Fact · Typing and writing speed
The corrected method in the 2016 Feit study sums the time between keystrokes, leaves out breaks between sentences, and divides by the number of transcribed words.
Checked against its source on October 16, 2026
In the source's own words
“For each user we sum up the times between all keystrokes (not including breaks between sentences) and divide it by the overall length of all transcribed sentences given in number of words (any 5 characters).”
How We Type: Movement Strategies and Performance in Everyday Typing, Anna Maria Feit et al., Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2016, Errata.
Open the original (DOI 10.1145/2858036.2858233)- What it measures
- The authors published an erratum because the first description of their WPM calculation did not match what they had done.
- What it does not show
- Two studies can use the same word definition and still produce different speeds if they handle breaks and outliers differently.