few of us type as infrequently as my dad. Typing has become something we all do, even though most of us have never been taught how. This blog post looks at common myths and assumptions and what research says.
Let’s start with a basic question. Should we bring back typing lessons? One study found that while only 16 percent of middle and high school students had received formal instruction on how to type, they improved quite a lot over time. Simply typing more leads to better typing. But technique matters too. One factor stood out even more than practice time: the number of fingers used. Hunt-and-peck typists remained disadvantaged, no matter how much they practiced. Even a little early training in using all your fingers can make a big difference down the road.
OK, so does good typing equal better writing? After measuring the typing proficiency of university students, one group of researchers found that, in timed essay exams, faster typists did tend to write more, and that longer responses were associated with higher grades. However, there was no direct statistical link between typing speed and exam performance. Speed allowed students to get more words down, but only those with the ideas, knowledge, and writing skills to back it up saw better scores. Typing may be a useful tool, but it’s no substitute for substance. That said, good typing can help us access that substance. Typing is a lower-order writing skill, and when lower-order skills are automatized, more working memory is freed up for higher-order tasks like planning, structuring, and revising. Learning to type well increases your ability to do more, cognitively speaking, with what you have.
Finally, how fast is “fast enough”? One study found that for middle school students, typing speed stops affecting writing quality above a certain threshold, roughly 20 words per minute. Below that, however, quality begins to suffer. If typing is cognitively difficult, writers use a slow, step-by-step one: think, pause, write, repeat. When it becomes automatic, these processes are integrated. Twenty words per minute, however, is very low. The average university student has been measured to type at around 41.5 words per minute, the vast majority over this threshold and therefore not likely to have their writing affected by poor typing skills.
The take home message? Test your typing and make sure your typing speed is at least 20 words per minute (though it probably is), and for best long-term results, use all fingers. By improving your typing speed, you’ll free up more space in your brain for big ideas while writing.
Typing: A Motor Skill or a Linguistic Skill?
Once you’ve tested your typing speed in your native language, try it again, but this time, in a second language you don’t know as well. I did it in English (80 words per minute), Dutch (64), and Spanish (35). Linguistic knowledge is clearly linked to good typing, along with how fast and accurately we can move our fingers to the correct keys. If we want to measure if someone is good at typing, we need to consider both of these factors.
Most online typing tests ask you to type random words for a minute, such as the one linked above. However, many job-related typing tests ask you to reproduce a full, meaningful passage. Both types of tests are useful, but they don’t measure exactly the same thing. The first type is more about muscle speed and coordination, while the second relies more on language skills, like understanding sentence structure and being familiar with vocabulary related to the topic. In linguistics research, measuring both these factors can help us investigate language knowledge and proficiency. For example, when looking at my own typing test results, you will not be surprised to learn that English is my first language, my Dutch is quite strong, and my Spanish is only at the elementary level.
Figure 1. An illustration of Logan & Crump’s (2011) two-loop theory of skilled typing, with an inner (green) loop controlling the motor skills of typing and an outer (blue) loop controlling the language skills of writing.
But what exactly is the relationship between skillful finger movements and language? Researchers Gordon D. Logan and Matthew Crump propose a so-called two-loop theory of skilled typing, which views typing as governed by two systems: one that deals with language (choosing and ordering words), and one that handles routine finger movements across a keyboard. So, one system knows what needs to be said and passes it down one word at a time. The typing system then breaks each word into letters and keystrokes, relying on automated, practiced movements. Crucially, the two loops operate semi-independently; skilled typists, for example, often can’t say where keys are on the keyboard or which hand hits which letter, even though their fingers find the keys effortlessly. The outer loop doesn’t need to know how the keys are pressed; it just needs the result. This separation helps explain how we can type fluently in a language we know well, and why our fluency breaks down when either language knowledge or motor control (control over muscles) is lacking.
Good typing, therefore, is the result of coordination between systems (cognitive, linguistic, and motor) that usually work so seamlessly we forget they’re even there. The better we understand those layers, the better we can understand what happens when writing goes smoothly, and when it doesn’t. When it comes to typing, fluency comes not just from speed, but from letting your mind focus on what to say while your fingers take care of how to say it. Typing, it turns out, isn’t just a technical skill. It’s a window into how thinking becomes doing.
Typing: A Tool for Transcription or a Partner in Cognition?
Answer quick! Is blark an English word? If you’re a skilled touch typist, you probably answered just a little more slowly than those of us who hunt and peck. When presented with pseudowords like this, your brain’s visual system sends the input to the language centre, which goes, Hmm… I don’t think this is an English word. But the word also reaches the motor system, and for skilled typists, that system pushes back a little. This finger pattern feels familiar!, it says, and that’s enough to delay your decision, just a touch.
It turns out that when we process a written word, the brain doesn’t rely solely on linguistic knowledge. It also draws on sensory and motor experiences associated with that word. This is the basic idea behind embodied theories of language, the notion that language is grounded in the body. And typing, it turns out, is a key way we produce language with our bodies. According to these theories, years of typing experience create a kind of muscle memory that becomes integrated into how we understand language. When you read a word, your brain isn’t just processing it visually or semantically, it’s also consulting the feel of how it’s typed.
A recent study shows this interaction in action. Participants typed different kinds of verbs. Some were actions involving the hands, like grab. Others involved other body parts (walk) or non-action verbs (believe). Typing was slower and less accurate for hand-related words, suggesting that the motor system had already been activated during comprehension, creating interference with the physical act of typing. The brain sent signals to the hand in preparation for the action of grabbing instead of typing, and the body and the brain were briefly at odds. This effect was observed not only in native speakers, but also in learners of the language.
Typing can also play an active role in language learning. For instance, typing helps learners absorb the statistical patterns of a language, such as why blark sounds plausible, while bparq does not. Through frequent typing, learners internalize these so-called orthotactic patterns without needing explicit instruction. And typing a word doesn’t just help you remember how to spell it; it can also help you learn how to say it. Typing new words improves both spoken and typed recall better than speaking practice alone. This suggests a strong, two-way link between typing and language learning, one that shapes how we process written language in general.
Even the layout of the keyboard can shape our thinking. For example, people seem to solve anagrams more easily when the scrambled letters were arranged in a familiar keyboard layout. This suggests that our brains don’t rely solely on visual recognition when working with words, they also tap into motor memory: the spatial knowledge of where letters “live” under our fingers. Typing habits leave deep grooves in the brain, helping us make sense of language even when we’re not actively typing. Typing doesn’t just turn thought into action. It turns action back into thought.
Writer: Michelle Czajkowski
Editor: Jitse Amelink
Translation Dutch: Lieke Herraets
Translation German: Anna Serke
Recommended Reading
- The Gendered Past of Typing Education – The Atlantic
- The QWERTY Keyboard Will Never Die. Where Did the 150-Year-Old Design Come From? – The Smithsonian
- Rollover Typing: One skill to make you type a lot faster – BBC
- Typing shown to be an automatic action
- Automated or controlled – On automaticity in the brain in general
- Inputlog Copy Task – Try the test out for yourself.
- Why You Are Not Your Brain
- Using Typing to Decode Language Production
- Storing Two Keyboard Layouts In Your Brain At Once
References
How Typing Develops in Students:
Pinet, S., Zielinski, C., Alario, F. X., & Longcamp, M. (2024). On the Acquisition of Typing Skills Without Formal Training by School-Aged Children.
University Students, Typing and Writing Quality
Sperl, L., Breier, C. M., Grießbach, E., & Schweinberger, S. R. (2024). Do typing skills matter? Investigating university students’ typing speed and performance in online exams. Higher Education Research & Development, 43(4), 981-995.
Lower and Higher Order Writing Tasks
Kellogg, R. T. (2001). Competition for working memory among writing processes. The American Journal of Psychology, 114(2), 175.
Olive, T., & Kellogg, R. T. (2002). Concurrent activation of high-and low-level production processes in written composition. Memory & Cognition, 30(4), 594-600.
The 20-wpm Threshold
Gong, T., Zhang, M., & Li, C. (2022). Association of keyboarding fluency and writing performance in online-delivered assessment. Assessing Writing, 51, 100575.
The Two-Loop System:
Logan, G. D., & Crump, M. J. (2011). Hierarchical control of cognitive processes: The case for skilled typewriting. In Psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 54, pp. 1-27). Academic Press.
“Blark”:
Cerni, T., Velay, J. L., Alario, F. X., Vaugoyeau, M., & Longcamp, M. (2016). Motor expertise for typing impacts lexical decision performance. Trends in Neuroscience and Education, 5(3), 130-138.
Typing Action Words, e.g. Grab:
Ghavam Rankohi, Z., Liepelt, R., Luchterhand-Dehn, J., & Sperl, L. (2025). Embodied cognition in native and foreign language–evidence from a typing task. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 37(1), 15-38.
Typing and Speaking New Words:
Pinet, S., & Martin, C. D. (2025). Cross-modal interactions in language production: evidence from word learning. Psychonomic bulletin & review, 32(1), 452-462.
Anagrams:
Wamain, Y., Ott, M., Longcamp, M., & Danna, J. (2023, September). Embodied cognition in written word processing: Evidence from an anagram-solving task [Poster presentation]. ESCOP 2023 Conference, Thessaloniki, Greece.
