Thanks to all for your support and advice, I will put these ideas into practice and let you know whether I improve rapidly or not.

Elkiedee, I am trying to get into the legal secretarial (doing Company/Commercial Law short cse at the moment).  No go at the agencies if you don't have a "reasonable" typing speed (with no experience, like me :-(( ), so I want to get up to speed (no puns intended) and then tackle them head on!  Will let you know.

Once again, thanks to all for the advice.

xxxY

Thank you all for the warm welcome.  I must say I spent 2 hours surfing the forum - most useful! I'm just sorry I did not discover this site earlier!!

Just to get a little bit "technical" on this -  I plan to practice at home by instaling a few typing  programs on my computer (as I have a low-typing role currently).  However, most of them propose 1) rythmic typing and 2) typing b with the left hand and 3) the whole bottom row shifts one key-finger along!.  I am manual typewriter trained and I type "b" with my right hand and must be the noisiest typist around as I still "bang" the keys (oh, that stiff manual machine my dad owned!!). Does typing the new way make it any easier/faster? I have somewhat confused myself by trying to change to the new way a while back (this hasn't helped my accuracy!).  Also, some typing programs have lefthand/righthand exercises which frustrates even more.  I also read somewhere recently that someone can reach their "typing speed limit".  I would hate to think it's below 100wpm for me :-(.  I am prepared to put the hours in the hope that it will be worth it.

Any encouragement/view welcome.

yvemun

Hello
I hope you can help me.  I  just wanted to get a poll from all you skilled admins out there.  I am desperately trying to improve my typing speed by at least 20wpm, but seem to have reached a plateau.  What is the average speed of you experienced people out there (even the young kids these days are over 100wpm!!!)?  Have you any tips/techniques/anecdotes as to how to break through that speed barrier?

Any ideas/suggestions would be most welcome (and would encourage me as I am obsessing a bit about it at the moment).  Every agency I go to seems to want speeds of 90wpm or more.  Help!