Fact · Typing and writing speed
78words per minute
In a study of 136 million keystrokes from an online typing test, typists faster than 90 percent of participants were those above about 78 words per minute.
Checked against its source on October 16, 2026
In the source's own words
“Fast Typists are the typists with speeds higher than that of 90% of participants (above approx. 78 WPM in our data)”
Observations on Typing from 136 Million Keystrokes, Vivek Dhakal et al., CHI 2018, ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2018, Section 'Typist Groups'.
Open the original (DOI 10.1145/3173574.3174220)- What it measures
- The authors grouped about 168,000 volunteers who took an online typing test. Fast typists were defined by the speed that 90 percent of participants fell below.
- What it does not show
- Self-selected online volunteers, not a random sample of the population. The threshold is for this dataset only and may differ on other tests or texts.
Source
Used to calculate
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