Average typing speed

The spread tells you how much people differ. In the keyboard study it is large: it is the usual distance between one typist and the average, and it is a good deal wider than most people expect. Most typists in that study were within one spread of the average, so a result well above or well below the average is nothing unusual.

Typing speed is written WPM, words per minute, but a word here is not a word of a sentence. By the usual rule a word is five characters long, spaces and punctuation included. A text is cut into groups of five characters, and the number of groups you finish in a minute is your speed. This way a long word counts as more than one word and a short one as less than one, and the measure does not depend on which words you happened to get.

The studies counted the length of what people typed, however many mistakes it held. A test that counts only the words you got right, like ours, reads a little lower than that. When you set a result next to these averages, remember which of the two ways of counting it used.

The keyboard study took its volunteers from a typing-test website, so they were people who wanted to know how fast they type. Most came from the United States and most were native English speakers, their average age was in the mid twenties, and most had taken a typing course. That group is probably faster than people who never think about their typing.

The phone study also used volunteers, mostly from the United States, and just over half spoke English as a first language. People typed with their own phone's keyboard, with autocorrect, suggestions and swiping all allowed. That helps a phone typist's speed and makes it hard to compare with a keyboard where nothing is done for you.

Nobody has set an official line between slow and fast. What is good depends on what you need it for: a chat, an essay, a job application that names a speed. The averages above give you a reference point, and the best thing to compare with is your own result from last month. The guide on how to type faster covers what is worth practising.

• Around the average of the keyboard study, you type about as fast as the typical volunteer of a typing-test site.
• Within one spread of it, you are in the large middle of the group.
• Far above it, you are among the quicker typists of a group that was already keen on typing.
• On a phone, set yourself beside the phone average and not the keyboard one.

The typing test uses single everyday words, not sentences, which is a different job from copying sentences. That is why it only says roughly where you are, as one of five levels, and never gives a rank.

A fast result with many mistakes is worth less than a slower one that is clean, because errors have to be fixed and fixing them takes time. If your speed goes up while your accuracy drops, you have probably gone past the pace your fingers can control. Watch both numbers together, and use the same device and the same length of test each time you check how you are changing.

Language matters as well. Both studies used English. Other languages have shorter or longer words, accents and different keys, so an average from an English study is a rough guide there.