Typing Speed Test

This is a simple typing speed and accuracy test. The page shows a short passage in Chinese or English, you type it out, and when you finish it reports your time, speed and accuracy. The timer starts when you type the first character and the test ends automatically when what you have typed reaches the length of the passage. English speed is shown in WPM (words per minute, counting every 5 characters as one word) and Chinese speed in characters per minute. It is a lightweight self-check: it keeps no history, has no leaderboard, no timed mode, and takes no account of how long a pinyin input method needs for choosing candidates. Use it to compare yourself with yourself, not as formal proof of typing ability.

How to use it

1. Choose the test language at the top by clicking 'Chinese' or 'English'. The page opens in the passage language matching the interface language, and switching language picks a new passage in that language.
2. Read the passage under 'Type the passage below'. To change it, click 'New passage', which picks randomly from the three built-in passages for the current language (so you may get the same one again).
3. Click the box underneath and start typing. The timer starts as soon as you type the first character, as the placeholder text says.
4. While you type, the passage is colored position by position (a live hint only; the final score is not position-based): correct characters turn green, wrong ones turn red on a light red background, and characters you have not reached stay grey.
5. When what you have typed is as long as the passage, the test ends at once, the box is locked, and a 'Result' section shows time in seconds, speed and accuracy. If accuracy is below 95%, that cell is shown in the error style. To try again, click 'New passage' or the other language button.

A worked example

The first built-in English passage is 158 characters long. If you finish it in 60 seconds, speed = (158 / 5) / (60 / 60) = 31.6, shown as 32 WPM. If you finish in 45 seconds, it is (158 / 5) / (45 / 60), about 42 WPM. The first Chinese passage has 76 characters, so finishing in 30 seconds gives 76 / (30 / 60) = 152 characters per minute. Accuracy uses edit distance: if you typed 'qiuck' for 'quick' in that English passage, two substitutions are needed, so 156 characters are correct and accuracy is about 98.7% (speed over 60 seconds, counting only those 156 characters, is 31 WPM). If you skip the very first character and add one extra at the end, the edit distance is also 2 and accuracy is again 98.7%; later characters are not all marked wrong. Typing the same letter x over the whole passage leaves only 1 coincidental match, 0.6%. All these numbers come from running the tool's own formulas.

How the result is calculated

Time is the number of seconds from your first character until the typed length reaches the passage length, shown to one decimal place. For English, speed is the passage's character count divided by 5 to get 'words', divided by the minutes taken, rounded to a whole number. For Chinese it is the character count divided by the minutes taken. First the edit distance (Levenshtein: the minimum number of insertions, deletions and substitutions to turn one string into the other) between what you typed and the passage is computed. Correct characters = passage length minus edit distance (never below 0). Accuracy = correct characters / passage length x 100, to one decimal place. Speed also counts only correct characters: for English (correct / 5) / minutes, for Chinese correct / minutes. So mistakes lower both accuracy and speed.

Supported features and known limits

• The passages are built in: three Chinese and three English, between 65 and 174 characters each. You cannot supply your own text or change the difficulty.
• The final score uses edit distance, so skipping or adding one character costs only once instead of marking everything after it wrong. The on-screen colors are still positional, so after a skipped character the rest may show red as a hint. The test still ends when the typed length reaches the passage length, so after skipping a character you need to type one more before it finishes; fixing mistakes with Backspace is still best.
• Pasting and dropping text into the box are blocked. If the whole passage is auto-filled in one go before the timer has started, that input is ignored, so type the passage by hand.
• When typing Chinese with a pinyin input method, the test does not check for completion while you are composing; it checks once the text is committed. Uncommitted pinyin letters still appear in the box for a moment and show as red on the passage until committed.
• Once finished the box is locked and cannot be edited. Click 'New passage' to start again.
• The clock includes any time you pause to think, and there is no pause feature.
• Results exist only on the current page; they are gone after a refresh and there is no history.
• Punctuation, spaces and letter case all count. English must match capitalisation and punctuation exactly.

When does the timer start?

At the moment the first character appears in the box, not when the page opens or when you click the box. So you can read the passage and get your hands in position before you begin.

Can I compare Chinese characters per minute with English WPM?

Not directly. English WPM converts at 5 characters per word, Chinese simply counts characters, and Chinese input involves selecting characters, which is a different kind of effort. Use the numbers to compare your own runs in the same language and see whether you are improving.

I felt fast, so why is my accuracy so low?

The final score uses edit distance, so skipping a space or punctuation mark costs only once. If accuracy is still low, you really did mistype, skip or add many characters. The colouring gives a rough idea of where (after a skipped character the colors can turn red from that point on, but that is only a positional hint). Press Backspace as soon as you spot an error to improve accuracy.

Is the score accurate enough to count as proof?

No. It uses the page's clock in your browser and a simple comparison. There is no anti-cheating measure and nothing is recorded, so it is a personal reference only. Devices, keyboards and input methods all affect the outcome.

Privacy and processing

The test runs entirely in your browser. The passages are built into the page, and what you type and your results live only in the memory of the current page. The code does not send them to a server or save them to local storage, and they are cleared when you close or refresh the page.