what is copywork, and does typing a book improve your typing?
Copywork is the old practice of copying out a piece of good writing word for word. Applied to typing, it means typing a real book instead of generated word lists — and it trains the parts of typing that drills quietly skip: capitals at the start of every sentence, apostrophes inside ordinary words, commas and quotation marks under load, and the rhythm of clauses that are longer than three words. Expect your speed to drop when you switch to it. That drop is the point: it is the difference between your drill speed and your actual writing speed, and it is the gap worth closing.
what drills leave out
Most typing practice is built from common words in lowercase, because that is what is easy to generate and easy to score. Real writing is not shaped like that. It is roughly one capital letter per sentence, an apostrophe every few words, and punctuation that arrives while your hands are already moving. Practice made of bare lowercase words can take you a long way and still leave the shift key feeling like an interruption — which is exactly what shows up the first time you type an email at your supposed speed.
why your speed drops, and why that's fine
A page of a novel will usually cost you somewhere between a fifth and a third of your drill speed. Sentences are longer, vocabulary is wider, and every terminal mark is followed by a capital. Nothing has gone wrong: the drill number was measuring an easier task. The useful reading is the one you get on real prose, because that is the number that predicts how it feels to write something. Watching that number rise is slower and considerably more honest.
how to do it without it becoming a chore
Work in passages, not chapters — a few hundred characters is about a minute of typing and a natural place to stop. Type at a pace where you can be accurate, and let speed arrive on its own; copying a book badly at speed teaches your hands the wrong thing. Keep your place so you can leave and come back, and pick something you actually want to read: the practice only continues if the next passage is one you'd like to get to.
does it work?
For accuracy on real text and comfort with punctuation and capitals, copying real prose is straightforwardly better practice than word lists, because it contains the thing you are trying to get better at. For raw peak speed on easy text, timed drills on common words remain more efficient. Most people want both, in that order: fixed lessons to learn the keyboard, then real writing to make it usable. A book is simply the most pleasant supply of real writing there is.
questions
what is copywork?
The old practice of copying out a piece of good writing word for word. Applied to typing it means typing a real book rather than generated word lists, which supplies the capitals, apostrophes, commas and quotation marks that drills leave out.
does typing a book improve your typing?
For accuracy on real text and comfort with punctuation and capitals, yes, because copying real prose contains the thing you are trying to get better at. For raw peak speed on easy text, timed drills on common words remain more efficient. Most people want both, in that order.
why does my speed drop when i type a book?
Because sentences are longer, vocabulary is wider, and every terminal mark is followed by a capital. A page of a novel usually costs somewhere between a fifth and a third of your drill speed. The drill number was measuring an easier task.
how much should i type in one sitting?
A passage rather than a chapter. A few hundred characters is about a minute of typing and a natural place to stop. Type at a pace where you can stay accurate and let speed arrive on its own, because copying a book badly at speed teaches your hands the wrong thing.