What is "words per minute"

n. the rate at which words are produced (as in speaking or typing) [syn: wpm]

Words per minute, commonly abbreviated WPM, is a measure of words processed in a minute, often used as a measurement of typing speed or reading speed.

For the purpose of typing measurement, each word is standardized to be five characters or keystrokes long in English, including spaces and punctuation. For example, the phrase "I run" counts as one word, but "rhinoceros" and "let's talk" both count as two.

As an average English word consists of about 4–5 letters, characters per minute (CPMn), a measure of characters processed in a minute, is normally 4 or 5 times larger than WPM, so that 20 WPM are roughly equal to 80–100 CPM (not including spaces, which must add 20 to that).