How does a typing speed test work, and how is WPM calculated?
This typing test runs for 60 seconds. Random English words appear on screen, and you type them in order, pressing space after each one. The moment you hit space, the word is checked and marked right or wrong. When time is up, you see your net speed, your keystrokes per minute and your accuracy.
Net speed counts characters rather than whole words. The letters of every word you typed correctly are added up together with the spaces after them, and the total is divided by five. This is the usual "five keystrokes equals one word" rule. Say your correct words in one minute come to 230 characters, spaces included. Divide by 5 and you get 46 words per minute, or 46 WPM.
Counting characters keeps things fair, because a short word like "it" and a long one like "breakfast" each carry weight in line with their length. Mistyped words add nothing to your net speed and pull your accuracy down. Capital letters don't matter, so "Apple" and "apple" count as the same word.
What is a good typing speed?
On this test, 35 words per minute or more counts as Good, and 50 or more as Fast. Your results screen uses these bands:
- 0-19: Beginner
- 20-34: Developing
- 35-49: Good
- 50-69: Fast
- 70 and above: Very fast
These bands are the site's own scale, not an official standard. People who look at the keys and type with two or three fingers usually land in the 20s or 30s. Touch typists can get past 50 with steady practice, and going beyond 70 takes longer, more deliberate work.
Keep in mind that the test words have nothing to do with each other. In a real sentence your brain half-guesses the next word, so you'll probably copy a normal paragraph a little faster than you score here. Writing your own thoughts is slower again, because your fingers end up waiting for your head.
Watch your accuracy as closely as your speed. In everyday typing every mistake has to be noticed, deleted and typed again, so a pace that drops your accuracy below 95% will slow you down in real emails, whatever the test says.
What is touch typing, and how do you learn it?
Touch typing means typing without looking at the keyboard, with each key assigned to a particular finger. On a QWERTY keyboard your left fingers rest on A, S, D and F, your right fingers on J, K, L and the semicolon, and your thumbs on the space bar. The small bumps on F and J let you find this home row by feel, and after each keystroke your fingers return there.
The first rule of learning is to slow down. Anyone who switches drops below their old speed for a while, and that dip is part of the process. Keeping your eyes off the keys is the hardest part, but that struggle is exactly what teaches your fingers where everything is.
Build up in small steps: home row words first, then the top row, then the bottom row. Fifteen or twenty minutes of careful practice a day usually sticks better than one long session a week. In the first few weeks, track your mistakes rather than your speed; once you can type cleanly at a steady pace, the speed comes on its own. Taking this test once a week and noting the result is an easy way to follow your progress.
How can you type faster?
Short, regular practice with accuracy first is what works. Pushing the pace can lift your score for a round or two, but once mistakes pile up, your net speed falls back.
Start with the keys that trip you up. After a test, look at the words you got wrong. The errors often cluster around the same few letters, or around pairs typed with the same finger, like "ed" or "un". A few minutes on a short list of those words does more than random practice.
Next, make common words automatic. Once "the", "and", "that" and "with" come out as single smooth movements, your average climbs. Try to hit every key at roughly the same pace instead of racing through easy letters and stalling on hard ones, and keep your eyes one word ahead so your fingers can work a step in advance.
In a one-minute test, every lapse in focus shows up in the result. If you want to check your concentration on its own, the Attention Test shows how well you click the right shape and let the others pass. Reflexes are another matter: the Reaction Time Test measures how quickly you respond to a single signal, while typing speed comes from finger movements built up through repetition.
Does keyboard layout affect typing speed?
A little, but far less than practice does. An experienced QWERTY touch typist will comfortably beat someone who has just switched to a layout that is supposed to be faster.
QWERTY dates back to the typewriters of the 1870s and is still the standard in English-speaking countries. Dvorak and Colemak put the most common English letters on the home row so your fingers travel less. Whether they make you much faster is less clear, and switching means weeks of slow typing. The test works with any layout anyway, because it only checks the letters that land on screen.
Can you test your typing speed on a phone?
Yes, but on a phone the test measures your thumb speed on a touchscreen, which you can't compare directly with your speed on a computer. On glass you can't feel the edge of a key, so a clear gap between the two results is normal.
Watch out for autocorrect and word suggestions. Some keyboard apps "fix" a word the instant you press space and swap a correctly typed word for a different one. Switch these off during the test and compare phone results only with other phone attempts.
How long should a typing test be?
One minute is enough for keeping track of your speed. It's quick to repeat and makes week-to-week comparisons easy.
A short test slightly flatters your burst speed, and a single stumble can move the score by a few points. So one round can mislead you. Do three in a row and look at the average, ideally at a time of day when you feel fresh and on the same keyboard each time, so that results from different weeks stay comparable.