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What Is a Good Typing Speed Per Minute?


by Dan Stone, Demand Media
What qualifies as a good typing speed depends on the population you're examining: the general population or professionals. The average person types between 38 and 40 words per minute -- between 190 and 200 characters per minute. However, professional typists type a lot faster on average -- upwards of 65 to 75 WPM. A good typing speed compared to the general population would be over 40 WPM, but compared to professionals it would be in the 75 WPM range.

Characters Per Minute

The CPM metric is used to measure how many keystrokes a typist makes during a given time period. Characters per minute is often used as a metric because the name ignores the length of the words on the typing test. Someone who is typing lots of short, easy to spell words would perform faster than someone who types long, hard to spell words if you are counting words as a unit. A professional or good typist hits around 325 to 335 CPM. However, anyone that can type over 200 CPM is considered an above-average typist when compared to the general population.

Words Per Minute

The WPM typing metric is the most commonly used typing speed measurement. However, the WPM metric has a few adjustments to just counting words to compensate for the contrasting length of long words and short words: a "word" in the WPM standard is five characters. The WPM standard is really just an adjusted CPM measurement that's easier for people to understand: people wouldn't count the length of a sentence by character length.

Average Performance

According to Teresia Ostrach, president of Five Star Staffing, half the population lacks the finger dexterity to type faster than 50 WPM. The median typist speed is 38 WPM and the mean typing speed is 40 WPM. RankMyTyping.com, a typing test website that aggregates typing speed scores based on online tests, ranks the average typing speed at 43 WPM. According to RankMyTyping.com, secretaries that have taken the test rank around 74 WPM and the average 13-year-old performs around 23 WPM.

High Proficiency

There are typists who extend far above and beyond the normal level of proficiency. According to "On the Reappraisal of Microeconomics" author Robert Ayers, a highly proficient typist can hit upwards of 120 WPM compared to the 20 to 30 WPM typing speed of a "key pecker." According to The Martin J. Whitman School of Management, Barbara Blackburn of Salem, Oregon holds the record as the fastest typist of all time. Blackburn could type at 150 WPM over a stretch of 50 minutes and peaked at bursts of 212 WPM.

Error Correction

Error correction plays a major role in typing speed. According to Ahmed Sabbir Arif and Wolfgang Stuerzlinger's study, "Analysis of Text Entry Performance Metrics," typists would perform around 85 WPM if they didn't count errors and continued to type, but would drop to 65 WPM when they had to correct errors.