Typing studio for code and prose

Steady hands. Clean keys.

Stillwork is a small practice room for people who type all day. Time a passage, watch your net speed and accuracy move as you type, then read the field guide to see why they moved.

The still, drawn in a single line.

01 / Timed practice

Practice run

Type the passage into the box below. The clock starts on your first keystroke, and pasting is switched off so every character comes from your own hands.

Timed measurement needs JavaScript. The passage and the text box still work as a plain typing exercise, and the field guide explains the habits behind steady typing.

Length

30 seconds 60 seconds 2 minutes

100

Time left, seconds: 60
Net speed, words per minute: 0
Accuracy: —
Errors: 0

Passage 1 of 3

A still rewards the operator who does not hurry it. The heat rises slowly, the column settles, and the first portion that comes over is set aside, because it carries what nobody wants in the finished work. Patience is not a pause in the process. It is the process. Good keyboard work follows the same rule. Read the line before you start it, let the hands find familiar shapes, and keep the rhythm even rather than fast. Speed arrives on its own once the errors have stopped. When a mistake happens, notice it, correct it, and continue without drama. The aim is a steady stream of clean characters, each one placed on purpose, until the page is finished and the work can be checked with a clear mind.

Type the passage here

Backspace works, so you can correct a mistake. Enter is disabled because the passage is one paragraph.

02 / Overview

What the studio is for

Stillwork is built on one idea: accuracy comes first, and speed follows from it. People who write for a living, whether they ship software or edit prose, type far more than they notice. Small errors pile up, and each one costs attention long after the keys have stopped moving.

We make a practice room and a field guide for that daily work. The practice run gives you timed passages with live numbers. The field guide explains how to build a routine around them. Everything runs in your browser from the files on this site, so there is no account to create and nothing to upload.

Three working principles

Pace before speed. A rhythm you can hold is easier to improve than a burst that falls apart under pressure.
Measure what is on the page. Net speed and accuracy come from the text in the box, not from a guess about what you meant to type.
Keep sessions short. Regular, focused practice builds routine faster than long sessions done once in a while.

03 / Measures

How the numbers work

During a test, Stillwork reports three figures. Each one is calculated from the text that is in the box at that moment, so correcting a mistake changes the result.

Accuracy: The number of characters that match the passage at the same position, divided by all characters currently typed, shown as a percentage.
Net speed: Matching characters divided by five, then divided by the minutes elapsed. Five characters is the usual convention for one word, so the figure can be compared from one passage to the next.
Errors: Typed characters that do not match the passage at their position. Wrong characters are underlined in the passage as you type, so the mark does not depend on color alone.

Net speed = (matching characters / 5) / minutes elapsed

A test ends when the clock reaches zero, or sooner if you type the whole passage. The result is written to the status line, which screen reader users hear without searching the page.

Net speed stays at zero for the first two seconds. A single early keystroke would otherwise produce a figure that means nothing.

04 / Glossary

Terms used here

Accuracy: The share of typed characters that match the passage. See the Measures tab for the calculation.
Current character: The character you should type next. It is shown as a solid block so your place is easy to find.
Length: The duration you choose before a test starts. Changing it resets the test.
Net speed: Matching characters per minute, counted as five-character words. See the Measures tab for the calculation.
Passage: The text you type during a test. Each passage is one paragraph with no line breaks.
Pending character: A character you have not reached yet. It appears in a muted tone.
Steady pace: A rhythm you could keep for the whole test without rushing or stalling.
Wrong character: A typed character that does not match the passage. It is shown in the error color and underlined, so it does not rely on color alone.