Why medium difficulty is the standard
The medium difficulty typing test represents the vocabulary and sentence complexity of everyday professional English: business emails, news articles, general office documents. It is the format used by most employment typing assessments and the basis for most published WPM benchmarks. When someone says "I type 65 WPM," they almost always mean on medium-difficulty text.
Medium passages include a mix of common and moderately uncommon words, varied sentence lengths, and standard punctuation including commas, periods, and quotation marks. They challenge you to read slightly ahead of where you are typing — a key skill for professional typing speed.
Using medium tests for accurate benchmarking
For the most accurate benchmark to share with employers or on a CV, always use the medium difficulty 5-minute test. This is the closest equivalent to standard certification test conditions. Take three sessions and use the average net WPM across all three — a single result can be skewed by a particularly familiar passage or an unusually lucky run.