Is that true wpm measures the speed of typing?
I’ve been researched a lot through forums, websites about wpm. And I heard a lot of people want to reach to 100 (wpm), or from 100 (wpm) to 150 (wpm). But what is words per minute anyway? Is that factor really measures your typing speed as we often thought?
The Fact about WPM
WPM factor
Most people often think that typing speed is measured in words per minute ( wpm ). Since words are not all the same it would not be fair to measure someone’s typing speed counting the actual number of words taken randomly. Consider the following cases:
- Simple words that all text is lower case. (often use in chatting with friends or colleague)
- Complex words from history, or poem, or lyrics, or transcript. (For writer, blogger, writing report)
- Words with punctuation and capitals. (often meet in the reality)
- Words from programming with a lot of special characters. ([email protected]#$%^&*).
For each case, even they have the same number of words, but I can pretty sure that words per minute factor will different for each case if you take a test. Why?
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Simple words that all text is lower case
Most of website take a test with lower case, the easy one, right? So all you have to do is move your fingers around the 26 character on the keyboard without hold and press the Shift or reach higher row on the top (the number 1, 2, 3, …). That’s why your speed might be look pretty good.
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Complex words from history, or poem, or transcript, etc
But how about the test with complex word from history, or lyrics, poem, in the case 2. You speed will slow down a little bit even with the lower case. And one more thing from my experience, if you practice with one text over and over, your speed will increase, but if you change to another text different, you speed go down a little bit compare with the text you practice before. It’s just normal.
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Words with punctuation and capitals.
The speed is go down a little, if we hold press Shift + other characters, include . and , ; write the name of someone, or type report. And you will see 100 (wpm) with all lower is different with 100 wpm with mix punctuation and capitals.
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Words from programming with a lot of special characters
For developer, and programmer, this is really hard to increase their speed. They often use all the key in keyboard, from Tab, Shift, Home, Del, Ins, other special char {}:”, it’s really hard to keep the speed typing.
Summary
If you take test from various website, and your speed various around 100 wpm. No worry about that, because the text you taken is different, all lower case, or include the punctuation with capitals, something it could include special characters.
In my opinion, I think the words per minute factor is relatively measure your speed typing, not absolute exactly 100 wpm. Just around that.
Source: MasteringTyping.com