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

If speed is the goal, however, a 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 on Wednesday.

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