# Typing speed: understanding WPM and getting faster

> What WPM means, how it is calculated, the average typing speed from a study of 168,000 people, QWERTY and AZERTY, and what one typo really costs you.

- Web page: https://www.neurostim.fr/en/wiki/typerun
- Play: https://www.neurostim.fr/en/typerun
- En français: https://www.neurostim.fr/wiki/typerun.md
- Updated: 2026-11-07

Typing speed is measured in words per minute (WPM), and a "word" always counts as five characters, spaces included: 300 correct characters in one minute make 60 WPM. In an Aalto University study of 168,000 volunteers, the average was 52 WPM, and only 10% went above roughly 78 WPM.

On Neurostim, [Typerun](https://www.neurostim.fr/en/typerun) measures that speed on common words, in English or French, and [the daily typing test](https://www.neurostim.fr/en/typing-test) gives everyone the same words. This page is here to help you read your number: what it counts, what a typo takes away from it, and what actually makes it go up.

## In short

- **Genre**: a single-player typing speed test, on English or French words.
- **Goal**: type the words shown, fast and without mistakes. Your WPM sets your rank, and your accuracy breaks ties.
- **Daily challenges**: 30 words and 30 seconds in each language, so four leaderboards, renewed at midnight, Paris time. You can replay, and your best attempt of the day counts.
- **Free practice**: 15, 30 or 60 seconds, 10, 25 or 50 words, new words at every attempt, unranked.
- **Text**: lower-case letters and spaces, with no punctuation or digits. French accents count.
- **Account**: none to create; you play under a guest name.
- **Devices**: ideally a real computer keyboard; the test also works on a phone.

## The rules of the calculation: WPM, raw and accuracy

### A word is worth five characters

Counting real words would favour texts full of short ones. So the convention divides characters by five: *rhinoceros* counts as two words, *I run* as one. Typerun applies this formula.

```
WPM = characters of the right words, spaces included / 5 / minutes
```

For example, you type a 180-character text with no mistakes in 36 seconds. That makes 180 / 5 = 36 words, and 36 seconds is 0.6 of a minute. Your speed is 36 / 0.6 = 60 WPM.

### A wrong word earns nothing

A word counts in full or not at all. If a single letter is wrong when you press `Space`, the word and its space score zero, even if it had ten letters. The comparison is exact: *e* in place of *é* is a mistake, and so is a capital.

You can go back to a wrong word: `Backspace` on an empty word takes you into the previous one, and its characters count again once you fix it. A right word is locked in, and you cannot return to it. At the end of a timed test, the word in progress counts for its letters as long as none of them is wrong.

### Raw, accuracy, consistency

The result shows other figures that tell you where your time goes:

- **Raw** counts every letter and space typed, right or wrong, divided by five and per minute. A big gap between raw and WPM means your mistakes are expensive.
- **Accuracy** is the share of right keys among all keys. A corrected mistake gives its characters back to your WPM but stays a mistake for accuracy. `Backspace` is not counted, and a space after a wrong word counts as a wrong key.
- **Consistency** is 100 × (1 - standard deviation / mean) of your raw speed, second by second. The higher it is, the fewer jolts in your rhythm.
- **Characters** read in this order: correct, incorrect, extra, missed.

### How a test ends

A 30-second test lasts exactly 30 seconds from your first letter. A words test stops as soon as the last word is right, with no space needed, and its time runs from the first key to the last. If the last word is wrong, a space closes it as it stands, or you can fix it. The time you spend reading before your first letter therefore never counts.

## Playing Typerun on Neurostim

### Controls

| Action | Keyboard |
|---|---|
| Start the clock | type the first letter |
| Move to the next word | `Space` |
| Delete a letter | `Backspace` |
| Delete the whole word | `Ctrl` + `Backspace`, or `Alt` + `Backspace` |
| Go back into the previous word, if wrong | `Backspace` on an empty word |
| Start over during a test | `Esc`, or `Tab` then `Enter` |
| On the result: start over, another test | `Enter`, `Esc` |

Pasting is refused, and the typing field asks the phone to turn off its autocorrect. Without JavaScript, only words tests remain, through a form, and the attempt is not ranked.

### The daily challenges

Each challenge has its own words, the same for everyone: 30 words to finish as fast as you can, or 30 seconds to get as far as you can. Since you meet the same text on every attempt, your daily score can rise simply because you know it. To measure your real speed, use free practice instead.

### Free practice

It draws new words at every attempt, in the language picked on the tab. It stays off the leaderboards, but your record shows under each format, and [your stats](https://www.neurostim.fr/en/my-stats) draw your curve format by format.

### The leaderboard

Your best attempt of the day goes on [the challenge's leaderboard](https://www.neurostim.fr/en/challenges/typerun/daily-en-words30), provided it was finished. The server replays your keystrokes and works out the score itself. The leaderboard reads WPM to the hundredth; on a tie, the better accuracy comes first, then the attempt finished earliest. Over 30 seconds, each right character is worth exactly 0.4 WPM, so an exact tie can happen, and accuracy settles it. Weekly and monthly points are explained on [the speedrun FAQ](https://www.neurostim.fr/en/speedrun-faq).

### With friends

A [room](https://www.neurostim.fr/en/lobbies) starts a race on the same 10, 25 or 50 words, in English or French, and the "Challenge a friend" button on the result opens one in a click. In a race, WPM is worked out over the time since the shared start: a late start costs you, and JavaScript is required.

## Learning to type faster

### The home position

Eight fingers rest on the middle row and come back to it after each key. Your index fingers settle on F and J, the two keys with a small bump you can find without looking. The diagrams show AZERTY, then QWERTY: the line separates the two hands, and the marked squares are F and J. On QWERTY, home is A S D F for the left hand and J K L ; for the right.

```puzzle
A Z E R T | Y U I O P
Q S D F* G | H J* K L M
W X C V B | N _ _ _ _
```

```puzzle
Q W E R T | Y U I O P
A S D F* G | H J* K L _
Z X C V B | N M _ _ _
```

### Do you really need ten fingers?

Not necessarily, though the two studies do not say quite the same thing. A study observing 30 people as they typed (Feit et al., 2016) found that self-taught typists using five fingers could match ten-finger typists. The study of 168,000 volunteers does see a link: the more fingers people report, the faster they type (a correlation of 0.38), with 8.4 fingers on average for the fastest against 5.3 for the slowest. Those who had taken a course typed 5 WPM faster on average, a small gap, and the study notes that self-taught typists can be just as fast.

In the 2016 study, three habits set good typists apart: each key is always hit by the same finger, the next key is prepared in advance, and the hand moves as little as possible. If you already type fast your own way, work on these three before relearning everything. If you type with two fingers and hunt for the keys with your eyes, a style Wikipedia puts at around 27 to 37 WPM sustained, start with the home position: this is advice, not a study result.

### Eyes on the screen

Looking at your fingers stops you from reading ahead. Keep your eyes on the next word: that is what lets you prepare the next key.

### Rolling your keys

Fast typists often press a key before releasing the previous one. The Aalto study measures this overlap, known as rollover, on 25% of keystrokes on average, and on 40 to 70% for most of the fastest typists, while the slowest almost never do it (a correlation of 0.73 with speed). This is a link, not proof of a cause: the study suggests making it an exercise, without having tested that.

### Pairs typed with one finger

The same study finds that letter pairs typed by different hands or fingers predict speed better than repeated letters do. Its data does not show which finger presses which key, so it says nothing about one-finger pairs. In Typerun's English list on QWERTY, the most common are *un*, *de*, *lo*, *ed* and *ol*; in its French list on AZERTY, *tr*, *de*, *rt*, *ce* and *br*. The same finger has to change keys on these: if one slows you down, drill it on its own. This is advice, not a study result.

### Accents on AZERTY and QWERTY

On AZERTY, é, è, ç and à have their own keys on the number row, and ù has one next to M. Digits need `Shift`. The letters ê, î, ô and û go through the ^ dead key, to the right of P, followed by the vowel: two keys for one counted character. A 30-word French text holds one of these on average.

A US QWERTY keyboard has no é key. You need to turn on an international layout with dead keys, or stay on the English words, which have no accents at all.

### A simple practice routine

This is advice, not a study result. Pick one format, 60 seconds for example, and stick to it so you compare like with like. Slow down until you pass 98% accuracy, then build back up gently. On the result chart, look at where the error dots land: if they cluster after a burst of speed, you are going faster than your fingers.

## Getting faster

- **Fix a typo on the very next key.** The longer you wait, the more right letters you delete. In the measurements below, fixing at the end of a word wins back two to three times less than fixing at once.
- **Do not cross the space on a typo you saw.** The whole word would score zero.
- **Do not force the pace.** Typing 10% faster while going from 1% to 5% missed letters lowers your score.
- **Watch out for Caps Lock.** All the words are lower case, so any capital letter is wrong.
- **Restart without a second thought.** On the daily challenge only your best attempt counts: after a bad start, `Esc` costs you nothing.
- **Be wary of short tests.** A sprint does not show what you can hold over time: the records below go from over 300 WPM across 15 seconds to about 213 across an hour.

For a change, [Anagrun](https://www.neurostim.fr/en/wiki/anagrun) has you type words you must work out first, and [Flashtap](https://www.neurostim.fr/en/wiki/flashtap) measures your reaction time.

## Benchmarks: measurements, averages and records

### What Typerun's texts contain

These figures come from the game's real lists and from 5,000 texts of 30 words drawn by its generator, in November 2026.

| | French words | English words |
|---|---|---|
| Words in the list | 434 | 493 |
| Average length | 5.0 letters | 4.4 letters |
| Words of 5 letters or fewer | 62% | 83% |
| Most common letters | e 15.1%, r 11.8%, i 7.8% | e 13.6%, o 7.9%, a 7.6% |
| Words with an accent or cedilla | 56, or 12.9% | none |
| A 30-word text, on average | 179 characters | 162 characters |
| 9 texts out of 10 run between | 165 and 194 characters | 150 and 174 characters |
| Time without a mistake at 60 WPM | 36 seconds | 32 seconds |

The five-character convention evens all this out: 60 WPM means about 56 real English words or 50 real French words a minute. The letter r makes up 11.8% of the French list, against about 6% in the French corpus cited by French Wikipedia: infinitives are plentiful there, and that letter falls under the left index finger.

Since these texts have no capitals or punctuation, your score says nothing about those keys. It does not compare directly with a test on real sentences.

### Where your fingers work

Share of the letters of each list, on the usual layout for each language and with the fingers of the classic method, spaces not counted.

| | French on AZERTY | English on QWERTY |
|---|---|---|
| Top row | 62.5% | 51.6% |
| Home row | 21.4% | 32.8% |
| Bottom row | 13.9% | 15.6% |
| Number row | 2.2% | 0% |
| Left hand | 60.1% | 59.2% |
| Left index finger | 24.7% | 22.6% |
| Pairs on the same hand | 49.7% | 52.0% |
| Pairs on the same finger, different keys | 6.7% | 7.2% |

The home row holds only a third of the letters in English and a fifth in French: it is a place to come back to, not where most of the typing happens. The top row is where your fingers go most often, and your left hand works harder than your right in both languages. English on AZERTY reaches 28.4% on the home row.

### What a typo costs

We ran a simulated typist through Typerun's real engine, on 400 texts of 30 words in November 2026: 5 keys a second at a constant rhythm, so 60 raw WPM with no mistakes, with a share of letters missed at random. WPM obtained on the French words:

| Letters missed | Never fixed | Fixed at the end of the word | Fixed on the next key |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1% | 57.0 | 57.6 | 58.5 |
| 2% | 53.7 | 54.8 | 56.9 |
| 5% | 45.6 | 48.7 | 52.4 |

On the English words, at 5% missed letters, the three columns give 47.8, 49.7 and 52.7. Letting 2% of mistakes through therefore takes 11% off your score, because each one wipes out its whole word. Fixing them at once limits the loss to 6%. The model counts no reaction time: for real, a fix costs even more.

The same simulation settles the question of speed, with mistakes fixed on the next key. At 5 keys a second and 1% mistakes, you get 58.6 WPM. At 5.5 keys a second and 5% mistakes, 57.7. At 6 keys a second and 8% mistakes, 58.1: 20% more finger speed for a lower score.

Finally, typing a French text with no accents at all and no other mistake gives 52.3 WPM instead of 60.3: 3.9 words out of 30 drop to zero on average, a 13% loss.

### The average typing speed

| Benchmark | Speed | Where the figure comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Average in an online study | 51.56 WPM, standard deviation 20.2 | 168,000 volunteers, 15 English sentences (Dhakal et al., 2018) |
| The fastest 10% | above roughly 78 WPM | same study |
| The slowest 10% | below roughly 26 WPM | same study |
| Ordinary computer users | 33 WPM copying, 19 composing | Karat et al., 1999, via Wikipedia |
| Two-finger typists | 27 WPM copying, 37 on memorised text | via Wikipedia |
| Professional typists | 43 to 80 WPM, some jobs 80 to 95 | via Wikipedia |
| On a phone | 36.2 WPM | 37,370 volunteers (Palin et al., 2019) |

These volunteers came to a typing-course site of their own accord. The study says they are mostly young and interested in typing, that 68% are from the US and that over 70% took a typing course. The average of the whole population is therefore probably lower: that is our deduction, not a figure from the study. We found no French study of this size.

### The records

Records depend enormously on the format, and none compares with another. Pages checked on 7 November 2026.

- **On a typewriter**: Guinness lists Stella Pajunas, 216 words in one minute on an IBM machine in Chicago, in an official test in 1946.
- **On a Dvorak keyboard**: Barbara Blackburn is credited with 212 WPM "for a brief time" in 1985. Wikipedia reports other figures for her, such as 194 WPM in 1984.
- **Online**: Wikipedia cites 319 WPM over 15 seconds for MythicalRocket, then 255 over one minute for the player slekap and 213 over one hour for Joshua Hu, those last two on random words. The page warns that many of these online records cannot be verified.
- **In championships**: French Wikipedia credits the Czech typist Helena Matoušková with 955.10 characters a minute at 0.03% errors, in Rome in 2003, which is 191 WPM under the five-character rule. The page itself warns that it lacks sources.

To see where you stand on identical texts, look at [the challenge's records](https://www.neurostim.fr/en/challenges/typerun/daily-en-words30).

## The history of typing and keyboards

- **1868**: on 14 July, Christopher Latham Sholes, Carlos Glidden and Samuel Soulé get a US patent for a typewriter. Its keyboard then has two alphabetical rows.
- **1870**: in April, Sholes reaches four rows, close to today's QWERTY.
- **1873 and 1874**: his backer James Densmore sells the manufacturing rights to Remington, which starts selling the machine in 1874.
- **1878**: the Remington No. 2 adds a Shift key and establishes the layout.
- **1888**: on 25 July in Cincinnati, Frank McGurrin, who types without looking, beats Louis Traub, who uses eight fingers on a Caligraph, and wins 500 dollars. Whether he was really the first to type that way is unknown.
- **1889**: Georges Buisson, a stenographer at the French National Assembly, organises France's first contest, according to French Wikipedia.
- **1890s**: AZERTY appears in France, derived from American machines. Its author and reasons remain unknown.
- **2019**: in April, AFNOR publishes the voluntary standard NF Z71-300, started in 2015 at the request of the French Ministry of Culture. It keeps the 26 letters in place, moves some accents and symbols, and also offers the BÉPO layout.

A legend says QWERTY was designed to slow typists down. The work of Koichi and Motoko Yasuoka, cited by Wikipedia, does not back it up, and the explanation based on jamming machines may have been invented. Wikipedia adds, from another source, that spacing out common letter pairs tends to speed typing up, because it makes the hands alternate.

## Frequently asked questions

### What does WPM mean in typing?

WPM stands for words per minute, the unit of typing speed. By convention a word counts as five characters, spaces included, whatever its real length. So 60 WPM means 300 correct characters in one minute, or about 56 real English words from Typerun's list.

### How is typing speed calculated?

You divide the number of correct characters by five, then by the time in minutes. On Typerun, only the characters of entirely right words count, spaces included: a 180-character text typed without a mistake in 36 seconds gives 180 / 5 / 0.6 = 60 WPM. The server redoes this calculation by replaying your keystrokes.

### What is the average typing speed?

The average is about 52 words per minute in an Aalto University study of 168,000 volunteers typing English sentences. Those volunteers came to a typing site of their own accord, so the whole population probably types more slowly. An older study cited by Wikipedia gives 33 WPM copying text for ordinary computer users, and 19 WPM when composing.

### Is 60 WPM a good typing speed?

Yes, 60 WPM is above the 52 WPM average of the Aalto study, though short of the roughly 78 WPM that marks its fastest 10%. It also sits inside the 43 to 80 WPM range Wikipedia gives for professional typists. Check the test's format, though, because a score on common lower-case words does not compare directly with one on real sentences.

### How do you type faster?

The quickest gain is making fewer mistakes, because every wrong word scores zero. Keep your eyes on the screen, hit each key with the same finger every time, prepare the next key and move your hand as little as possible. Fix typos on the very next key, and track your progress on one single format.

### Is 98% typing accuracy good?

Yes, 98% is a sensible target, though it still costs about 5% of your score in our simulation on Typerun's engine. That accuracy matches roughly 1% of letters missed and left alone, because the space after a wrong word also counts as a wrong key, or about 2% fixed on the next key. Both end up close to 57 WPM out of 60.

### How can you type faster on a phone?

Use both thumbs: over 74% of the 37,370 volunteers in an Aalto study did, and it was significantly faster than one thumb or one finger. They averaged 36.2 WPM, and the study puts phone typing at about 70% of the speed on a full keyboard. Autocorrect users were faster too, and Typerun's field asks for autocorrect to be off, so expect a lower score there.

### What is the typing world record?

There is no single record, because everything depends on the duration and the text. Guinness lists 216 words in one minute for Stella Pajunas in 1946 on a typewriter. Online, Wikipedia cites 319 WPM over 15 seconds and 213 over an hour, records that often cannot be verified (page checked in November 2026).

### What does QWERTY mean?

QWERTY is named after the first six letters of the top row of the standard English keyboard. Christopher Latham Sholes worked the layout out in the early 1870s for his typewriter, and it spread with the Remington No. 2 of 1878. The popular story that it was designed to slow typists down is not supported.

### How do you type faster than 100 WPM?

No study we read tests a route to 100 WPM, but the Aalto study shows what its fastest typists do differently. Its fastest 10% averaged about 90 WPM, corrected about half as many errors as the average and overlapped about half their keystrokes, against a quarter overall. Aim for accuracy first and read ahead so that each next key is ready before you need it.

### What are the typing speed percentiles?

The Aalto study of 168,000 volunteers gives two useful marks: the slowest 10% type below roughly 26 WPM and the fastest 10% above roughly 78 WPM, around an average of 52 WPM. The fastest people in the data reach 120 WPM or more. These are self-selected volunteers, so a whole-population percentile would likely sit lower.

### Is Typerun free, with no account?

Yes, Typerun is free, has no ads and needs no account: your first game gives you a guest name, ranked like members. Creating an account later keeps your results, and free practice and all four daily challenges stay available with nothing to install.

## Sources

- Vivek Dhakal, Anna Feit, Per Ola Kristensson and Antti Oulasvirta, [Observations on Typing from 136 Million Keystrokes](https://userinterfaces.aalto.fi/136Mkeystrokes/), CHI 2018, checked on 7 November 2026.
- Kseniia Palin et al., [How do People Type on Mobile Devices?](https://userinterfaces.aalto.fi/typing37k/), MobileHCI 2019.
- Anna Feit, Daryl Weir and Antti Oulasvirta, [How We Type](https://userinterfaces.aalto.fi/how-we-type/), CHI 2016.
- Guinness World Records, [Fastest typist on an electronic typewriter](https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/67967-fastest-typist-on-an-electronic-typewriter), checked on 7 November 2026.
- Wikipedia, [Words per minute](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute), [Typing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typing), [Touch typing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_typing), [QWERTY](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY), [AZERTY](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AZERTY), checked on 7 November 2026.
- French Wikipedia, [AZERTY](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/AZERTY), [Dactylographie](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dactylographie), [letter frequency](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9quence_d%27apparition_des_lettres), checked on 7 November 2026.
- AFNOR, [French keyboard, a voluntary standard](https://www.afnor.org/en/news/keyboard-english-voluntary-standard-for-easier-writing/), checked on 7 November 2026.
- Neurostim's measurements: Typerun's word lists and engine, November 2026.

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