How long to type 500 words?
12 min 30 s at the 40 WPM office average — 2,500 keystrokes, spaces included.
- At 30 WPM
- 16 min 40 s
- At 40 WPM
- 12 min 30 s
- At 60 WPM
- 8 min 20 s
- At 80 WPM
- 6 min 15 s
- Keystrokes
- 2,500
500 words is 2,500 keystrokes on the exam convention of five keystrokes to a word, so the time is simply 500 ÷ your net WPM minutes. At the 40 WPM usually quoted for office work that is 12 min 30 s; doubling your speed to 80 halves it to 6 min 15 s, and every figure below is that same division.
The nearest thing to 500 words on this site is Anne of Avonlea at 199 exam words — and the timed test closest to the job is the 10 minute test.
By speed
| Net WPM | Time | Characters / minute |
|---|---|---|
| 20 | 25 min | 100 |
| 30 | 16 min 40 s | 150 |
| 40 | 12 min 30 s | 200 |
| 50 | 10 min | 250 |
| 60 | 8 min 20 s | 300 |
| 70 | 7 min 9 s | 350 |
| 80 | 6 min 15 s | 400 |
| 90 | 5 min 33 s | 450 |
| 100 | 5 min | 500 |
| 120 | 4 min 10 s | 600 |
To finish inside a deadline
| Finish in | Speed needed |
|---|---|
| 5 min | 100 net WPM |
| 10 min | 50 net WPM |
| 15 min | 34 net WPM |
| 30 min | 17 net WPM |
| 60 min | 9 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.