How long to type 100 words?
2 min 30 s at the 40 WPM office average — 500 keystrokes, spaces included.
- At 30 WPM
- 3 min 20 s
- At 40 WPM
- 2 min 30 s
- At 60 WPM
- 1 min 40 s
- At 80 WPM
- 75 s
- Keystrokes
- 500
100 words is 500 keystrokes on the exam convention of five keystrokes to a word, so the time is simply 100 ÷ your net WPM minutes. At the 40 WPM usually quoted for office work that is 2 min 30 s; doubling your speed to 80 halves it to 75 s, and every figure below is that same division.
The nearest thing to 100 words on this site is Little Women at 106 exam words — and the timed test closest to the job is the 2 minute test.
By speed
| Net WPM | Time | Characters / minute |
|---|---|---|
| 20 | 5 min | 100 |
| 30 | 3 min 20 s | 150 |
| 40 | 2 min 30 s | 200 |
| 50 | 2 min | 250 |
| 60 | 1 min 40 s | 300 |
| 70 | 86 s | 350 |
| 80 | 75 s | 400 |
| 90 | 67 s | 450 |
| 100 | 60 s | 500 |
| 120 | 50 s | 600 |
To finish inside a deadline
| Finish in | Speed needed |
|---|---|
| 5 min | 20 net WPM |
| 10 min | 10 net WPM |
| 15 min | 7 net WPM |
| 30 min | 4 net WPM |
| 60 min | 2 net WPM |
Typing flat out for the whole time is not the same as your one-minute score. Take a 15 minute test before trusting a number like this.
Other lengths
Keep going
Typing test
Gross and net WPM, accuracy and keystrokes per hour — the figures typing exams use, at eight lengths from 15 seconds to 15 minutes.
Typing lessons
Fifteen short lessons, two new keys at a time, with the keyboard showing which finger goes where.
Practice texts
Type a passage from a classic book: real sentences, capitals and punctuation, with the numbers that say how hard each one is.
Key drills
A drill for each row, hand, finger and kind of character — and how much of English prose each set of keys actually carries.
Every key
One page per key: the finger that owns it, how often it is really pressed, and the letter pairs it lives in.
Weak keys
A drill built from the keys you miss most, worked out from your own tests.
Times tables
Each table with its patterns, a drill that returns to what you got wrong, and a 60-second speed test.