CPM vs WPM: Characters Per Minute Explained

Quick answer

> Quick answer: Divide characters per minute by five and you get words per minute. Multiply words per minute by five and you get characters per minute. Sixty words a minute is three hundred characters a minute.

The five isn't an average of English words. It's a fixed convention.

I read how the standard defines a word, and it counts five keystrokes including the space. Every real word in the passage could be four letters or twelve and the maths wouldn't change.

The five character word

This is the whole thing, and almost nobody is told it.

A typing test doesn't count the words you typed. It counts the characters, then divides by five and calls the result words.

So the space between words counts as a keystroke. So does every comma and every capital shift.

It sounds arbitrary. It's actually the only way to compare two passages fairly, and the standard measure has used it for a very long time.

Why it exists

Imagine two passages. One is full of short words like the, and, is. The other is full of long ones like international and consequence.

Count real words and the first passage looks like twice the typing. It isn't. Your fingers did about the same amount of work.

Counting characters and dividing by a fixed number fixes that.

Without it, a test's difficulty would be decided by its vocabulary rather than by you.

Doing the conversion

Characters per minute to words per minute, divide by five.

Words per minute to characters per minute, multiply by five.

Forty words a minute is two hundred characters. Eighty is four hundred. A hundred is five hundred.

That's it. There's no adjustment for language, keyboard or test length, which is why the two numbers are interchangeable rather than competing.

Which one you will be shown

Most English language typing tests report words per minute, because the number is small and easy to hold in your head.

European tests, and German ones in particular, more often report characters per minute. A German job advert quoting three hundred is asking for the same thing an English one quoting sixty asks for.

Data entry roles usually use a third number again, keystrokes per hour.

That one is characters per minute multiplied by sixty, which is why the figures run into five digits.

Why characters per minute looks better

Three hundred sounds far more impressive than sixty, and it's the same typing.

That's worth knowing when you read somebody's claim online. A number in the hundreds is almost always characters, and a number in the tens is almost always words.

A claim of three hundred words a minute would be near the world record. A claim of three hundred characters a minute is an ordinary office typist.

The units matter more than the figure.

Where the confusion costs you

Job adverts are where this actually bites. I compared a batch of typing requirements and the units were split almost evenly between the three.

An advert asking for two hundred and fifty characters a minute is asking for fifty words a minute, which most regular computer users are already close to.

People read the big number, assume it's out of reach, and don't apply.

If you see a typing requirement in the hundreds, divide by five before you decide anything.

Keystrokes per hour is the third unit

Data entry and transcription adverts often quote keystrokes per hour, which is characters per minute multiplied by sixty.

So three hundred characters a minute is eighteen thousand keystrokes an hour. Ten thousand keystrokes an hour is about thirty three words a minute.

Those figures look enormous and describe ordinary speeds.

Any advert with a five figure number is using this unit, and it's the easiest of the three to misread.

Gross and net apply to both

Whichever unit you use, there are still two versions of the score.

The gross one counts everything you typed. The net one subtracts your errors, and it's the one that means anything.

A characters per minute score with no accuracy figure beside it is as empty as a words per minute score with none.

We set out how the deduction works in gross versus net.

Do languages change the maths

The division by five doesn't change. What changes is how many real words that represents.

German words are longer on average, so three hundred characters a minute in German is fewer actual words than three hundred characters a minute in English.

That's a fact about the language, not about the measurement.

It's also why characters per minute is more popular where words run long. The number describes the finger work honestly.

What about languages without spaces

Chinese and Japanese break the model completely, because there's no keystroke to character relationship at all.

Typing there goes through an input method where a few keystrokes produce a character you then choose from a list.

So those languages use characters per minute in a genuinely different sense, and the figures aren't comparable to an English score in either unit.

Comparing across writing systems isn't a conversion problem. It's a different activity.

Converting your own score

Take whatever number your test gave you and check the unit label rather than assuming.

If the test reported thirty eight, that's words. If it reported a hundred and ninety, that's characters, and it's the same performance.

Multiply or divide by five and you have both.

Our practice mode reports words per minute with an accuracy figure beside it, which is the pair most English speaking employers ask to see.

Which one to train with

It makes no difference to the training, because they're the same measurement.

What does make a difference is watching the same unit every session. Switching between them week to week destroys any sense of whether you're improving.

Pick the one your target job uses and stay on it.

If you don't have a target job, use words per minute, because almost everything you'll read online is in that unit.

Symbols and numbers change everything

Both units count a symbol as one character, which undersells how hard symbols are.

Typing a full stop and typing a bracket count the same, and one of them needs a shift key and an awkward reach.

So a passage full of punctuation gives you a lower score than a plain one, in either unit, and that isn't a flaw in your typing.

If your work involves code or numbers, test on text that resembles it.

The number that actually predicts your work

Neither unit predicts real office output particularly well, because both measure copying and work involves thinking.

The gap is large and consistent. Nobody types at their test speed while writing an email.

That doesn't make the test useless. It makes it a comparison tool rather than a productivity estimate.

We explained why the two diverge in test speed versus real speed.

A conversion table worth memorising

Thirty words a minute is a hundred and fifty characters.

Forty is two hundred. Fifty is two hundred and fifty. Sixty is three hundred.

Eighty is four hundred. A hundred is five hundred.

Four of those cover nearly every job advert you'll ever read, and the arithmetic is easy enough to do in your head at the moment you need it.

Going the other way is the same sum. Two hundred and forty characters is forty eight words. Three hundred and fifty is seventy.

What to do with a mixed requirement

Some adverts list both, and occasionally they disagree, usually because somebody converted badly when writing the advert.

When that happens, work to the higher of the two. It costs you a little extra practice and removes the risk entirely.

And check whether the figure is gross or net, because a net requirement with a ninety eight percent accuracy floor is a much harder target than the raw number suggests.

We covered what those tests look like in the data entry test guide.