Every typing speed ever quoted is characters divided by five, divided by minutes. Not average words — a fixed five characters, spaces included.
A fixed divisor is the only thing that lets two people typing completely different text be compared at all. Measure in real words and a typist given short words beats one given long ones without typing any faster, so the unit would say more about the passage than the person.
It is about 14% generous on English prose, where the average word runs 4.7 letters plus its space — so 60 wpm is really about 53 English words a minute. And it falls apart entirely on anything that is not prose: type code, or German, or a column of serial numbers, and the same physical effort produces a different score because the divisor stopped matching the material.
Estimate with the rule, then check it against the calculator that models it properly.
Open Typing Speed Test →Every typing speed ever quoted is characters divided by five, divided by minutes. Not average words — a fixed five characters, spaces included. A fixed divisor is the only thing that lets two people typing completely different text be compared at all.