"Should I type faster or more accurately" is framed as a personality question - some people say they're "speed people," others say "accuracy people." It's actually a math question, and the math has a pretty clear answer for most typists.
Why an error costs more than one keystroke
When you make a typo, the visible cost is one wrong character. The real cost is the whole correction sequence: noticing the error (which itself costs time - a lot of typists don't notice immediately), stopping forward momentum, hitting backspace one or more times, retyping the correct characters, and re-accelerating back to your cruising speed. Measured in aggregate, this full cycle commonly costs 300-800 milliseconds depending on how far back the error is caught and how quickly a typist recovers momentum.
At a typing pace of 60 WPM (5 characters per "word," so 300 characters/minute, or roughly 200ms per character), a single 500ms correction cycle costs you the equivalent of typing 2.5 characters worth of time doing nothing productive - and that's a best case, assuming you catch the error immediately.
A worked example
Say you can type a passage at 70 WPM with 3 errors per 100 words, or you can slow down slightly and type the same passage at 62 WPM with 0.5 errors per 100 words.
- 70 WPM run: 3 errors × ~500ms average correction cost ≈ 1.5 seconds lost to corrections per 100 words.
- 62 WPM run: 0.5 errors × ~500ms ≈ 0.25 seconds lost per 100 words. On raw uncorrected speed, the 70 WPM attempt looks faster. But once you fold in correction time, the actual completion time for 100 words often ends up nearly identical between the two - sometimes the more accurate, "slower" run finishes faster, because it isn't paying the error tax repeatedly.
This is why platforms (TypeClash included) don't just reward raw WPM in ranked scoring - our Solo Ranked accuracy modifier table applies a full ×1.0 multiplier only at 95%+ accuracy, and actually flips negative below 80%, because the scoring system is trying to reflect this real tradeoff rather than let raw speed dominate.
Where the crossover point sits
The break-even point depends on your personal correction speed, but as a rule of thumb: if pushing for more speed costs you more than roughly 1 extra error per 30-40 words, you're very likely losing net time, not gaining it, even though the WPM number on screen looks better. Most typists' intuition about this is wrong because the WPM counter updates in real time and correction cost doesn't show up as a visible number - it's hidden in the total time, which is why it's easy to chase a high WPM reading that isn't actually your fastest real-world completion speed.
The practical takeaway
If you're optimizing for genuinely finishing text fastest - which is almost always the real goal, not the number on a typing test - accuracy above roughly 95% is very rarely something to trade away for more speed. Below that threshold, each additional point of accuracy usually buys back more time than the equivalent speed increase would.
The one exception: pure speed-test formats where corrections aren't required to complete the test (some competitive formats let errors stand and just penalize the final accuracy score rather than forcing a correction). In that specific format, the tradeoff math changes because you're not paying the correction-cycle cost at all - but that's a narrow case, and it's not how most real typing (emails, code, documents) works.
Applying this to your own practice
If you want a rough personal read on where your break-even point sits, run the same passage twice at two deliberately different paces - once comfortable, once pushed - and compare total completion time rather than the WPM readout. The version with the lower total time, not the higher WPM, is your actual faster typing style right now. Most people are surprised the first time they do this, because the WPM counter rewards exactly the behavior (raw speed over correction cost) that this comparison exposes as a false economy.