Typing is an everyday skill that helps boost our productivity at work and in our personal lives. Whether we're typing an email, an article, a transcription, or a text message, speed and precision are advantageous. In a job where typing is a core or critical skill, it's vital to have the typing speed desired in the particular job role. For example, it is considered a good practice that a data entry typing agent is able to type at least 60 words per minute. A legal clerk position requires a minimum typing speed of 35 minutes per second, while a U.S. court reporter is required to type an average of 200-225 words per minute.
Typing proficiency is a skill anyone can pick up and master with practice. When applying to a job that involves typing duties as a core function, job-seekers can expect to undergo a typing test that gauges their typing speed and accuracy. There are many online typing tests that enable students, job-seekers, and the employed to know their words per minute (WPM) and typing accuracy. In addition to providing these results, some sites let users practice their typing and work on areas of weakness. Typeracer is a fun typing game that can also help improve typing speed.
This post explains how a good typing speed can be an asset to work performance and career success. We mention the online typing speed tests, such as the monkey type test, that are helping people improve their typing proficiency and increase their chances of getting a job.
What is Typing Speed?
Typing speed is a measure of how fast someone can type words or characters on a keyboard. It is usually expressed in words per minute (WPM) or characters per minute (CPM). The average typing speed is 40 WPM or 200 CPM. Professional typists can type faster, reaching 65 to 75 WPM or more.
The components of typing speed are:
- Speed of keystrokes, which focuses on how quickly a person can press the keys on the keyboard without errors.
- Accuracy of entered text, which is crucial to ensure that the content is free of errors and requires no or minimal edits or corrections.
- Consistency, an important facet that allows typers to maintain a steady pace and make the most of the time they have.
- Adaptability, a key aspect that enables typists to optimize their typing speed for urgent tasks and typing accuracy for tasks that require utmost precision.
Typing faster is better but other aspects like accuracy, consistency, and adaptability also matter in completing work efficiently and to the expected quality standards. Beyond workplace productivity, a good typing speed helps in maintaining prompt communications over email, text, or social media. For students, speed typing helps in taking notes quickly during lectures, completing assignments faster, and excelling in exams that involve essay writing. This article on typing speeds provides a greater understanding of what's a good typing speed, the average typing speed, and improving typing speeds.
What is a Typing Test?
If you are wondering how to test typing speed, the answer is a typing test. A typing test is a practical test that measures a person's typing speed by recording the number of words typed within a specified time. So, if a person took a 3-minute typing speed test, their test results would show the number of words they've typed in that time or the WPM and their typing accuracy, expressed as a percentage. An adjusted words per minute, which takes into account the errors made during typing, may also be provided in the test results.
Careers Where Typing Speed is Vital
As technology is a large part of virtually all industries, typing is a useful skill for any professional. In some jobs, a good typing skill is a core requirement as the daily work not only involves but also demands it. As a member of a talent acquisition (TA) team, you may be aware of the job roles in which typing speed forms an important requirement and duty. Depending on the industry, there may be certain roles which, at the time of hiring, require typing speed tests. Here's a long list of the fast typing jobs across industries:
Transcriptionist or Medical Transcriptionist
A medical transcriptionist listens to medical notes from healthcare professionals and accurately transcribes the audio recordings into official medical documents. The job involves typing quickly and accurately, typically at least 60 WPM. A transcriptionist converts different audio recordings into written documents.
Data Entry Clerk
Data entry clerks are responsible for entering data into computer programs and company databases. They work in a variety of industries, including finance, healthcare, retail, and transportation. They're responsible for ensuring that their organization's databases are up-to-date and accurate.
Court Reporter
A court reporter is responsible for accurately documenting court proceedings verbatim during trials, depositions, and hearings. Apart from a strong understanding of legal terminology and attention to detail, a court reporter requires rapid typing skills.
Closed Captioner/Subtitler
Subtitlers transcribe spoken dialogue, sound effects, and other audio elements of movies, TV shows, and videos into written text. They play a crucial role in ensuring the accessibility of audiovisual content to those who are deaf or hard of hearing. Some closed captioners work in real-time settings such as live broadcasts, conferences, or events. They must type quickly and accurately, with most aiming for a typing speed of 200 WPM with 98% accuracy.
Legal Secretary
Typing speed is important for legal secretaries in order to ensure the timely preparation of legal documents, correspondence, and court filings. Legal secretaries often transcribe audio recordings or spoken language into written text. Precise transcription is crucial to ensure the accurate documentation of legal documents and court transcripts.
Journalist
With news coming online and becoming instant, journalists need to be able to draft stories quickly and accurately. A good typing speed helps in meeting deadlines.
Blogger
Productive typing is beneficial to bloggers, particularly those who share content regularly, to gain subscribers and amass a large following. The time savings from creating blogs quickly are available for research, relationship-building, financial management, and other relevant aspects.
Freelance Writer
In a gig economy, companies rely on contractors to get work done cost-effectively. Freelance writers have the flexibility to take on multiple projects at a time. Typing speed is extremely important to meet deadlines, accept more work, and ensure repeat clients.
Top Typing Tests
A number of typing test websites are available to help job-seekers, graduates, and employed individuals check and improve their typing speeds. Here's a look at the best typing test websites.
1. Typing.com
Typing.com shows your average typing speed and accuracy. It offers beginner, intermediate, and advanced typing lessons, with various assessment tests under each. The different types of typing tests available on the site are great for daily typing practice.
Apart from 1 minute typing test, 3 minute typing test, and 5 minute typing test, there are 1-page, 2-page, and 3-page tests and typing games. Typing.com shows users their problem keys that can be worked upon to improve typing speed and accuracy. Users can track their progress on a dashboard and even print a certificate of their test results.
Typing.com is free to use. But users will need to sign in to download their test certificate and access the site's advanced features.
2. Monkeytype
Monkeytype is a free typing test website on which users can practice typing through various modes. Users can type short, medium, or long text, practice getting punctuations in text right, do a 30-second typing test, assess typing accuracy when numerical elements are involved, and more. The typing speed tester shows the WPM, accuracy, percentage of correctly pressed keys, test length, consistency, and other information, all of which helps users gain clarity about their typing skills.
Monkeytype also offers a finger map, a method of keyboard typing where the typist uses all ten fingers to type without looking down at their keyboard. It helps users improve their muscle memory and ingrain where each key is located, so there is no need to look at the keys while typing and still create accurate documents quickly.
3. TypingTest.com
The typing test website offers timed typing tests that are 30 seconds, 1-minute, 2-minutes, 3-minutes, 5-minutes, and 10-minutes long. On TypingTest.com, users can choose from different types of tests, including a standardized 5-minute certification test; easy, medium, or difficult text; a blind typing test; and a tricky spellings test. Blind/Touch typing is a method of typing without the use of sight but by using feel and muscle memory to find the keys. This is in contrast to search and peck where the typist finds each key by sight and moves their finger over it to press it.
Testers can test their typing skills on text related to four fields: legal, medical, business, and coding. For fun typing tests, users can choose a theme from options such as pop culture, technology, nature, sport, traveling, and a mix of these subjects. Typingtest.com offers typing lessons for free, along with a downloadable typing tutor. Typing games ensure a lively learning experience.
There is also a feature for companies to create customized typing tests for their recruitment and training needs. This is a paid service starting at $49 per month for one customizable typing test.
4. 10FastFingers.com
Intended to help users improve their typing speed, 10FastFingers.com offers a variety of typing tests. A nice option is letting users create their own text to practice typing. The site challenges typists to do better by offering the options to participate in typing competitions and multiplayer tests.
Users can begin with the 1-minute test to check their WPM, keystroke stats, correct words, and wrong words. 10FastFingers.com has a simple typing test of 200 words and advanced tests of 1000 words. A feature called 'Top 1000 mode' allows users to practice the most frequently used words in the English language. Faster typing awards more stars and unlocks more levels. All in all, the typing test website makes typing practice engaging and informative.
5. Keybr.com
Keybr.com is a website that helps typists learn touch typing or blind typing. The website uses a computer algorithm to generate random words from a subset of the complete alphabet of all letters. It helps users to get familiar with individual keystrokes, which reduces the time it takes for them to type it. Once they familiarize themselves with the entire current subset of letters, the algorithm adds more letters to the subset. This methodology helps users increase their overall speed with practice.
A multiplayer mode is available, which allows users to compete against one another. Another feature is the option to change keyboard layouts based on individual preference. Keybr.com provides various stats on typing performance, including WPM, accuracy, errors, and a key frequency heatmap. It is one of the more unique typing test applications typists can consider.
6. TypeTest.io
If you want to know how to test your typing speed, TypeTest.io is a good option. The simple typing test speed checking website shows the raw WPM (a user's typing speed without considering errors), accuracy, correct characters, and incorrect characters. Users can choose a timed typing test of their preference, from 10-second, 30-second, 1-minute, 2-minute, and 5-minute tests.
The simple words in the tests are based on a collection of 100 popular English words, while the advanced words list consists of the top 1000 most common English words. TypeTest.io has a leaderboard that users can join upon qualifying.
Test Candidates for Typing Skills and More with HiPeople
The HiPeople platform streamlines and simplifies pre-employment candidate assessment and screening in various industries. It conducts AI-powered assessments and reference checks, freeing your time for other aspects of the recruitment process.
A comprehensive assessment library provides tests assessing candidates' hard skills, soft skills, language competency, and cognitive abilities, and personality. For example, the assessment for data entry specialists covers fundamental data input methods, knowledge of spreadsheet software, data analysis concepts, and more. With 1000+ job-specific templates and AI-assisted assessments that are generated and curated within seconds, you can formalize and implement tests more efficiently.
If you're hiring for any role that requires a good typing speed, apart from other competencies and skills necessary to perform in the job role, you will find the relevant tests on HiPeople. The intelligent AI provides insights and reports to support your goal of optimizing your recruitment process and staying adaptable to hiring trends and changing requirements.
More than 2000 teams use HiPeople to accelerate hiring and choose the best candidates. You can try HiPeople with a demo.
