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More quotes, more plays, and more speed

September has been rather quiet on this blog, but things have been heating up on TypeRacer with almost exactly 1 million games played this month!  We’re ending September with some major improvements to the site.  While you won’t actually notice many of these changes, they are acting behind the scenes to make TypeRacer work faster and more reliably than ever.

One thing you will notice is that we’ve added more quotes – 40% more!  You’ll see new quotes from movies like The Godfather, The Dark Knight, V for Vendetta, and Sexy Beast.  A broad range of books including classics like Discourse on Method, Animal Farm, and the The Great Gatsby, more recent masterpieces like Slaughterhouse Five and The Alchemist, topped off with a few titles most relevant to current events, like The Limits Of Power and Bonfire of the Vanities.  Many of these quotes were contributed by racers like you.

Now you also get to see your accuracy at the end of the race.  Accuracy has a significant impact on your overall typing speed and will be highlighted red if it’s below 98%.  See if you can get it in the green!  Accuracy is calculated as the ratio of mistyped characters over the total number of characters in the text.

We’ve also compiled a large selection of texts about typing.  We read several “learn how to type” books from different decades and looked at some historical perspectives on the origins and longevity of the Qwerty keyboard.  The Greatest Stories Never Told, for instance, claims that other keyboard layouts, like Dvorak, “are demonstrably more efficient, but the original continues to thrive,” due to “the power of inertia and the reward of being first,” while Famous Fables of Economics argues the opposite: that the Qwerty keyboard has withstood the test of time and that “the best-documented experiments, as well as recent ergonomic studies, suggest little or no advantage for the Dvorak keyboard.”

We hope you enjoy the new texts!

34 comments

  2. Type racer has come far, maybe they should make a lobby style area so you can chat to other people. That would be great! sort of like yahoo games if you are familiar with them.

    Reply

  3. Ooh, I like the new accuracy feature. I make a lot of mistakes (usually teh – I spend ages backspacing), so its nifty to see exactly what percent.

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  5. Should make you can earn money and buy new cars and stuff. Like on bebo. 🙂
    Then HEAPS more people would play 🙂

    Reply

  6. I have been playing TypeRacer for almost 4 months now. I have tried to improve my typing a million times, but always got bored. But, now I am hooked on to this beautiful game. My typing speed has gone up from 50 wpm to a consistent 70wpm. Thanks for this wonderful game! And keep increasing the database of quotes.

    Reply

  7. You definitely need to find a mechanism that cuts down on abandoned races. Half of the high score posters just quit in the middle every time.

    Reply

  10. Accuracy BUG!
    (after typing several texts meticulously at 100% accuracy, on ALL the skill levels, the site reports that my accuracy is 96.5-98.5%); XP+Opera

    Reply

  11. Kapli – the Facebook app will finally become available shortly. It’s been taking a while because we had to come up with a way to link your typeracer.com account with your facebook account. Stay tuned!

    Reply

  13. Clarification: the accuracy reported at the end of the race is for the last race only, and it’s a measure of how many corrections you’ve had to make. Since TypeRacer makes you fix all your typos, the fact that you typed all the words doesn’t mean that you have 100% accuracy. It’s not a bug!

    Reply

  15. kyleva – MySpace accounts are separate from TypeRacer.com at the moment, but we’re working on a way to combine them!

    Reply

  21. Hey. so basically I think you should make typeracer into
    TYPE RACER.
    it is sooo confusing that those two words are joined to gether, and I usually end up making my own name for it like “poopy racer” because I can remember it more.
    I think this site should shut down because its a waste of time for people who want to achieve academic sucess. GAH.
    this typing thing sucks. & you need more updated quotes because they are all DUMB and no one has ever heard of them.
    GO DIE POOPY RACER!

    Reply

  24. Why can’t you guys have less boring quotes? All they are about is computers and and typing!!!!

    Reply

  29. Is it possible for you guys to make an option
    for a game involving typing with you get money f
    for typing fast.But not that fast at least more
    than 30wpm. Also I wanted to say that this
    program has helped me typing in school.

    Reply

  30. Can you get any quotes from High School Musical
    3 because I know there are many people who love
    this movie. Did you know that I think this game
    will improve your typing skills. Come to think
    of this, my friend has went from a 28wpm to a
    56wmp. So I thank this program for letting our
    acedemic skills reach a high and satisfing
    grade.
    Thanks a lot I really appriciate it.

    Reply

  34. there’s this funny quote from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, i think it would be funny

    its when the whale is talking about what itself is, before smashing to the ground on MAgrathea.
    you should look it up

    Reply

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