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My typing speed in words per minute is:

Displaying poll results.
less than 50
  21% 101 votes
50-74
  24% 114 votes
75-99
  22% 107 votes
100-124
  10% 49 votes
125-149
  2% 13 votes
more than 150
  3% 16 votes
I can't type, you insensitive clod!
  6% 32 votes
it depends - explain
  8% 39 votes
471 total votes.
[ Voting Booth | Other Polls | Back Home ]
  • Don't complain about lack of options. You've got to pick a few when you do multiple choice. Those are the breaks.
  • Feel free to suggest poll ideas if you're feeling creative. I'd strongly suggest reading the past polls first.
  • This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.
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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by cosurgi on Saturday January 17 2015, @03:24PM

    by cosurgi (272) on Saturday January 17 2015, @03:24PM (#135667) Journal

    My typing speed depends on the result of the measurement of my typing speed, which has not been performed so far :) There's a risk that measuring it might destroy the wavefunction of my typing speed.

    --
    #
    #\ @ ? [adom.de] Colonize Mars [kozicki.pl]
    #
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by martyb on Sunday January 18 2015, @03:22PM

      by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Sunday January 18 2015, @03:22PM (#135828) Journal

      You raise an interesting point: how are people measuring their self-reported typing speed?

      I found this nice little GNU program, gtypist [gnu.org], which provides both typing tutorials and speed measurement. Downloads are available for a number of platforms. Sources are available, of course, since it's GNU. Windows binaries are available, too. I'm hoping that pretty much everyone here would be able to use it as a consistent baseline for measurement.

      I used: version 2.9.5 for windows which I found at: gtypist-2.9.5-w32.7z [gnu.org].

      NOTE: It took me a while to get used to the program, as I often used arrow keys to backspace which this program did not understand -- use the "backspace" key, only. (Or, of course, just type with no errors!) Also, one needs to actually press "enter" to go on to the next line -- I kept pressing the space bar at the end of the line -- as my muscle-memory expected the system to automatically word wrap for me. I did much better when I typed as if I were using an old-school typewriter.

      On lesson 1, (quick brown fox), after a few tries, I twice scored 93 wpm.
      On lesson 2, (Heathkit(!) diskettes), my adjusted speed was 50 wpm.
      On lesson 3, (A Christmas Carol), my adjusted speed was 57 wpm.
      On lesson 4, (Romeo and Juliet), my adjusted speed was 50 wpm.

      --
      Wit is intellect, dancing.
      • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 29 2015, @08:17AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 29 2015, @08:17AM (#139115)

        the instructions weren't clear enough... i got my dick caught in the usb port

    • (Score: 1) by Bill, Shooter Of Bul on Monday January 26 2015, @11:44PM

      by Bill, Shooter Of Bul (3170) on Monday January 26 2015, @11:44PM (#138357)

      My Typing speed is in excess of 15 wpm, when measured from the correct reference frame.

      • (Score: 1) by Bill, Shooter Of Bul on Monday January 26 2015, @11:49PM

        by Bill, Shooter Of Bul (3170) on Monday January 26 2015, @11:49PM (#138358)

        Uhm, I think I meant 150 there, but you know, 15 is also true. 15 is probably closer to my reference frame speed...

      • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday February 07 2015, @10:27AM

        by maxwell demon (1608) on Saturday February 07 2015, @10:27AM (#142193) Journal

        Note that your typing speed goes down when measured in another frame of reference.

        --
        The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    • (Score: 2) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday January 27 2015, @05:30PM

      by nitehawk214 (1304) on Tuesday January 27 2015, @05:30PM (#138582)

      You are right, my typing speed testing system is:

      1. Test baseline typing speed of subject.
      2. Smash fingers of subject's hands.
      3. Test typing speed again to calculate difference.

      --
      "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
  • (Score: 2) by tynin on Saturday January 17 2015, @04:49PM

    by tynin (2013) on Saturday January 17 2015, @04:49PM (#135681) Journal

    I'd like to thank my ~85 wpm rate on the years of my childhood I devoted to MUDing instead of going out into the world of light. 20 years later and I can still remember the paths to all of the main guild halls, several of the rare drops, and other completely useless bits stored away for that rainy day which will never come.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 19 2015, @12:30PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 19 2015, @12:30PM (#136011)

      I used to think I was good after years of mudding in the dark. Then I met blind mudders. They could type faster than me, never stuffed up, and were PKs. Wow.

      Now apparently the kiddies play WoW.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 07 2015, @09:25PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 07 2015, @09:25PM (#142307)

        In almost completely unrelated but rather interesting news many of the phreakers were blind, including Joe Engressia, the guy who discovered 2600 Hz.

        /nerd lore

    • (Score: 2) by Kell on Tuesday January 27 2015, @05:52AM

      by Kell (292) on Tuesday January 27 2015, @05:52AM (#138447)

      I credit my typing ability to years of arguing with people online. Nothing makes you focus on sharp, fast and (mostly) typo-free replies like trying to prove someone wrong on the Internet!

      --
      Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
    • (Score: 2) by SGT CAPSLOCK on Saturday February 07 2015, @12:25AM

      by SGT CAPSLOCK (118) on Saturday February 07 2015, @12:25AM (#142057) Journal

      ~110 wpm (according to Typeracer), also thanks to the mud days! Only with clicky, feedbacky keyboards though.

      I'm using a Corsair Vengeance K90 or K95 or whatever, with Cherry Red MX micro-switches these days, and I find that I type a lot slower. It's good for gaming though, and it doesn't affect my coding speed in the least. I can do about ~85 wpm with it. Something like that...

      My Das Keyboard with Cherry Brown MX switches feels much, much nicer for typing, and the speed difference on Typeracer is noticeable (~110 wpm), but it doesn't feel as nice for the games I play (fps games, and osu!).

  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday January 17 2015, @04:54PM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Saturday January 17 2015, @04:54PM (#135682) Journal

    Depends on the language. It takes much more time to type a word like "Einkommensteuererklärung" than it takes to type any of the the three words "income tax declaration".

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    • (Score: 1) by maxim on Saturday January 17 2015, @05:18PM

      by maxim (2543) <maximlevitsky@gmail.com> on Saturday January 17 2015, @05:18PM (#135688)

      no! the WPM is defined as number of 5 character words you type, so its letter per minute divided by 5

      • (Score: 2, Funny) by Buck Feta on Monday January 19 2015, @02:11AM

        by Buck Feta (958) on Monday January 19 2015, @02:11AM (#135934) Journal

        sdepoifughodsiuyvfoidvi swhefr;pvguhdsl;pighvl;pdsjg;sldjhfg;podsh goswjher;pobvgijh ser;pvhsl;eodfuivposeivpodsuihfpvudshfl;pvhdslofkjh lpadifjhvl;paduvidsh fopvgiuash dofivh;pdsofvp sidufhovidshfpviuhdofiuvhadseopifjuvhpadigfhvoasuido viuaehopdsicvuh

        --
        - fractious political commentary goes here -
        • (Score: 2) by danomac on Tuesday January 27 2015, @08:26AM

          by danomac (979) on Tuesday January 27 2015, @08:26AM (#138472)
          It looks like your keyboard is stuck on the Dvorak layout!
      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday January 19 2015, @10:17PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 19 2015, @10:17PM (#136160)

        Yeah thats why its obsolete, back in the days of secretaries taking dictation for interoffice typed memos and all that.

        So with clojure its all like "how fast can you type parenthesis?". And think of the zillions of variableCapitalizationConventions all of which are proven to be the ultimate and are always replaced , fad like, but one thing they all have in common is the number of caps is weirdly different from .uk business dictation in 1900. I'm not sure its relevant anymore given what people "really" type now.

        Maybe a new "wpm" calculator would use "l33t texting" pseudo-language. Or data entry for clickbait headlines like "7 shocking things you didn't know about typing speed in words per minute, and you'll never guess VLM's response"

        It would be interesting to compare the typing patterns of "old fashioned business english" vs programming languages for the best match. Maybe "chef" would win as a match.

        http://esolangs.org/wiki/Chef [esolangs.org]

    • (Score: 2) by bradley13 on Monday January 19 2015, @07:15PM

      by bradley13 (3053) on Monday January 19 2015, @07:15PM (#136103) Homepage Journal

      Or in English, "go for it"

      We begin with the Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän piloting his ship, but that's just the start of the fun. Let's talk about the place they make the paint for the button on his cap: Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänmützenknopffarbenfabrikhalle. Or the insurance company that covers glass breakage there: Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänmützenknopffarbenfabrikhallenfensterglasversicherungsgesellschaft.

      Native German speakers rarely appreciate how fun their language is :-)

      --
      Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
      • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday January 19 2015, @07:55PM

        by maxwell demon (1608) on Monday January 19 2015, @07:55PM (#136116) Journal

        Well, I do; I just wanted to use an example which is actually used today, not just historically (like the Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän — BTW, since the spelling reform with triple-f, and therefore one character longer than before, for a total of 42 characters) or just created for the purpose of creating long words (like your further examples). But if you want a really long world, I've got no problem creating one:

        Hauptwortlängenmaximierungsmethodenerklärungsversuchserfolgsbeurteilungsmaßstabsentwurfsvorschlagsrechsverweigerungsvorwurfszurückweisungserklärungsformularvordrucksvorlagenauswahlverfahrensregelverletzungsstrafmaßbemessungsgrundlagenfestsetzungsbescheidszustellungsverzögerungsursachenforschungsauftrag

        --
        The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
        • (Score: 2) by Geotti on Monday January 19 2015, @08:26PM

          by Geotti (1146) on Monday January 19 2015, @08:26PM (#136129) Journal

          The longest word that exists in the German standard dictionary's (i.e. Duden) language (?) body more than once is: Grundstücksverkehrsgenehmigungszuständigkeitsübertragungsverordnung [duden.de], i.e. "the regulation on the delegation of authority concerning land conveyance permissions", or "land-conveyance-permissions-authority-delegation-regulation".

          • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday January 19 2015, @08:49PM

            by maxwell demon (1608) on Monday January 19 2015, @08:49PM (#136139) Journal

            As far as I understand, the "Dudenkorpus" is the set of texts they analyse to determine which words are to be added to the Duden dictionary.

            --
            The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
            • (Score: 2) by Geotti on Tuesday January 20 2015, @02:07AM

              by Geotti (1146) on Tuesday January 20 2015, @02:07AM (#136215) Journal

              I wonder if Bild is part of it...

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 20 2015, @09:08AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 20 2015, @09:08AM (#136285)

        To: StoneWallJack

        There is a famous story that this sort of reminds me of....

        It seems that a coffee company in Brazil sent a shipment of coffee to Germany. En route, rats cut the coffee bags up, nested in the coffee, and damaged the whole shipment. The shipping people, however, sewed up the bags and sent them on to their destination. Two weeks later, the exporter receives a letter from the client, which went like this:

        Hamburg, Germany
        A. C. Company,

        Schentlemen,

        Der last two pecages uf Koffee vee got from you vas mit de Ratt schitt gemixt. Der Koffee may be good enuf, but the Ratt Durds schpoils der trade. Vee did not see der Ratt Schitt in der semple vitch you sent down to us.
        It take too much time to peek der Durds out from der Koffee. Ve order der Kleen Koffee, und you schippt Schitt mixt mit der Koffee. It was a mistake, yes?
        Vee like you to schipp us der Koffee in one sak, und der Rat Schitt in one odder sak, den vee mix to suit der Kustomer. Write please, if vee schould schipp beck der Koffee and keep der Schitt, or schipp beck der whole Schitten Vorks.
        Ve vant to ride der madder, but vee do not like der dam Ratt Schitt biziness.

        Mit much respekts,
        Hans W.

  • (Score: 2) by gallondr00nk on Saturday January 17 2015, @06:05PM

    by gallondr00nk (392) on Saturday January 17 2015, @06:05PM (#135698)

    But I have a horrendous typing action. Three fingers on the left hand, one finger on the right.

    The worst thing is I don't even know where I picked it up from, but it was certainly in the last few years - I suspect either my old Smith Corona typewriter or the cramped keyboard on my X series ThinkPad is to blame.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 22 2015, @12:03PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 22 2015, @12:03PM (#136922)

      I don't even know where I picked it up from

      Too easy:

      Three fingers on the left hand

      wasd.

      one finger on the right

      mouse button.

      • (Score: 2) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday January 27 2015, @05:30PM

        by nitehawk214 (1304) on Tuesday January 27 2015, @05:30PM (#138583)

        Middle finger.

        --
        "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
  • (Score: 2) by joekiser on Saturday January 17 2015, @09:26PM

    by joekiser (1837) on Saturday January 17 2015, @09:26PM (#135725)

    I was taught touch-typing in elementary school, and spent more time at the computer than my peers. In HS, I was around 110wpm. During my first professional IT job, I found a cache of Model M keyboards that were going to be thrown out, and set one up at my workstation. Office colleagues commented it sounded like popcorn popping.

    On the BlackBerry Passport, I'm probably a third to half as fast as a real keyboard, so I choose the average.

    --
    Debt is the currency of slaves.
  • (Score: 2) by shortscreen on Saturday January 17 2015, @10:04PM

    by shortscreen (2252) on Saturday January 17 2015, @10:04PM (#135734) Journal

    If I was downstairs, sitting at a desk, copying text using my LASER XT keyboard, I think I could do 55wpm. But I don't sit at a desk anymore because it makes my ass hurt. Copying text manually is obsolete, and I'm super slow at writing. And normally I use a bunch of different keyboards whose layouts are not in agreement. So in reality I am closer to 10wpm.

    • (Score: 1) by schad on Wednesday January 21 2015, @04:20AM

      by schad (2398) on Wednesday January 21 2015, @04:20AM (#136590)

      I'm around 110-130, depending on the text. It's the point where I start to have trouble reading fast enough to keep my fingers moving at full speed. My brain is the bottleneck; I've hit 165 for tests I've memorized well enough that my fingers can go on autopilot. I've never known any way to type except by touch. I learned in the first or second grade. It probably helps that I never had any bad habits to un-learn.

      To address the keyboard layout problem, there's a free program called AutoHotKey you can download for Windows. It does a great many things; most relevantly, it allows you to remap your keyboard however you like. I got myself a HHKB2 a couple months ago, and I use AHK to replicate the layout on my laptop. It doesn't work perfectly because the HHKB layout doesn't precisely map to a regular keyboard, but it works well enough for me to get by. It might work for you too.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 17 2015, @11:12PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 17 2015, @11:12PM (#135742)

    ~60

  • (Score: 2) by mendax on Sunday January 18 2015, @03:43AM

    by mendax (2840) on Sunday January 18 2015, @03:43AM (#135757)

    I learned to touch type in summer school between 6th and 7th grade. This dates me because California schools have not had the money for summer school for decades. I was not a fast typist. But what really got my typing speed up there beyond 80 WPM was university classes in COBOL. Hunt and peck typing just wasn't fast enough.

    --
    It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 18 2015, @07:38PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 18 2015, @07:38PM (#135860)

    Typeracer.com is an easy way to check.

    Though, in general if I'm typing freely instead of just copying text, speed falls by 3x -- thinking inbetween sentences takes a while.

    One regrettable consequence of being a dvorak-only typist, is that when an unavoidable qwerty layout comes around, speed is decimated.
    For example, in the microsoft IME for inputting japanese, you select a mode (straight through, hiragana, katakana), type stuff phonetically in /QWERTY/ and select the correct character from a dropdown box. Since I don't know japanese, it's not a problem; but still . . . are there truely zero dvorak enthusiasts in all of japan ?

    • (Score: 1) by Hell_Rok on Monday January 19 2015, @04:17AM

      by Hell_Rok (2527) on Monday January 19 2015, @04:17AM (#135950) Homepage

      I'm also a dvorak typist and went through a bit of a 'japanese' phase. You can actually do it but you have to fiddle with the registry http://superuser.com/a/140802 [superuser.com]

      My fastest check was at 115 on tenfastfingers.com

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 19 2015, @06:13PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 19 2015, @06:13PM (#136093)

        Thanks.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 23 2015, @08:15PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 23 2015, @08:15PM (#137402)

      16 WPM with a mouse and onscreen keyboard.

  • (Score: 2) by lhsi on Sunday January 18 2015, @08:03PM

    by lhsi (711) on Sunday January 18 2015, @08:03PM (#135866) Journal

    Depends on whether the keyboard is physical or a touchscreen one. If the later, it depends on the types of words (common ones I can swipe, uncommon ones I'd have to do one letter at a time), and sentence itself (a commonly typed one would have next-word suggestions)

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 22 2015, @05:49AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 22 2015, @05:49AM (#136884)

      I bet you can type even faster using Ctrl+V.

  • (Score: 1) by ThG on Monday January 19 2015, @02:57PM

    by ThG (4568) on Monday January 19 2015, @02:57PM (#136041)
    Two words: Ballmer Peak [xkcd.com].
  • (Score: 2) by TK on Tuesday January 20 2015, @07:21PM

    by TK (2760) on Tuesday January 20 2015, @07:21PM (#136465)

    60 wpm, according to typracer, as linked by an AC above. Not great, but then I usually don't have to type that much as part of my job. I mostly use the mouse and hot keys. The rest is quickly-typed commands via muscle memory.

    --
    The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum
    • (Score: 2) by jimshatt on Thursday January 22 2015, @09:04AM

      by jimshatt (978) on Thursday January 22 2015, @09:04AM (#136905) Journal
      I'm only at 55 wpm, but as a programmer I don't have to type length texts as much. The IDE helps improve my speed, and quality is hugely more important than speed.
      I'm not a fast reader either, maybe there's a connection?
  • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday January 23 2015, @06:23PM

    by Freeman (732) on Friday January 23 2015, @06:23PM (#137358) Journal

    I average about 70WPM. Sometimes faster sometimes slower. I could probably be faster, but I don't type enough to need to try and increase my speed. Most of my slow down is figuring out What to Write as opposed to the actual typing.

    --
    Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
  • (Score: 2) by mechanicjay on Tuesday January 27 2015, @06:07AM

    My Typeracer average floats between 75 and 85.

    I get the best speeds on either my DAS Keyboard or IBM Model M. I can get good bursts on a quality Thinkpad keyboard, but I can't sustain the speed for a longer test, my fingers just get fatigued.

    Shitty rubber dome keyboards get me down to about 60.

    --
    My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
  • (Score: 2) by arslan on Wednesday January 28 2015, @01:51AM

    by arslan (3462) on Wednesday January 28 2015, @01:51AM (#138706)

    Mine depends.. it was pretty good in the good old MUD days where a slow "cast heal" from a raw telnet terminal can be a difference between a wasted 36 hours of squatting for an uber item to spawn or a well earned self-pat in the back. Its all downhill since then..

  • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday February 04 2015, @08:52PM

    by Gaaark (41) on Wednesday February 04 2015, @08:52PM (#141307) Journal

    I can type really quickly, except the errors make it hard for anyone else to read.

    If it is only me reading it, then typing speed usually isn't slow.

    So how do we test this... for readability or for speed? :)

    --
    --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
    • (Score: 2) by SGT CAPSLOCK on Saturday February 07 2015, @12:16AM

      by SGT CAPSLOCK (118) on Saturday February 07 2015, @12:16AM (#142053) Journal

      dude i type so fast i dont capitalize use punctuation etc if u type like me you'll be faster i promise

      you don't need to measure the speed of light it's already been measured

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 07 2015, @09:44PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 07 2015, @09:44PM (#142310)

      How long does it take for you to use the spell check? :)

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 10 2015, @11:34PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 10 2015, @11:34PM (#143362)

    This poll has been up so long I've forgotten how many words per minute I can type...

    New poll suggestion:
    When will the next poll question launch?
    0) Today!
    1) Tomorrow
    2) Next week
    3) Next month
    4) Whenever
    5) What's a poll?
    6) In Russia poll answers you!

    • (Score: 2) by SrLnclt on Wednesday February 11 2015, @04:02PM

      by SrLnclt (1473) on Wednesday February 11 2015, @04:02PM (#143626)

      My typing speed is slow slow that I have been typing the new poll since last month and I'm still not finished.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 13 2015, @09:36PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 13 2015, @09:36PM (#144747)

    ... slower than the frequency of changing the poll on the front page!