TEXTING STUDENTS TRUMPET

SUBJECTS between the ages of 10 and 19 were about 10 words per minute faster on smartphones than people in their 40s.

THERE has never been another typing study study on this scale, according to the researchers, but they said when they compared their findings with smaller studies the gap in speed between the two devices appeared to be shrinking.

ALL THUMBS? A good trait for faster texting. First large-scale study shows our mobile typing speed is increasing.

FOR many of us, our approach to typing on a smartphone is something we stumbled upon. Unlike, composing words on a typewriter or a computer keyboard, there is no widely taught, proper way.

If speed is the goal, however, study of around 37,000 people suggests that one particular approach is better than others : writing with two thumbs and embracing autocorrect, but avoiding predictive text.

''That is basically the trick of typing quickly,'' said Per Ola Kristensson, a professor of interactive systems engineering at the University of Cambridge and one of the authors of the study, which was presented at a human-computer interaction conference in Taipei this month.

The study focused on the stubbornly persistent Qwerty keyboard, which was originally designed to minimize mechanical typing jams in typewriters. Despite questions about its utility and the emergence of alternate systems, much of the world still relies on the setup.

To conduct the study researchers asked volunteers from around 160 countries to memorize a series of sentences and write them both on desktop keyboards and mobile phones.

There has never been another typing study on this scale, according to the researchers, but they said that when they compared their findings with smaller studies, the gap in speed between the two devices appeared to be shrinking.

When smartphones first came out, people typed about 20 to 25 words per minute, said Anna Felt, a researcher in human-computer interaction at ETH Zurich and author of the study.

Now people average 37 to 40 words per minute, she said.

As the authors write in their study, the average person is nearly 70 percent as fast on a phone as on a laptop. One remarkable typist hit 85 words per minute on a mobile device.

The publishing continues. The World Students Society thanks author Heather Murphy.