How phone typing speed is measured: WPM explained

Typing speed is reported in words per minute, or WPM. The idea is simple, but the details decide whether two scores can be compared, so it is worth knowing what is being counted.

A “word” is five characters

Real words vary in length, so typing tests use a standard word of five characters, with spaces counted as characters. Typing 200 correct characters in one minute is 40 WPM, whether that was 40 short words or 25 long ones. This is the long-standing convention for keyboard tests, and Thumbster uses it too.

Only correct characters count

There are two common ways to report speed. Gross speed counts everything you typed. Net speed removes what you got wrong. Thumbster reports a net figure: your WPM is the number of characters that match the text, divided by five, per minute. A wrong letter, an extra letter or a letter you skipped earns nothing. The space after a word counts only if the word before it is exactly right.

Accuracy

Accuracy is the share of your keystrokes that were correct. If you pressed 200 keys and 190 were right, that is 95%. Fixing a mistake does not erase it: the wrong keystroke still happened. This is deliberate. A typist who gets it right first time is more accurate than one who types fast and repairs the damage.

Errors

The error count is every wrong keystroke during the test, including the ones you went back and fixed. It is the plainest measure of how much time went on mistakes. Ways to bring it down are in thumb typing accuracy tips.

What a Thumbster test controls

• The test lasts 60 seconds, starting on your first keystroke.
• The text is common lowercase words with no punctuation, so you never need to switch keyboard layout.
• The test asks your keyboard to switch off autocorrect and auto-capitalisation, and pasting is blocked, so the score reflects your thumbs.

What counts as a good score?

It depends who you compare yourself with. Large studies of phone typing have put the typical speed somewhere in the mid-30s WPM, with practised two-thumb typists comfortably above that. Those studies usually allow autocorrect, which this test does not, so expect your Thumbster number to run a little lower than figures you may have seen elsewhere. The comparison that means most is with your own previous score, and with other players measured the same way on the leaderboards.