Talk:Words per minute

message: The article reads: "Policy debaters often speak 350 to 400 words per minute, while Conversations are maintained at around 200 wpm, and although research by Ronald Carver has demonstrated that adults can listen with full comprehension at 300 wpm, even auctioneers can only speak at about 250 wpm." So policy debaters speak faster than auctioneers? This doesn't sound right. Justin Bacon 17:58, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contradiction in Speaking Speeds 

message: It would be helpful to list what keyboards these were achieved on. I'm told someone proficient with a DVORAK keyboard can type usually faster than someone on a QWERTY keyboard, which is what most people use The snare (talk) 08:12, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Removed. The citation in policy debate does not support this statement, and the the auctioneer statement is a cited contradiction. Ajonlime (talk) 01:08, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Readded. See Talk:Policy debate#Speed for more citations.  And, btw, the auctioneer statement is uncited, not to mention the fact that I don't even see the contradiction.  From , "although research by Ronald Carver has demonstrated that adults can listen with full comprehension at 300 wpm, even auctioneers can only speak at about 250 wpm".  That auctioneers can't, as a general (uncited) rule, speak faster than 250 wpm doesn't mean that policy debaters are similarly limited. TerraFrost 20:09, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Keyboard Types 

message: I am trying to find out what speed of WPM is as fast or faster than handwriting. It's important for my application of word processing in my classroom.
Does anyone know?
:I think it depends on how fast the particular person's handwriting is. For example, someone doing a penmanship exercise painstakingly will be much slower than, say, a reporter interviewing a fast-talking person. 202.156.6.54 10:01, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You can find some information if you search for average handwriting speed in any search engine. In particular, this paper seems very interesting. — LazyEditor (talk) 05:05, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

text: I believe the top speed for cursive writing is about 35 wpm. --Ross UK 21:19, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree; I timed myself just now and I write 37 wpm, quite legibly although far from neat. 218.186.9.3 10:16, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

text: I'm a German Gymnasium teacher giving Keyboarding as a elective subject. Since 2005 I've been testing the handwriting of my students to motivate for typing quicker than handwriting. They have to write for three minutes as quick as possible (not beautiful!) a sentence of 84 characters (incl. spaces) with every letter minimum once contained repeatedly. The mean values show: 5th Graders 100 - 120 cpm; 6th Graders 120 - 130 cpm; 9th Grader 160 - 170 cpm. (First item fall course, second item spring course.) There are huge deviatons, examples: 5th Grader min. 65 cpm, max. 166 cpm; 6th Grader min. 79, max. 159 cpm; 9th Grader: min. 129 cpm, max. 205 cpm. 5th, 6th, and 9th Grade each several hundred students, other grades I've only a few. I tested some grown up people, mostly teachers: average 160 - 180 cpm, record 228 cpm. (Notes: In German wpm makes no sense. I take indeed cpm, not the German "Anschlaege".)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gehrd (talk • contribs) 14:46, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

text: Supplement: Bart Pisha (1993) wrote in his dissertation that the speed of handwriting is the minimum speed for automated finger movements when typing. In my experience it is 20 - 25 % above because of then decreasing typing errors obvious.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gehrd (talk • contribs) 09:47, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Handwriting speed 

message: What about the reported, analyzed, tested speeds of sign languages? Are they faster than speaking?
What about typing with only one hand? Does handedness (right- or left-handed) influence typing speed with only one hand or typing with both hands? Mirror image of the keyboard?
134.76.210.207 (talk) 10:25, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Sign language]] speed, [[handedness]] in typing 

message: It says it needs cited. Would AVG word length work?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.69.40.181 (talk) 12:12, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Length of a word 

message: Why Afrikaans and French?  it doesn't make very much sense  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.235.3.230 (talk) 21:28, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems to be for purposes of example, it could very well say that the speed of a German-speaking operator in Berlin can be compared to an Indonesian-speaking operator in Jakarta.  Provided the speakers are using the same alphabet (which Afrikaans, French, German, and Indonesian do) they can be compared.  --192.127.94.7 (talk) 15:26, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dubious 

message: The article's author makes some assumption that comparisons among typists performing in different languages and even different locations are pertinent. Why? I could understand the need to compare typists for job hiring measures just as you could compare house painters by their performance abilities. In this case, the language and equipment should be comparable (I do not see the location as important). It would seem the confused author is relating such measures as pressure, temperature, etc. and in this case, it is simply not needed. No one would consider hiring a typist (is that still a profession) that could not type in a specific language. Simply delete the statement as a final solution.
I Need Knowledge (talk) 21:07, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I can see how someone who makes an international study would want to compare people from different countries that speak different languages. Jiiimbooh (talk) 08:49, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  WHY? 

message: The figures stated for reading comprehension seems wildly off the wall, especially considering the normal reading speed mentioned three lines before.
Reading for comprehension is always markedly slower than reading prose, so comprehension speeds up to 3 times higher than normal speeds seems blatantly false.
Not to mention the fact that Reading at 1000 wpm is the same as reading a normal 300 page book in less than 2 hours... Obbas (talk) 13:58, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  dubious comprehension figures 

message: How can a conversation between their wpm (ref: Chinese input methods for computers)and usual latin typing being facilitate?C933103 (talk) 17:12, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[CJKV]] characters ? 

message: The original text of claimed that a Morse code sender won a speed competition with an SMS user.
The citation for this was  http://www.engadget.com/2005/05/06/morse-code-trumps-sms-in-head-to-head-speed-texting-combat/ in which it was claimed that the morse code operator "delivered a resounding ass-whoopin' to his rival", but no times were listed.
Engadget linked to its source:
http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/2005/05/008191.htm
which gave no numbers and only speed claim was a quote from its source which said "morse code is still faster at sending text".
The textually.org cited as its source 
http://www.160characters.org/news.php?action=view&nid=1541
which offered the aforementioned quote as its summary, but in the details says:
:Just 90 seconds after [the sending Morse code operator] began transmitting, [the receiving Morse code operator] announced that he had the message received and written down correctly. It took another 18 seconds for [the SMS sender]'s message to reach the mobile phone belonging to her friend.
in which the only measured times offered include the transmission and decode time rather than being about the keying time, which is what this wikipedia article is about. No information about just the keying time is given in the 160characters.org article
The 160characters.org article gives as its source an article in The Times; the link is dead, but it is presumably this article:  http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/article1918226.ece
but it is behind a paywall so it is unclear whether it offers any more specific data. But it is clear that neither the originally cited source or any of the currently reachable sources offer any evidence that the wpm keying numbers were faster.
For this reason I have removed the sentence describing this contest.
24.22.185.207 (talk) 03:52, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed Morse vs SMS 

message: It seems silly and is outside the scope of this page.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.192.150.41 (talk) 02:26, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why is there a handwriting section? 

message: Should the Ultimate Typing Championship (and Sean Wrona's achievement) be mentioned in this article? The stuff about Wrona looks suspiciously like self-promotion (or the work of a zealous Wrona fan). I'm not convinced that the Ultimate Typing Championship (only held once in 2010 in spite of an attempt to continue it in 2011) is a particularly notable contest. Surely there are other equally (non)-noteworthy typing contests held all the time.  There is a fairly recent (2005) Guiness World Record for typing speed mentioned, which I'm inclined to treat as the most credible typing speed record in the absence of any ongoing organized typing competitions.Plantdrew (talk) 03:33, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ultimate Typing Championship/Sean Wrona 

message: The header currently reads:
:..."I run" is one word,...
Doesn't the fact that there are two keystrokes required to produce an "I" (shift + i) make that a six character phrase, and therefore more than one word? - eykanal talk  17:07, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Shift/modifier keys? 

message: For now "words per minute" and "characters per minutes" are abbreviated inconsistently either in lower case or upper case. We should decide what way is appropriate throughout the article. But I'm more inclined to respell these abbreviations in full.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 15:38, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Abbreviation 

message: Overall this is a great article. Very informative and thoroughly readable. A perfect example one of those entries that can really pull you in and before you know it you've read every word. I got to thinking that I'd also really like to know the wpm rates of traditional handwriting or typing methods, etc. stack up against emerging methods such as speech-to text and eye-movement recognition devices or software.
And is the appropriate place to post this?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Andysseus (talk • contribs) 05:34, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Completeness Issues