The QWERTY keyboard layout is standard on nearly every keyboard and phone in the English-speaking world.
Currently, the average typing speed on a
QWERTY layout for an adult who uses typing for their job is around 40 WPM.
Touch typists using the home-row method are typically faster typists because they don’t look down at the keyboard and type from muscle memory.
Hunt and peck typists typically use two-fingers and look at the keys as they type, so it takes them longer to find the letters.
While the average typing speed is 40 WPM, having a typing speed of this level may not be fast enough for some professions.
Secretaries and receptionists are normally required to type at 65 WPM or higher and legal or administrative assistants may be required to type as high as 100 WPM.
Court reporters have the fastest WPM for any profession at 225 WPM, although they type on a stenotype keyboard. This gives them a huge advantage over a typist using a standard keyboard because a stenotype keyboard uses shorthand and types syllables rather than letters.
Some factors should always be taken into account when looking at a typing speed, such as what type of text was typed when a WPM speed was reached.
Burst typing uses a simple one-sentence, or 10-15 second piece of text, and produces the fastest typing speeds because you don’t need to have stamina or consistency to type a small piece of text. Difficult and long-form text will have much slower WPM speeds.
One example of a very difficult, long-form piece of text is the infamous “pink ping pong ball” quote that was used in the 2020 Ultimate Typing Championship where the winner, Anthony Ermolin still had a 165.4 WPM speed with 98.5 % accuracy.
As you can see from the above text, there are a lot of factors that go into truly calculating an average WPM speed.
The important thing is to set a benchmark for yourself by continuing to calculate your average WPM using the same method, and by typing in a similar length and difficulty of a text.
This way you will have an accurate picture of what your current average WPM speed is and will be able to see progress made with practice.