Real queries — joins, aggregates, subqueries, window functions, table definitions — timed from your first keystroke. SQL has its own rhythm, and it is not the rhythm of English.
Capitals, mostly. The convention of upper-case keywords means SELECT, FROM, WHERE and JOIN each cost a held shift, and a long query can have a dozen of them. Then commas between every column, parentheses around every function call and subquery, the period of table.column references, single quotes around literals, and the asterisk — shift-8, a stretch for the middle finger. Snake_case column names bring the underscore, and comparison operators bring the angle brackets.
The test text is idiomatic SQL of the kind that appears in analytics and application code: filtered aggregates, multi-table joins, CTEs, window functions, INSERT and UPDATE statements. Keywords are upper-case and identifiers lower-case, as most style guides ask.
SQL usually sits between prose and JavaScript in typing speed: fewer braces than JS, far more capitals and commas than English. A typist at 70 WPM on prose will often land around 50 on SQL. If yours is much lower, watch the live counter for where it dips — for most people it is the transitions into and out of shifted keywords, and the coach's drill will target exactly those transitions.
Accuracy on SQL has a cost the WPM number cannot show: a mistyped column name is a failed query, not a typo. The accuracy figure here is a fair proxy for how often you will be re-running a statement.
The Data Entry course covers the number row, commas and the punctuation-heavy patterns SQL shares with spreadsheets, and the Programmers course isolates brackets and the shifted layer. The Practice Lab will write queries against a schema you describe, so the practice can look like your own database rather than a textbook one.
Most SQL editors offer snippets and keyword completion, and they help with long statements. They do not help with the part this test measures: column lists, string literals, the WHERE clause you write differently every time, the join condition. Developers who rely on completion often discover their raw speed on SQL is well below their prose speed, and that the difference is almost entirely the shifted keywords and the punctuation between columns — both of which touch-typing practice fixes in a couple of weeks.