Head copy

There is a threshold at which writing stops helping. Depending on your handwriting it lies between 20 and 25 words per minute: nobody writes faster, and trying anyway loses you not one character but all the rest.

Above that it only works in your head. This is no higher art but the same process as listening in a conversation: you do not remember the sounds, you remember what was said. Hear a sentence in your own language and you usually could not repeat it word for word afterwards - but you could give its content.

Why it is scored by words

In comprehension a word is either understood or not. Whether a letter wobbled inside it does not matter - anyone who took HARBOR as HARBOR has it, and someone who wrote HARBOR probably does too. Conversely, having eighty per cent of a sentence's letters is no use if not one word is complete.

That is why the word rate stands at the top here. The character rate is reported as well, because it shows whether it was close or far off.

How to start

At a speed where you just about could not write along - typically two to three words per minute above your writing limit. Slower does harm: if there is time to write, the head writes along internally, and the exercise does not happen.

The sentences are everyday language, five to eight words long, without accented letters. They barely occur on the air, and a sentence you can only type correctly with special characters measures the keyboard rather than the ear.

The transition

Between "I write everything down" and "I understand it all in my head" lies an uncomfortable phase where both half work. It is normal and lasts weeks. What helps in that time is deliberate alternation: one session of blind copy, one in the head, and the familiar dictation in between as a check that the characters themselves are still solid.

If you notice that individual characters still cost attention, head copy is too early. Then the reaction test helps: it tells you in milliseconds which characters are not yet automatic.