start with a passage
This is the real opening of a real book, and typing it here counts for nothing — nothing is recorded until you choose a book properly.
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice "without pictures or conversations?"nothing is saved — this is a taste. your place is only kept once you start reading.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland · Lewis Carroll
why a book beats a word list
Most typing practice is built from common words in lowercase, because that is what is easy to generate and easy to score. Real prose is not shaped like that: roughly one capital per sentence, an apostrophe every few words, and punctuation that arrives while your hands are already moving. A novel supplies all of it at natural density, which is also why your speed drops when you switch to one — the drill number was measuring an easier task.
a passage at a time
Each book is divided into readings of a few hundred characters, about a minute of typing, and you stop whenever you like. The next passage is waiting when you come back, so a chapter is something you finish across a week rather than in one sitting. There is no clock, no leaderboard and no streak to protect, and a passage left half-finished costs you nothing.
what's on the shelf
13 public-domain books in English and 4 in Spanish, graded by how hard they are to type rather than how hard they are to read. Gentle means short sentences and plain punctuation. Steady is ordinary novel prose. Challenging means long sentences, period spelling or dense dialogue — which is a typing problem, not a reading one. The shelf only offers books your keyboard can actually type, so the Spanish titles appear on the Spanish course.
it stores almost nothing
A book from the shelf is fetched when you open it and is never saved to your device. What is saved is your position and a few totals, in your browser, with no account and no server involved. The trade-off is honest: your place does not follow you to another computer unless you export it yourself, and in exchange nothing about what you typed is sent anywhere.
or bring your own
Any plain-text file can be imported and split into chapters and passages on the spot. It stays on your device and is never uploaded, which is the whole reason the feature can exist without an account — and the reason it works with a book nobody else needs to have heard of.
questions
can i practise typing with a real book?
Yes. The shelf holds public-domain novels split into passages of a few hundred characters, and you type them one passage at a time with your place kept between sessions. You can also import your own plain-text file, which stays on your device.
is typing a book better practice than a typing test?
For accuracy on real text and comfort with capitals and punctuation, yes, because a novel contains the thing you are trying to get better at. For raw peak speed on easy words, timed drills remain more efficient. Most people want both, in that order: lessons to learn the keyboard, then real writing to make it usable.
why is my speed lower 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. That lower figure is the one that predicts how it feels to write an email.
does the book get stored on my device?
No. A book from the shelf is fetched when you open it and never saved; only your position and a few totals are kept, in your browser. A book you import yourself is stored on your device and is never uploaded anywhere.
do i need an account?
No. There is nothing to sign up for and nothing to log in to, and there is no advertising. Progress lives in your browser, which is also why it does not follow you to another computer unless you export it from the settings page.
where the text comes from
these books come from Project Gutenberg, a volunteer library of public-domain works. they are free to use, in the United States and most of the world, at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever — you may copy them, give them away, or re-use them under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License.
our copies are not untouched. we normalise typography (curly quotes and dashes become the ones on your keyboard), fold the occasional accented letter no key can produce, and cut each chapter into passages. a character you cannot type is a dead end in a typing exercise, so nothing here is left unreachable.
Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark of the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. they are not affiliated with lowkey type and do not endorse it.