What is a good typing speed? WPM explained

Typing speed is usually given in words per minute (WPM). The number looks simple, yet two results of 50 WPM can mean quite different things, depending on the text and on how errors were counted. Here is how the number is calculated, what studies have measured, and how to judge your own speed without a leaderboard.

How WPM is calculated

By convention, one word equals five characters, and spaces count as characters. The phrase “the cat sat” has 11 characters and counts as 2.2 words, although you see three.

Gross WPM is the number of characters you typed, divided by five and then by the minutes it took. If you type 600 characters in two minutes, that makes 120 words, or 60 gross WPM.

Net WPM also accounts for the errors you left in the text. The usual formula subtracts uncorrected errors per minute from the gross speed. With 10 uncorrected errors in those two minutes, you lose 5 WPM and end up at 55 net WPM. Errors you fix with Backspace are not part of the formula, but fixing them takes time and lowers your speed anyway.

Many studies report keystrokes per minute instead. Dividing by five converts them: 300 keystrokes per minute are about 60 WPM.

Before you compare two results, make sure both are net or both are gross. typando reports net WPM, measured from your first keystroke to your last.

Typical speeds in research

The figures come from very different groups of people. Read them side by side, not as one scale.

Keystroke values are per minute; the WPM values next to them are our conversion.

The largest data set comes from Dhakal and colleagues. Around 168,000 volunteers (168,960, to be exact) took an online typing test and averaged 51.56 WPM, with an uncorrected error rate of 1.167%. Keep the sample in mind: the volunteers chose to take the test, were mostly young and from the US, and probably more practiced than average.

In a study of everyday typing by Feit, Weir, and Oulasvirta, touch typists averaged 57.8 WPM and self-taught typists 58.9 WPM. There was no difference in speed. What mattered for speed was a fixed finger for each key, preparing the next keystrokes in advance, and little movement of the whole hand. What this means for learning is discussed in Is touch typing still worth learning?

Learners start much lower. In the study by van Weerdenburg and colleagues, children practiced 20 minutes a day for seven months and went from 52.85 to 168.34 keystrokes per minute (roughly 11 to 34 WPM). The postal workers studied by Baddeley and Longman were learning to type; at the end of training, the group that practiced one hour a day typed faster than the group with two 2-hour sessions a day.

Use these numbers for orientation. They are not a bar you have to clear.

Accuracy belongs to the number

An error you fix costs extra keystrokes, and an error you leave lowers your net speed. Dhakal and colleagues found that reducing errors by a small margin can bring a large gain in speed. Accuracy is not the opposite of speed; it is part of it.

That is why typando judges every lesson by accuracy first. A lesson counts as passed at 97%, which allows at most three wrong keystrokes in every 100. Mistakes you correct with Backspace still count, because the wrong key was pressed. In phase 1, speed does not count toward passing.

No training experiment has directly tested whether practicing accuracy before speed works better, so that question is still open. The findings on errors do speak for staying accurate, so check your accuracy before you look at your speed. Practical ways to build speed are collected in How to type faster: what the research says.

A realistic first goal

Many people type more slowly for a while after switching to touch typing. Weigelt Marom and Weintraub measured university students before and after a touch typing course. Right after the course, the students without learning disabilities typed more slowly than before, while those with learning disabilities had become slightly faster. Three months later, both groups were significantly faster than before the course, and accuracy stayed above 95%. Judge your progress over months, not days.

For a first milestone, a school report by Ertl offers a hint. Fifth graders who reached at least 20 WPM were likely to keep the skill when they were tested again in seventh grade; below 20 WPM, the chance of keeping it was about 50%. The report was not peer-reviewed and looked at children, so treat it as a pointer, not a rule. Still, 20 WPM without looking at the keys makes a sensible first goal.

Beyond that, the research gives no figures for how many hours it takes to reach 60 or 80 WPM. Be wary of anyone who promises one. The first weeks are covered in How long does it take to learn touch typing?

Compare yourself with yourself

Leaderboards mix different tests and texts, and the people on them chose to compete. Your own trend says far more.

Measure the same way each time: the same kind of text, a similar length, net WPM together with accuracy. Look at the average of several results rather than your best one, and compare it with your average from a few weeks earlier.

typando is built around this idea: it shows no speed while you type and reports your result only afterward. In phase 2, each unit also has a personal speed goal: the average of your last five exercises plus 5%. If those five results were 30, 32, 31, 33, and 34 WPM, the average is 32 and your goal is 34 WPM (33.6, rounded). A unit counts as passed when you reach 97% accuracy and then the speed goal.

To find your own starting point, begin with the first lesson in the trainer. It uses only F, J, and the space bar, and the results screen shows your net WPM and accuracy right after the exercise.