Speed Building: Common Letter Pairs (Bigrams)
Below the level of whole words, certain two-letter combinations — "th", "he", "in", "er", "an", and similar pairs — occur so often in English that drilling them in isolation, disconnected from any specific word, builds the finger-pair motion into something automatic rather than re-decided from scratch every single time it appears.
This lesson deliberately zooms in one level further than the previous one — where common-words practice built automaticity at the whole-word level, this lesson builds it at the level just below that, the raw two-letter motions that combine to form thousands of different words.
If a specific bigram in this lesson's practice text consistently feels slower than the rest, that's worth noting specifically, since the standalone Common Bigram Drill on the Drills Hub is the natural place to give that particular pair extra, ongoing repetition beyond what this single lesson provides.
What This Lesson Trains
This is a genuinely different unit of practice than the previous lesson's whole words: instead of automating "the" as a single chunk, you're automating the raw "th" motion so it transfers into every word that contains it — "that", "this", "other", "think", and hundreds more. Bigram drilling is a repeatable exercise you can return to at any point, not a one-time lesson, precisely because these two-letter motions recur inside so much of the vocabulary you'll type for the rest of your life.
Because this site's Drills Hub also offers a standalone Common Bigram Drill covering the same underlying skill, treat this lesson as your first, guided introduction to the concept, and the drill as the repeatable version you return to on an ongoing basis once you understand what you're training and why. A further practical note: because these ten pairs recur so heavily across ordinary English, even a brief daily touch of this lesson's practice text, well after finishing the sequential path, tends to keep the underlying automaticity sharp in a way that occasional full-sentence typing alone doesn't reliably maintain. A final point worth adding: some typists find it useful to type this lesson's pairs while consciously trying to feel the specific finger-to-finger handoff involved in each one, rather than thinking of them as abstract letter combinations — that small shift in attention can accelerate the automaticity this lesson is building.
Practice Text
QWERTY layout assumed. Backspace corrects; uncorrected errors count against net WPM.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is bigram practice different from just typing common words?
Word-level practice automates a specific whole word; bigram practice automates the underlying two-letter motion itself, which then transfers into every word containing that pair — a broader, more generalizable speed gain than memorizing individual words.
Should I come back to this lesson regularly, or is it a one-time step?
It's designed as a repeatable drill you can revisit any time, unlike most lessons in this path — since these letter pairs recur constantly across almost all English vocabulary, periodic bigram practice keeps paying off well after you've finished the main path.
What's the difference between this lesson and the Common Bigram Drill on the Drills Hub?
This lesson is the guided, one-time introduction to the concept within the sequential path; the Drills Hub's version is the repeatable maintenance exercise meant for ongoing practice once you already understand the underlying skill this lesson introduces.
Should I say the letter pairs out loud while practicing, or just type silently?
Either approach can work, but typing silently while focusing purely on the motor motion tends to build faster automaticity than narrating out loud, since the goal is bypassing conscious verbal processing entirely, not reinforcing it.
Next lesson: Speed Building: Common Letter Triples (Trigrams)