Fact · Typing and writing speed
-0.36correlation with error corrections (r)
Across participants, faster typing was negatively correlated with uncorrected errors (r = -0.21) and with error corrections (r = -0.36).
Checked against its source on October 16, 2026
In the source's own words
“We find a negative correlation between WPM and uncorrected errors ( r = −0.21), error corrections ( r = −0.36), and KSPC (r = −0.4)”
Observations on Typing from 136 Million Keystrokes, Vivek Dhakal et al., CHI 2018, ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2018, Results, Errors and error-correction behaviour.
Open the original (DOI 10.1145/3173574.3174220)- What it measures
- Error corrections are the backspaces and deletions a typist makes, and KSPC is the number of keystrokes needed per character of the final text.
- What it does not show
- Correlations across a large online sample. They show a pattern, not a cause.
Source
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