Fact · Typing and writing speed
201words per minute
In the speaking rate in words per minute dataset, the 3 published figures for “Conversation” have a median of 201 words per minute, ranging from 196 to 236.
Calculated from 3 data points on October 19, 2026
- What it measures
- Each figure is one row of the dataset: a published measurement for a stated group, traced to its source. The median is the middle value of the 3 figures for this group.
- How it is calculated
- Median of 3 values (196, 201, 236) = 201.
- What it does not show
- Word length differs between languages, so words-per-minute rates compare well only within one language. Pauses are counted in some studies and not in others.
A statistic of the dataset Speaking Rate Statistics: Words per Minute, calculated by code from its published rows.
Calculated from
- In large corpora of conversational telephone speech in English and Chinese, the overall average rate was 196 words per minute, counting all elapsed time.
- Measured over elapsed time, the speaking rate of individual conversations ranges from 111 to 291 words per minute.
- When silences and non-speech noises are removed from conversational telephone speech, the average net speaking rate is 236 words per minute.