1 Minute Typing Test

How to take the 1 minute typing test

1. Click the text (or tap the box on a phone). The 60 second clock starts on your first key.
2. Type the sentences exactly as shown, including capital letters, commas and full stops. Press space after every word.
3. Correct letters turn dark; mistakes turn red. Backspace within a word fixes it; once you press space the word is scored.
4. When the minute is up the result appears. Press Tab or Restart for a new set of sentences.
5. Take it three times and keep the middle score; a single minute is short enough that one slip changes the number.

What the results mean

In one minute an average adult types about 40 words, a good office typist 60 and a professional 80 or more. The sentences include punctuation and capitals, which typically cost 5-10 WPM compared with a plain word test, because the shift key and the symbol keys are slower than letters.

WPM is correct characters divided by five; raw WPM includes mistakes; accuracy is the share of characters you typed correctly. Only results with accuracy of 90% or better are saved as a best, because a fast run full of errors is not a useful benchmark.

Why one minute is the standard

Typing courses, schools and recruitment tests settled on one minute because it is long enough to average out a slow start and short enough to repeat several times in a session. Most published averages, such as the figure of about 40 WPM for adults, come from one minute tests on everyday text, so a one minute score is the one to quote. The downside is variance: a single bad word costs two or three WPM, so take three runs and use the middle one. For a measure of stamina, the 5 minute typing test shows how much your speed drops over a longer passage; for pure speed on common words without punctuation, use the typing speed test.

Typing tests for jobs

Employers that test typing usually ask for 40-60 WPM for general office work, 60-80 for data entry, transcription and legal secretarial roles, and 80 or more for medical transcription and court reporting (which often use shorthand machines instead). Most job tests are 1-5 minutes on prose with punctuation, like this page, and set a minimum accuracy of 95% or higher; some count only net WPM, which is what the WPM figure here is. Practice on the same kind of text: sentences with capitals, commas and numbers, not just lowercase words.

Common problems and fixes

The sentences have words I cannot see yet

Only three lines are visible and the text scrolls as you type. The next sentence appears when you reach it.

My score is lower than on a words-only test

Expected: capital letters and punctuation slow everyone down. Compare one minute sentence scores with other sentence tests, not with word tests.

A comma was marked as an error

Punctuation is part of the word it is attached to, so "day," needs the comma before the space. Apostrophes count too.

The clock does not start

Click the text first so the hidden input has focus. On a phone, tap the box under the words to open the keyboard.