70 WPM Typing Test — Reach 70 Words Per Minute

Typing at 70 words per minute is an excellent, professional-grade speed that places you in the top 15% of all typists. It is the threshold where practically every typing-intensive career becomes accessible — legal work, executive support, transcription, journalism — and where your speed becomes a competitive advantage rather than simply a baseline qualification. This page covers what 70 WPM means for your career, why the 60-to-70 barrier is the most common plateau in the typing world, and the specific technique refinements that break through it.

What 70 WPM Means for Your Career

The professional value of 70 WPM is not subtle. It unlocks a tier of roles that explicitly state typing speed requirements in their job postings — roles that actively screen out candidates below this threshold. Here are the positions where 70 WPM is the practical entry point or the preferred minimum:

Beyond specific role requirements, 70 WPM also means that typing is no longer a cognitive drain. At this speed, most people can hold a conversation, think about the content of what they are writing, or read source material while their fingers handle the mechanical task automatically. That cognitive headroom is genuinely valuable.

The 60–70 WPM Plateau: Why It Is So Common

The gap between 60 and 70 WPM is by far the most reported plateau in online typing communities. Typists who have trained to 60 WPM often stall there for months — sometimes years — without understanding why. The four root causes are distinct from the issues that slow people below 60 WPM:

• Inconsistent finger assignment: Many typists who reach 60 WPM are still occasionally using the wrong finger for letters on the boundary rows — B with the right index, Y with the left, T occasionally with the right. Each of these substitutions introduces a micro-pause. Film your fingers (or use a keyboard heatmap tool) and root out any assignment violations.
• Looking-ahead deficit: At 60 WPM you are likely processing one word at a time. At 70+ WPM, your eyes must be reading 2–3 words ahead of where your fingers are. Practice reading the next word before you have finished the current one. This feels strange at first but becomes automatic within two to three weeks.
• Single-finger bottlenecks: Statistically, the right ring finger (responsible for L and O in QWERTY) and the left pinky are responsible for the largest speed drops at this level. Use a tool that shows per-key latency and run daily 5-minute isolation drills on your two slowest keys.
• Tension and reset failure: Typists who clench their wrists, curl their fingers too tightly, or forget to return hands to the home row between bursts accumulate fatigue and lag. Take a 30-second break every 10 minutes to shake out your hands, and consciously keep your wrists floating — not resting on any surface — while typing.

The common thread across all four causes is that 60 WPM is fast enough to feel like mastery, which reduces the self-corrective pressure that drove improvement from 30 to 60 WPM. Breaking 70 WPM requires actively hunting for these subtle inefficiencies rather than hoping that more practice will naturally push speed up.

Technique Refinements to Break 70 WPM

The following refinements specifically target the gap between 60 and 70 WPM. They assume you already use correct touch-typing finger assignments and do not look at the keyboard:

• Look-ahead reading practice: Take any paragraph and read it aloud while tapping the rhythm on your desk. Force yourself to read three words ahead of the word you are saying. Transfer this habit to your typing sessions — your eyes should always be 2–3 words ahead of your current keystroke. This is the single biggest separator between 60 WPM and 70 WPM typists.
• Finger independence exercises: Place your hand flat on a table and lift one finger at a time while keeping all others still. This builds the independent motor control that stops one finger's movement from disrupting adjacent fingers. Do 2 minutes per hand before each practice session.
• Controlled error-zero sets: Set your timer to 2 minutes and type at exactly 60 WPM — your current comfortable speed — with an absolute zero-error goal. No backspacing, just accept any mistake and keep going. This locks in accuracy at a pace you can control before you raise the speed ceiling.
• Variable-speed text drills: Alternate between 30-second bursts at 80 WPM and 30-second recovery at 55 WPM. The contrast trains your fast-twitch finger muscles and makes 70 WPM feel like a comfortable middle pace rather than your ceiling.
• Difficult-words library: Collect the 20–30 words that most reliably break your rhythm — unusual spellings, awkward letter sequences, long words with repeated letters. Drill only those words for 5 minutes per day until each one is automatic. Eliminating known weak spots yields disproportionately large speed gains.

What to Expect After 70 WPM

Once you break 70 WPM consistently, the rate of improvement naturally slows. The gains between 70 and 80 WPM are more incremental than those between 50 and 70 WPM. You are now optimising an already-good system rather than fixing structural problems.

The next clear milestone most typists aim for is 80 WPM, which is where you cross into the "expert" category and place in roughly the top 10% of all typists. After 80 WPM, reaching 100 WPM requires a significant time investment in deliberate practice — the kind of focused, coached effort that takes months rather than weeks.

For most people, 70–80 WPM is the range where the returns on continued typing practice start to diminish relative to other skills. Once you are here, maintaining speed through daily use is more important than continuing to chase higher numbers.

Frequently Asked Questions