Fact · Typing and writing speed
The authors found that untrained typists can be as fast as trained typists, although trained typists are faster on average.
Checked against its source on October 16, 2026
In the source's own words
“We found that untrained typists can be as fast as trained typists, but trained typists in general are faster than untrained ones.”
Observations on Typing from 136 Million Keystrokes, Vivek Dhakal et al., CHI 2018, ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2018, Results, trained versus untrained typists.
Open the original (DOI 10.1145/3173574.3174220)- What it measures
- A summary of the trained versus untrained comparison in the online sample.
- What it does not show
- Describes averages; many individual untrained typists are faster than many trained ones.