Fact · Typing and writing speed
250words per quarter hour
Anthony Trollope said his custom was to write with his watch before him and to require 250 words from himself in every quarter of an hour.
Checked against its source on October 16, 2026
In the source's own words
“require from myself 250 words every quarter of an hour”
An Autobiography, Anthony Trollope, Project Gutenberg (ebook 5978, from the 1883 text), 1883, Passage on writing with his watch before him.
Open the original- What it measures
- Trollope describes this habit in his autobiography, which was published in 1883, the year after his death. He says the 250 words arrived as regularly as his watch went, and that he had grown more lenient with himself.
- What it does not show
- A target the author set for himself and reported in his own words. It describes one novelist's habit, measured by the words he counted, and it is not an average for writers.