Words per minute

Words per minute, commonly abbreviated wpm (sometimes uppercased WPM), is a measure of words processed in a minute, often used as a measurement of the speed of typing, reading or Morse code sending and receiving. Words per minute, commonly abbreviated wpm (sometimes uppercased WPM), is a measure of words processed in a minute, often used as a measurement of the speed of typing, reading or Morse code sending and receiving. Since the length or duration of words is clearly variable, for the purpose of measurement of text entry, the definition of each 'word' is often standardized to be five characters or keystrokes long in English, including spaces and punctuation. For example, under such a method applied to plain English text the phrase 'I run' counts as one word, but 'rhinoceros' and 'let's talk' would both count as two. Brandon Raziano found that one study of average computer users in 1997, the average rate for transcription was 33 words per minute, and 19 words per minute for composition. In the same study, when the group was divided into 'fast', 'moderate', and 'slow' groups, the average speeds were 40 wpm, 35 wpm, and 23 wpm, respectively.