Fast typing LaTeX

I recently became aware of this post where somebody asked how you can become faster at typing LaTeX. Just a little post with a few recommendations.

Experience from constantly using LaTeX for everything

I have to say, I think it really gets better with experience. And experience from doing your everyday stuff in LaTeX (like to do lists, taking notes, etc.). Else you probably just won’t get enough experience to become really fast.

Raise awareness

But then again, slowing down might not be a bad thing if you’re supposed to produce high quality work. Using LaTeX, then, will force you to take the subconscious back into your conscious mind. Maybe not what you want when just quickly taking notes, but maybe something to reflect upon in the long term.

I also found that, since I don’t constantly use MS Word’s auto-correct anymore, I’m actually better at spelling and grammar (even though, as someone holding a degree in Latin, I probably never was bad in the first place).

However, I find it useful that LaTeX forces you to be more conscious on some stuff (like typing correctly instead of bad touch typing and relying on auto-correct to clean up your mess).

10 finger system touch typing

Quick typing generally comes down to correct 10 finger system touch typing (Zehnfingersystem being the German name, focusing on the fact that  you use all your ten fingers, whereas the English name touch typing focuses on the fact that you type by muscle memory and don’t look at the keyboard). So if you don’t know that already, please stop complaining about LaTeX. You’re probably super slow and make tons of mistakes, so don’t pretend LaTeX plays a big part in slowing you down.

The free open-source Tipp10 app is a great resource for learning touch typing (available for all distributions, your Linux package mangager will probably have it) . Especially as you can use it to target LaTeX-specific typing effectively since the program allows you to use your own texts for typing practice. This means, if you want to get better at typing LaTeX, you should create a “fake” document which contains tons of the commands you use most often, then add it to the app as a custom practice text and practice for 5 minutes daily (ideally before starting work as a “warm-up“). You will get better very quickly. Here is an example text I created for this purpose. Feel free to add what you need or remove what you don’t need.

This is what I would recommend for now,

Cheers,

the LaTeX Ninja