TIMED PRACTICE · English
English typing speed test
Flow like a stream. Space commits a word, backspace fixes the last one. Tab or Esc restarts.
Testing your English typing speed
English is written in the Latin alphabet. Every practice word here stays inside it: 26 letter keys and nothing beyond them.
Worth knowing before you start: these 100 words use 22 distinct characters, and the effort is not spread evenly across them. Ten of them do roughly 74% of the work, so the first week of practice buys far more than the tenth will. That is the normal shape of it, not a sign of a plateau.
English is written with the plain Latin alphabet and nothing else: not one of the 100 practice words here needs a character beyond the 26 letter keys. That makes it the shortest route into touch typing, because every key you learn is one you already have. The only thing between you and fluency is the habit of not looking down.
Two modes, timed and word-count, plus the option to paste your own text. The words come at random from 100 common English words. What you get back is not just a number: net and raw WPM, accuracy, consistency across the run, and the keys you got wrong most often.
Speed in English comes from prediction more than from finger speed: a familiar word is one motion, an unfamiliar one is a letter at a time. Drilling common words trains the shapes the language repeats, and "e" is the character you will press most.
- Writing system
- Latin
- Keyboard layout
- US QWERTY
- Direction
- left to right
- Practice words
- 100
- Distinct characters
- 22
- Average word
- 3.4 units
Characters you will press most in these English words
- e40
- o34
- t30
- a27
- h27
- i22
- n19
- w18
- r17
- s15
- d13
- l13
Counted across the 100 practice words — the characters worth getting right first.
the of and a to in is you that it he was for on are as with hisThe layout everything else is measured against
English is the reason QWERTY looks the way it does, and it is the only major language whose alphabet the standard keyboard fits exactly. Twenty-six letters, twenty-six keys, no diacritics required — a coincidence of history rather than design, and one that makes English an unusually gentle place to learn touch typing.
US and UK QWERTY differ, though only around the punctuation. The UK layout gives the pound sign its own position, moves the at sign and the quotation marks, and adds a key next to the left shift. Programmers notice; most other people never do.
Worth knowing if you will type other languages later: almost every Latin-alphabet layout in the world is QWERTY with additions or small swaps. Learn the finger positions here and the great majority of them cost you a few keys rather than a fresh start.
Questions about typing in English
Do I need an English keyboard?
No — and no layout change either. English spells its 100 most common words entirely from a-z, so whatever keyboard you are reading this on is already an English keyboard.
Which English keyboard layout do these tests use?
US QWERTY. The 100 practice words between them use 22 of those 26, so 4 characters never come up in the practice text — these are the commonest words rather than an even sweep of the layout. The keyboard guide below the typing area shows the keys you actually press, which for an input method are the Latin ones already printed on them.
What will I actually be typing in English?
100 of the most common words in English, drawn at random. They use 22 distinct characters between them and average 3.4 written units each, with the longest running to about 6. Short, frequent words are used on purpose: they are the ones your hands will meet most often outside a lesson, so the practice transfers.
Is English hard to type?
No — English is about as gentle an introduction to touch typing as exists. No accents, no layout change, a fairly compact inventory of 22 characters across the practice bank, and every key already under your fingers. Whatever difficulty you meet is the difficulty of touch typing itself, not of this language.
What is the difference between raw and net WPM?
Raw counts everything you typed; net subtracts what you got wrong and left wrong. A large gap between the two is the most useful signal on the results screen — it means the speed is there and the accuracy is not, which is a different problem from simply being slow, and a faster one to fix.
Does accuracy matter more than speed?
For a score, they are the same measurement — net WPM already penalises errors. For improving, accuracy matters more, because the fastest route to a higher number is almost always removing mistakes rather than moving your fingers faster.
How long should an English typing test be?
Longer than you would like. A 15-second test measures your sprint and flatters you; over two minutes your sustainable speed shows up, along with the fact that concentration runs out. If you want one number that describes you rather than your best moment, take the longer one.
Do I need an account, and is it free?
Neither. There is no paid tier and no required sign-in — the 100 English practice words, the speed test and all three games are the whole product, available immediately. Signing in is worth it only if you practise on more than one device.
Also in English: lessons and typing games.
Other languages written in Latin: Esperanto, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, German. Or browse all 86 by writing system.
Further reading
- Typing accented letters and symbolsDead keys, AltGr, Option, compose and the Unicode escape hatch: the five ways to type é, ñ, ü or ß, and which one is actually worth learning.
- Does your keyboard matter?Mechanical against membrane, laptop against desktop, split against straight. What genuinely changes your typing, what only changes how it feels.
- How long a typing test should beFifteen seconds, one minute and five minutes measure three different things. Which length to use, and why comparing results across them is meaningless.