Improving your words per minute

Has anyone asked you, how fast do you type?

But, how do you calculate your words per minute?

The Basics of Words per Minute

Words per Minute, commonly abbreviated to WPM is used as a measurement of typing speed or reading speed. Typically each word is standardised to five characters (keystrokes) including spaces and punctuation typed in one minute, divided by five.

The famous sentence “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs.” contains 46 characters. If it takes you one minute to type this sentence, we can calculate your WPM:

Characters Typed in One Minute / 5 = WPM
46 / 5 = 9.2 WPM

What about accuracy?

It is important to try and maintain 100% accuracy, however realistically this is not always possible, but accuracy can be measured. In the quick brown fox example, if you mistyped one letter you would have still typed 9.2 WPM, but with a 98% accuracy.

Gross WPM vs Net WPM

Net Words per Minute is your WPM x your accuracy percentage, however measuring by NetWords can lead to greater mistakes and inaccuracies. As a transcriber or typist it is much better to slow down and be more accurate as ultimately it will lead you to be faster in the long run as you will not need to go back and fix your mistakes.

Accuracy and speed all boils down to the content

With any piece of work, if you know the subject matter or are familiar with the content then it will be easier for you to type quickly and accurately. Simple vocabulary is easier than typing technical or long words such as “pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis” (which out of interest is a lung disease and the longest word in the English dictionary!), words such as these require more though processing to establish the correct spelling to ensure higher accuracy.

Here is what you should look out for to get the most accurate gauge for your typing speed:

• Length of Test – 3 and 5 minute tests tend to be the most accurate gauge of overall typing speed, they are long enough to produce a repeatable average speed and accuracy
• Familiarity of Content – The less familiar you are with the content the better as it will be most accurate, repetition and familiar content is likely to give you an elevated score because simply if you type the same sentence over and over and you will get faster and faster, as you will remember the content and sentence structure.

How do I increase my WPM?

It is like any kind of exam revision, practice, practice, practice!

Find an article that is interesting to you and get typing, start off fast, then slow down to improve your accuracy, you will quickly pick up your speed and accuracy.

Test yourself, there are many typing test sites out there so find one and test yourself with content that you are not familiar with to continue to improve your ability.

If you find yourself with too much to do and too little time, then Fingertips Typing can help. Visit Fingertips Typing Services.

Written by: Cerri Killworth, Transcriber for Fingertips Typing Services.

Transcription and Typing

First Typewriter

The first typewriter recognised as being “commercially successful” is one invented in 1868 by Christopher Latham Sholes, Carlos Glidden and Samuel W. Soule in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. [1]

The patent was sold for $12,000 to a company called Densmore and Yost, who tried to manufacture the machine. The company made an agreement with E. Remington and Sons to produce the machine.  In 1874,  the Sholes and Glidden Type-Writer went on sale. It had a QWERTY keyboard, and was a blind writer, as the keys struck upwards. It meant that the typist couldn’t see the characters as they were being typed. [2]

Learning to Type

Children these days learn the keyboard very quickly without ever having a typing lesson. Because they navigate the keyboard using one hand or just two fingers, does that make it wrong because they are not using the tried and tested methods?

Learning to Touch Type

Colour Coded Keyboard

Teaching children to type

Learning to type, in the traditional way, is about learning which fingers type which letters, lots of repetition, and then the development of typing by touch or touch typing, by muscle memory. It was believed that this was the most efficient way of typing. Once the individual has mastered touch typing, the development of speed is crucial.

Children today can learn to type by games that teach them whilst having fun. It becomes second nature very quickly as they are using mobile devices with keyboards from a very young age.

Typing speeds used to be the benchmark, along with accuracy, for administrative jobs. The job adverts used to state how many words per minute the individual needed to be able to type in order to be considered for the job. A typing test, at interview, was standard to check speed. Check your typing speed here.

Image courtesy of  ratatype.com/learn

 

Here are some best practice pointers for safe and efficient typing. You can view the web page here for full details.

Posture – sit straight, elbows at right angles, face the screen with head tilted slightly forward

Home keys – ensure you always return your fingers to the home keys between typing bouts

Take a break – ensure you take regular breaks, to rest your eyes and your hands, wrists and shoulders

 

Evolution of the Typewriter

Since the invention of the typewriter, the keyboard, as it has become known, has evolved hugely.

Click on the Timeline to learn more

The concept of the modern keyboard has also changed, with the invention of mobile technology.

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Typing Then and Now

When I learned to type, it was on the old fashioned manual keyboards, in a cold hut, whilst at sixth form college. Having mastered the basics, I then progressed to an electronic word processor that took on another learning journey. The keyboard was more reactive and faster, the keys required less pressure and what had been manual calculations before for tabs or centering were now a more automated process.

USB Typewriter?

Typewriters and word processors gave way to computers, with small screens, small memory capacity and large keyboards. As technology progressed, screens got larger and so did the memory, and keyboards became more streamlined.

Eventually, the computers got smaller in physical size, massive in capacity and screen and keyboard condensed into one device. Typing can still be done manually on touchscreen with fingers or a stylus. But you can now dictate to your device and it is clever enough to recognise what it is you want to say.
The documentation produced has also changed. Letters used to be the only

Stephen Hawking

way to communicate, and these were typewritten or handwritten. Emails became another way to stay in touch, followed by text messaging.

Social media followed, allowing words to reach their recipient in a flash.

Technology exists to allow a user with a disability to type by having their eye movements tracked on a keyboard… Stephen Hawking.

The future is here – you can now buy a virtual keyboard, which a small bluetooth device projects on to a flat surface, offering the user a full keyboard experience. [3]

Virtual Keyboard

Whatever next?

Transcription and Typing

Whatever you  need typing, Fingertips Typing Services can help. We have years of experience of typing and transcribing a variety of projects, for example, but not limited to:

• Interviews/focus groups/seminar/conferences
• Medical reports
• Property/lettings/estate agents reports
• Legal/insurance reports
• Education/dissertation/theses

Visit the Fingertips Typing website to see how we can help you work effectively, by providing a friendly, professional and personal service.

Written by: Debbie Rowe, typist for Fingertips Typing Services

Resources

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewriter

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sholes_and_Glidden_typewriter

[3] http://gandtnews4u.blogspot.com/2012/12/cube-laser-virtual-keyboard-future-of_75.html