If you’ve ever been curious about how a typing tool measures your speed, you’re probably wondering how it works.
Before discussing formula that are used in calculating your typing statistics when you take our online typing speed test.
#Note: The formulas are same equally applicable for both English typing and Hindi typing or any other language.
But let’s first try to understand some important terms that every typing tool consider.
Calculation of Typing Speed
There are two types of speed, one is net speed and the other is gross speed. Net speed is the speed in which only correctly typed words and characters are considered for speed calculation. While, Gross Speed also includes incorrectly typed words and characters for assessment.
#Note: Incorrect typed words are also used to calculate typing accuracy.
1. Characters Per Minute (CPM)
Characters Per Minute (or CPM) is defined as number of characters typed in a minute. Characters, key strokes, key depressions, letters all are the same thing.
#Note: Spaces, backspace, enter or other non-character keys like enter, shift, control, alt etc. are not counted as characters.
To understand it in simple words you can think of it like, when a key is pressed, if it prints something on your screen then only it will be considered as character. Enter, backspace, shift, etc do not print anything on the computer screen.
For example the sentence “Typing Buzz do it’s best to improve your typing speed” has 44 characters.
2. Words Per Minute (WPM)
Words Per Minute (or WPM) is defined as number of words typed in a minute. But this definition is not so simple as it seems.
Now the question that comes in our mind is ‘what is the word’. The definition of the word varies but mostly words are counted in these two ways.
Method 1: Number of words is equal to the number of characters (without spaces) divided by 5. So a group of five letters is counted as one word.
For example, The sentence “Typing Buzz do it’s best to improve your typing speed” has 44 characters. Suppose all the words are typed correctly. Then the number words in above sentence will be 44/5=8.8 words.
Method 2: The word separated by space is counted as a single word. For example in the sentence “Typing Buzz do it’s best to improve your typing speed” has 10 words.
3. Key Stroke Hourly / Key Depression Hourly (KPH):
Key strokes and key depressions are similar to the characters per minute described above. Typing tools treats characters, alphabets, keystrokes and key depressions as one thing.
no. of character = no. of letter = no. of key stroke = no. of key depression
The basic difference that should be noted is that KPH is measured per hour not per minute.
4. Typing accuracy
Accuracy is the percentage of correct words out of the total typed words or characters. Suppose you typed a total of 100 words or characters in a typing test. You have typed 85 words or characters correctly and 15 words or characters wrong. So your typing accuracy is 85%.
Typing Speed Calculation Formula
Typing tools uses two formulas to calculate typing speed. One formula is based on counting characters and the other is directly applied to counting words.
#Note: The formulas are same equally applicable for both English typing and Hindi typing or any other language.
A) Gross WPM
B) Net WPM
