What is WPM?
WPM stands for Words Per Minute. It is a common measure of typing speed that estimates how many words a person can type in one minute. A conventional approach is to treat five characters as one word when converting character counts to words.
What is CPM?
CPM stands for Characters Per Minute. CPM counts individual characters typed in a minute and is particularly useful when the text contains punctuation, code, or non-standard spacing.
How is typing speed measured?
The typing application counts typed characters and the time spent in an exercise to compute CPM and converts that into WPM where appropriate. The app also reports accuracy by comparing typed input to the target text.
Why typing speed matters
Stronger typing speed improves efficiency for students, office work, coding, and writing. Faster entry lets you focus more on content and less on keystrokes, but speed without accuracy leads to more corrections and slower overall progress.
How to improve typing speed
- Prioritize accuracy; lower error rates increase effective speed.
- Practice short, focused sessions 3–5 times per week.
- Do targeted drills for weak keys (numbers, punctuation).
- Use real-world text (emails, code snippets, essays) for context-specific practice.
Related: Typing Accuracy • Lessons