What is the best way to increase my typing speed in a small period of time?

I’m not sure there’s a better way than practice. There are some typing games we used in school, looking online there’s still quite a few places that have those up. You can play right in the browser and they help you get faster while setting a goal and tracking progress.

If you’re not feeling the games, then maybe typing through song lyrics while the song is playing or transcribing any sort of speech might be more of a fit.

15–20 wpm is quite a bit, really. Maybe starting with a quick, free, course online would get you the speed while just learning the “right” way from the start. It’s probably the fastest way as well and is going to make any other practice more beneficial.

Good luck.

Our career centers have typing tests you can take anytime. I’m at 60 with 98% accuracy, so it works. Learning where to rest your fingers really is important, I dont even look at my keyboard anymore. Good luck.

Online touch typing courses.like this one which is free. And just like you get to Carnegie Hall, practice, practice, practice!

I don’t type in the prescribed way either, and as long as nobody’s looking, they can’t tell the difference. I tested out long ago as fast enough and accurate enough to qualify as a typist (and I actually had a few temp typing jobs back when)—and this was long before keyboard skills were expected to be universal. (Some men used to take pride in the fact that they couldn’t type, as if it proved that they were superior to those—nearly always women—who could.)

I learned to stop typing and become busy with something else whenever somebody walked behind me. That way, I wouldn’t have to hear them say “I can’t stand to watch you do that” and “How do you know what keys you’re hitting?” I do know. It just isn’t done the way they taught it in school.

So, like everybody else, I’m going to say practice. As long as you get the right results, why would anybody care if it’s by an idiosyncratic method?

Best wishes for the new job.

@Jeruba ”...“How do you know what keys you’re hitting?”

Actually, that was how typists used to type, looking at their stenographer notes, not at the keys and not at the paper.

Yes, I know. I watched my mother type my father’s dissertation exactly that way. But because I don’t do it in the prescribed way, people thought I couldn’t possibly know what I was doing.

You can try by doing https://www.typingtest.com/