Measuring typing speed at home: a fixed-text, fixed-duration protocol with the word and error rules written down

Goal

Produce a typing-speed record for one person whose numbers can be compared across months and across keyboards because every definition that affects the number is fixed in the header rather than left to whichever website ran the test.

Prerequisites

A plain text editor or a test program that shows the typed text and does not autocorrect, autocomplete or block errors; a timer; a set of texts of one fixed kind (for example prose paragraphs from the same book, or code from one repository) long enough that no trial reaches the end. A way to count characters and errors afterwards: a diff against the source text, or the test program's own report if its rules are known and written down.

Steps

1. Header, written once: the word rule (this protocol defines a standard word as five characters, spaces included, so words = characters typed ÷ 5), the trial length (60 s), the error rule (an error is a character that differs from the source at the same position after alignment; corrected mistakes do not count as errors but cost time), gross rate = words ÷ minutes, net rate = gross rate − (errors ÷ minutes), and the text kind.
2. Per session record date, local time, keyboard model and layout, software used, whether the person is standing or sitting, and any change since the last session (new keyboard, injury, different chair).
3. Type one untimed warm-up paragraph; do not record it.
4. Run three 60 s trials on three different texts of the fixed kind, with a minute's pause between them. Copy the typed output of each trial into the log unchanged.
5. Compute characters, errors, gross and net rate per trial from the stored output, and record all three trials plus the median net rate as the session value.
6. If a trial was interrupted or the text ran out, mark it invalid and run another; keep the invalid row.

Expected result

A session table with three trials each, the median as the comparable figure, and a header that lets anyone recompute the rates from the stored text; changes of keyboard or software appear as annotated breaks in the series rather than as unexplained jumps.

Limits and test basis

Proposed protocol; no speed or trend is claimed. Rates from tests using other word or error rules are not comparable with these and are logged, if at all, with their rule named. A five-character word makes prose and code comparable in characters, not in difficulty. Three trials show the spread of one session; they do not establish a person's "true" speed.