Words per minute
Categories: Linguistics stubs | Human-computer interaction | Typing
Words per minute, commonly abbreviated wpm, is a measure of input or output speed.
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Typing
Words per minute is a measure of typing speed, commonly used in recruitment.
Words per minute is also a measure of a telegraph or amateur radio operator's Morse code speed. Since the codes for different letters differ in length, one needs to specify a reference word. A commonly-used reference word is "PARIS".
For the purposes of WPM measurement a word is standardized to five characters or keystrokes. So, "fifth" counts as one word, but "fifteenth" counts as two.
The benefits of a standardized measurement of input speed are that it enables comparison across language and hardware boundaries. The speed of an Afrikaans-speaking operator in Cape Town can be compared with a French-speaking operator in Brussels.
Reading
Words per minute is a common metric for assessing reading speed. It is often used in the context of remedial skills evaluation. It is also used in the context of speed reading, where it is a controversial measure of reading performance.
A word in this context is the same as in the context of speech.