English Typing Tips and Practice — Why Japanese and English WPM Can’t Be Compared

What carries over is the keys and the fingers. On both JIS and US layouts the 26 letter keys sit in the same places. Romaji input uses letter keys, so the home position and each finger’s job work as they are when you type English.

I have not found research that directly tests whether skill at Japanese typing transfers to English typing. All I can say is that the same finger movements are used. Whether speed carries over is unknown.

What differs is the material you type. The next sections cover why the numbers can’t be compared and how letters occur differently.

In short, WPM from Japanese typing and WPM from English typing cannot be set side by side as the same number. There are three reasons.

• The formula looks alike, but the material differs

  English typing tests conventionally count “five characters as one word” to get WPM. The 2018 study by Dhakal and colleagues also divides the transcribed character count by five, then by time. Typing Musou’s WPM takes correctly typed romaji keystrokes, divides by five and by elapsed minutes, so the formula is similar. But because the material typed differs, the numbers are not interchangeable.

• The text you type is different

  English sentences contain spaces between words, a capital at the start, apostrophes, commas and periods. Typing Musou’s prompts are lowercase hiragana words (3–12 keystrokes), with no spaces or capitals inside. Even at the same 60 WPM, the two are typing different things.

• Some Japanese measures even use another unit

  Japanese typing measures include characters per minute, counted by the number of characters entered. Japan’s Ministry of Education (MEXT) information-literacy survey (FY2021) had students type a 285-character passage in three minutes and reported results as characters entered per minute. That is a different yardstick from WPM.

For the definition of WPM and Japanese benchmarks, see WPM averages and benchmarks. This guide does not offer any conversion from Japanese WPM to English.

For English letter frequencies there is Peter Norvig’s count from English Google Books (about 743.8 billion word mentions). For romaji I counted the letters of Typing Musou’s prompt dictionary (16,132 words) myself.

Two things stand out. First, vowels make up about half of romaji, more than the roughly 38% in English (E, A, I, O, U combined). Second, TH, the most frequent pair in English, does not appear in romaji’s standard spellings (it can appear depending on how you type, such as typing ティ as thi). Fingers that got fast on romaji are not necessarily used to the pairs that are common in English.

A large English study is Dhakal et al. (2018, CHI): about 169,000 people (168,000 in the abstract) transcribing 15 English sentences, about 136 million keystrokes.

The limits are large. Participants volunteered through a commercial online typing-test site whose users are mainly young people in the US. 68% were from the US, the average age was 24.5, and 72% reported having taken a typing course. The paper itself says the sample is self-selected. These are English transcription numbers, not Japanese typing speed and not the average of the general population. Treat them as a reference range, not as a target for yourself.

English asks for keystrokes that romaji prompts hardly ever include. Here are four typical ones.

• 1. Capital letters (Shift)

  English capitalizes sentence starts and proper nouns. Romaji input rarely needs capitals. The standard fingering is to press Shift with the pinky on the side opposite the key you are typing. No standard requires it.

• 2. A space after every word

  English puts a space between words; Japanese text has none. In Typing Musou, Space is the key for special moves, so it does not practice spacing between words.

• 3. The apostrophe

  The ' in don’t and it’s. Its position depends on the layout: Shift+7 on JIS, the key right of ; on US (xkeyboard-config layout data). Typing Musou does not accept this symbol as input.

• 4. TH and other pairs absent from romaji

  The most frequent two-letter pair in English is TH (3.56%, Norvig). It does not appear in romaji’s standard spellings, so frequent words like the and that ask for movements your fingers may not be used to.

This order is my own suggestion, not something research has confirmed. Work through it one step at a time.

1. 01.1. Fix letter-key positions and each finger’s job (the home position), which is shared with romaji
2. 02.2. Type frequent short words without looking. “the” is the most frequent word, 7.14% of word mentions in Google Books (Norvig)
3. 03.3. Short sentences with a capital and a period, to build the Shift and space rhythm
4. 04.4. Longer sentences with apostrophes and commas
5. 05.5. Measure the same text under the same conditions and watch the trend

For how to approach long passages, see Long-text typing. It is written for Japanese, but the ideas about reading ahead and breaks are shared.

No, you cannot practice typing English text (as of October 18, 2026). Even if you switch the interface to English, the prompts stay Japanese (typed in romaji). There is no mode that shows English prompts.

• What you can do

  The letter drills in the Home Position Dojo (150 stages) practice letter-key positions and each finger’s job. The results of the 60-second Speed Trial include a WPM counted from romaji keystrokes. That WPM is not English WPM, though.

• What you cannot do

  Type English words or sentences. Practice spaces, capitals, apostrophes, or symbols that need Shift. The game accepts only a–z, 0–9, and , . - as input.

• If you switch to English

  Only the interface language changes. The prompts stay Japanese.

• Q. If I type Japanese fast, will I type English fast too?

  The keys and fingers are shared, so the home-position groundwork carries over. But I have not found research on whether speed carries over. English has keystrokes that romaji input does not, such as capitals, spaces, and apostrophes.

• Q. What is the average English typing speed?

  In a large English study (Dhakal et al. 2018), the average was 51.56 WPM (SD 20.2), with the slowest 10% below about 26 WPM and the fastest 10% above about 78 WPM. Participants were self-selected and 68% were from the US, so it is not the average of the general population.

• Q. Can Japanese WPM and English WPM be compared?

  Not directly. The formula looks alike, but English text includes spaces, capitals and symbols, while the romaji prompts are lowercase hiragana words. Some Japanese measures also use a different unit, such as characters per minute.

• Q. Can I practice typing English in Typing Musou?

  No. Even with the interface in English, the prompts stay Japanese (typed in romaji), and there is no mode for English text. The game can only practice letter-key fingering.

• Q. Which hand presses Shift for capitals?

  The standard fingering uses the pinky on the side opposite the key you are typing: the right Shift for letters on the left, the left Shift for letters on the right. No standard requires it.

• Q. Where should I start with English typing?

  I suggest fixing letter-key positions and finger assignments first, then frequent short words, then short sentences with a capital and a period, then longer ones. This order is not confirmed by research.

The English figures and the symbol positions were checked against the sources below (October 18, 2026). The romaji letter shares are my own count of the prompt dictionary file.

1. Peter Norvig, English Letter Frequency Counts: Mayzner Revisited — counts from Google Books Ngrams (English Version 20120701): letters, two-letter pairs, and the share of “the”
2. Dhakal, Feit, Kristensson, Oulasvirta. Observations on Typing from 136 Million Keystrokes. CHI 2018 — the authors’ page, with the paper as a PDF. DOI: 10.1145/3173574.3174220
3. MEXT (Japan), Information-literacy survey results (March 2023) — Japanese-language PDF. Fiscal 2021 survey: a 285-character passage in three minutes, reported as characters entered per minute
4. xkeyboard-config: symbols/jp (Japanese 109-key layout) — the apostrophe is Shift+7 on JIS
5. xkeyboard-config: symbols/us (US layout) — the apostrophe is the key right of ; on US

Romaji input and English share the letter keys and the fingers, but their speed numbers can’t be compared directly. English has spaces, capitals and apostrophes, and its letters occur differently from romaji (the share of vowels, the presence of TH).

Typing Musou has no practice for typing English text. It can practice only the letter-key groundwork. If you use English average speeds as a target, keep the limits of the Dhakal study in mind and treat the numbers as a reference.