Long Text Typing Practice · Literary Excerpts

Why long passages

Speed on a short sentence is close to a sprint. Writing a report or an email needs the stamina to keep a steady pace through 100+ characters. Long text mode carries excerpts from five poems — Yun Dong-ju's "Prologue" and "Counting the Stars at Night", Kim So-wol's "Azaleas", Han Yong-un's "The Silence of Love" and Yi Yuk-sa's "Green Grapes" — each between 104 and 147 characters.

Every work is in the public domain, more than 70 years after the author's death, and its title, author, year of death and source appear under the text. Each date has one passage of the day, and the "Other Sentences" button loads another poem at random. Long text has no leaderboard; results stay in your own records.

Things to know on the long text screen

• The thin progress bar just under the text shows how much of it you have committed so far. Read it alongside the live speed to see where your pace drops.
• The poem's original line breaks are turned into single spaces, so the text runs as one line. Pressing Enter where a line used to end counts as a typo there; use the space bar instead.
• If you need a break partway through, press Esc to pause. Paused time is removed from the elapsed time, so your speed does not suffer.
• The passage of the day is one of the five poems, chosen by date, so if you visit daily you meet the same poem again every few days and can compare against your last run.
• Long text results are saved under their own mode. On the typing home page, filter the "last 30 days" speed graph to long text to see how your daily average changes.

Goals and a routine for stamina

• The goal is not peak speed but a smaller gap between your opening and closing pace. If speed drops near the end, tension has crept into your shoulders and wrists.
• Poems have many line breaks and commas. Take a breath at each line end, but keep your hands resting on the home row.
• Once or twice a week, retype the same poem and compare with your last record; that shows changes in stamina most clearly. Holding at least 80% of your short-text speed on long passages is enough for real-world writing.
• Typing steadily while keeping accuracy usually produces a higher final speed than hammering backspace to fix every slip.

About the five poems

"Prologue" and "Counting the Stars at Night" appeared in Sky, Wind, Stars and Poems, the collection published in 1948 after Yun Dong-ju's death. "Azaleas" is the title poem of Kim So-wol's 1925 collection of the same name, "The Silence of Love" comes from Han Yong-un's 1926 collection, and "Green Grapes" first appeared in the literary magazine Munjang in 1939. All five authors died between 1934 and 1945.

As typing material they differ a little. The excerpt from "Counting the Stars at Night" is the longest at 147 characters and "Green Grapes" the shortest at 104. "The Silence of Love", rich in final consonants, averages 2.12 strokes per character, the densest of the five, so it keeps your fingers busiest. Words with double final consonants, such as 없다, 즈려밟고 and 까닭, mostly turn up in this mode.

Common questions about long text practice

What happens to my record if I stop halfway?

If you press Quit and confirm View Results, the result is calculated from the characters committed so far and the time elapsed, and it is saved to your records. If you would rather not mix unfinished runs into your history, use the Retry button to start over; a restarted round is not saved.

How do I check the gap between my opening and closing pace?

The live speed on screen is the average from your first keystroke until now. Note the speed when the progress bar reaches about halfway and compare it with your final speed. If the final figure is clearly lower, you faded in the second half; next time, start the first half a little more slowly.

I keep losing my place or typing the same word twice in long passages.

That happens when your eyes sit on the same character as your hands. While your hands type the current character, train your eyes to read two or three characters ahead, and about a word ahead once you are used to it. Typed and remaining text are shown in different colours, so if you lose your place, stop and find the cursor position before carrying on.