[gxs]

My average typing speed is 80-110, but I can max out at 121. This is for standard english words, not the crazy blocks of letters and special characters used for competition, which IMO isn't practical for the average user.

I actually spend a few minutes every few weeks taking typing tests etc, as it's a valuable skill to me.

I figure if the average typing speed is somewhere between 50-80 WPM, if I can type 50% faster, in theory, I'm responding to emails and commenting in general 50% faster.

It's just a nicer experience using a computer if you can type fast. Sometimes it's easier to command-backspace and retype an entire line/word than it is to move the cursor and correct the error. It's also just plain nice to have only your thoughts to worry about when typing and not have the cognitive overhead of trying to keep track of where all the letters on the keyboard are.

All in all, I would recommend improving your typing speed if you spend any type of meaningful time on a computer.

A fun 1-minute test that is somewhat practical here: 10fastfingers.com

[j7ake]

Are tasks like responding to emails and adding comments limited by typing speed ? I would have guessed most typing tasks aside from copying text are limited by knowing what to type.

[sellyme]

Pretty much all of the time I'm typing natural language (chat apps, emails, writing this comment here) I'm going to be limited more by my typing speed (~120WPM) than by the speed at which I can think of the words I want to type.

A pretty trivial demonstration of this is that I can talk much faster than I can type, and I would expect that you can too.

[Oreb]

I can talk much faster than I can type, but I have much higher standards for precision and language quality when writing. When I write in natural language, I almost always carefully read through my message once or twice before sending. I don’t think doubling my typing speed (currently around 80 wpm, I guess) would save much time.

[gxs]

There's a time and place for everything. Sometimes that level of precision is required, sometimes it's not.

[snet0]

I think it's frequently the case that you determine what you're going to type in a block-wise fashion. You know roughly what the next paragraph/sentence should look like, and then "speak" through your typing. If you type faster, you will almost certainly "speak" faster in this way.

[toast0]

Sometimes, yes. If your brain gets too far ahead of your writing, then you need to pause thinking or you miss stuff.

If this happens to you a lot, you might benefit from training your typing speed up. (or writing, or dictating, or whatever)