20 WPM
One minute, with 20 as the target. The live counter shows both your speed and the number you are chasing.
- Gross WPM
- 0
- Accuracy
- 0%
- Wrong words left in
- 0
- Keystrokes / hour
- 0
- Time
- 0 s
20 WPM in other units
- Characters / minute
- 100
- Keystrokes / hour
- 6,000
- Characters / second
- 1.67
- Words / hour
- 1,200
- Where it sits
- Getting there
20 words a minute means 100 keystrokes a minute, because a word is defined as five keystrokes — so it is faster than handwriting and 50% short of the 40 WPM usually quoted for office work. Around the speed of careful handwriting. Accuracy first — speed follows it.
On this site that speed gets through none of the practice texts inside a minute — every one of them is longer than that. The text closest to exactly one minute at this pace is Common Sense, at 62 exam words.
How long things take at 20 WPM
| Words | Time at 20 WPM | Keystrokes |
|---|---|---|
| 100 | 5 min | 500 |
| 250 | 12 min 30 s | 1,250 |
| 500 | 25 min | 2,500 |
| 750 | 37 min 30 s | 3,750 |
| 1,000 | 50 min | 5,000 |
| 1,500 | 1 h 15 min | 7,500 |
| 2,000 | 1 h 40 min | 10,000 |
| 3,000 | 2 h 30 min | 15,000 |
| 5,000 | 4 h 10 min | 25,000 |
Other speeds
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.