One of the skills that help in the career growth of a person, especially one in the transcription industry, is the typing speed. A person’s ability to type more than sixty-five words per minute with a consistent accuracy rate of more than 95 % can be a major influencing factor in making that person a highly efficient transcriptionist from an average transcriptionist. Along with the listening skills, typing speed of a transcriptionist will determine the success of a transcriptionist. Listening requires a silent environment and a good headphone set. But, typing requires a lot of practice because it involves coordination of eyes and hands with great concentration levels along with highest levels of accuracy. Following a few tips can increase the typing speed and efficiency levels of a transcriptionist.
Acquaint yourself with the keyboard: To improve typing speed, acquainting yourself with the keyboard will help a lot. You should first learn to feel the ‘F’ and ‘J’ keys and learn to place your fingers appropriately on the keyboard. This will help you as you go along because you need not look at the keyboard often that will slow down your speed.
Concentrate on accuracy: Even before going to speed, you should concentrate and work on your accuracy levels in the beginning. Typing accurately gives you more control and confidence that will ultimately help you in increasing the speed as well. The reason behind this is that the faster you type in the initial days, the more mistakes you will commit and the longer it will take to rectify those errors. As you slow down and concentrate on accuracy, you tend to gain proficiency in the hand movement and technique as well. This will improve your typing speed over time.
Practice regularly: Daily practice improves your typing speed pretty fast as it will help in strengthening the muscle memory and technique developed initially. To practice regularly, you can try typing tutorials and tests available on the internet. While practicing, you should look for those letter combinations or words that trouble you the most and practice even harder to get over them.
Maintain proper posture: Maintain the correct posture while typing to keep you healthy and be able to type faster. Always sit straight and maintain the correct distance and angle for the screen and keyboard while typing. Along with this, keep stretching yourselves once in a while to give rest to your stiff fingers and hands. This will make you feel more relaxed and help in concentrating better again to type faster.
It may seem to you that these tips are mundane and you may doubt if they will help you in any way. But, these are those tips that you must try sincerely and with perseverance to see the results. Just remember that in the initial days when you are learning to type, you should learn to treat your errors as opportunities to learn. Like all other things, typing fast requires a positive mindset to learn from mistakes and failures.