Why gross WPM and net WPM are different numbers
Words per minute has a standard definition built for exactly this kind of comparison: since real words range from "a" to "rhinoceros," text-entry research measures every "word" as five characters, including spaces and punctuation, so a score does not depend on which words happened to be in the passage. Gross WPM is (characters typed / 5) / minutes, or simply words / minutes when you already have a word count. That figure by itself ignores mistakes entirely; a typist who mashes the keyboard fast and inaccurately can still post a high gross score.
Net WPM fixes that by deducting uncorrected errors, prorated by the same time, before reporting a final speed. It is the number typing certification programs, timed workplace tests, and most online typing tests report as your "real" score, precisely because it rewards accuracy along with raw speed rather than either alone. The gap between the two numbers is a rough measure of how much a test-taker's mistakes are costing them: a small gap means most keystrokes are landing correctly, a wide one means speed is being bought at accuracy's expense.
What counts as a typical, good, or exceptional typing speed
The most-cited baseline for ordinary computer use comes from a 1999 study of average computer users published at the ACM CHI conference: participants typed at 32.5 WPM when transcribing text they could see and only 19.0 WPM when composing text as they thought it up, since composing adds the mental work of deciding what to say next. That same study split typists into fast, moderate, and slow groups averaging 40, 35, and 23 WPM. A larger 2019 study of 37,000 volunteers found average two-thumb smartphone typing at 36.2 WPM with a 2.3% uncorrected-error rate, a useful comparison point now that a large share of casual typing happens on a phone rather than a full keyboard.
Above that everyday range, 911 dispatcher and emergency-operator hiring tests typically set a floor of 35 to 45 WPM (a hiring minimum, not an achieved average; experienced dispatchers commonly type 50-60+ WPM day to day), while skilled or professional typists are commonly cited in the 60 to 80 WPM range, and sustained speeds above 120 WPM mark an advanced typist on a standard keyboard. The far end of the scale belongs to stenotype machines, the specialized keyboards court reporters and captioners use: they are not typing English words letter by letter but chording phonetic shorthand, which is how the Guinness World Record for fastest realtime court reporting stands at 360 WPM with 97.23% accuracy, set by Mark Kislingbury in 2004 and still the record as of this writing.
A worked example
Say a timed test has you type for two minutes and you produce 90 words with 3 of them wrong and never corrected. Gross WPM is 90 / 2 = 45. Net WPM subtracts the error rate: 3 errors over 2 minutes is 1.5 WPM of penalty, so net WPM is 45 - 1.5 = 43.5. Accuracy is (90 - 3) / 90, or 96.7%. That net score of 43.5 WPM sits right around the top of the typical 911-dispatcher hiring floor cited above (35-45 WPM) and just short of the 60-80 WPM skilled/professional band: solidly average-to-good, not yet professional-fast, and nowhere near what a stenotype writer produces on specialized hardware.