Fact · Dictation
125 to 150words per minute
The same authors put people's normal speaking speed at 125 to 150 words per minute.
Checked against its source on October 16, 2026
In the source's own words
“much lower than people's normal speaking speed of 125-150 words per minute”
How productivity improves in hands-free continuous dictation tasks: lessons learned from a longitudinal study, Jinjuan Feng et al., Interacting with Computers, 2005, Abstract.
Open the original- What it measures
- A rough figure in the introduction, used to frame the gap between speaking and dictating.
- What it does not show
- A round figure from the abstract, not a measured result of the study. Measured rates vary by speaker and setting; see the conversational speaking rate fact.
Source
Used to calculate
- Composing by speech software at 8 to 15 words per minute runs at about 5 to 12 percent of normal speaking speed.
- At a normal speaking speed of 125 to 150 words per minute, a 10-minute spoken script is about 1,250 to 1,500 words.
- At the normal speaking rate of 125 to 150 words per minute, reading or dictating a prepared text would produce about 7,500 to 9,000 words in an hour of continuous speech.
- The 225 words per minute testimony standard is 1.5 times the upper end of normal speaking speed, which is 150 words per minute.
Cited on
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- Characters per minute (CPM)Glossary
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