Pick a duration, a text mode and a language, and get a speed and accuracy figure in about a minute. This is the quick test — separate from the three-condition diagnostic, and not comparable with it.
What this test is for
This is the ordinary version: one passage, one clock, one number at the end. It is the right tool when you want a quick read on where you are, when you want to practise in a specific language, or when you want to try a text mode — numbers, punctuation, code — without committing to a full assessment.
You can change the duration, the word pool and the language. All of those change what the run measures, which is exactly why this test is kept separate from the diagnostic rather than folded into it.
How to read the number
Words per minute here means five characters per minute, the standard convention, counted against the passage you were given. Accuracy is the share of your keystrokes that were correct, including the ones you went back and fixed.
A single run tells you less than people assume. Scores swing by ten percent or more on nothing but which words came up, how awake you are and what keyboard you are on. Two runs an hour apart on the same settings will usually differ more than a week of practice moves the average. Treat one result as a rough position, not a measurement.
The figure is also specific to these settings. A 60-second run on common English words is not comparable with a 5-minute run, with a punctuation-heavy mode, or with the same test in another language — different text is a different task, not a harder or easier version of the same one.
How it differs from the diagnostic
The diagnostic runs three fixed 45-second conditions that differ by one variable each: plain words, then capitals and punctuation, then digits and symbols. Because only one thing changes at a time, it can say which condition costs you speed, and then build practice for that. This quick test cannot, because it only ever measures one condition at a time and lets you change it.
The two also keep separate histories. Quick-test results are not eligible for the diagnostic’s before-and-after comparison, because the passage, timing and settings are not fixed. Mixing them would produce a trend line made of measurements that were never taken the same way.
Languages and text modes
Word pools are available in nine languages: English, Japanese, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Indonesian, Korean and Vietnamese. Several of them are genuinely different tasks rather than translations — languages using an input method to compose characters measure something the English pool does not, and the resulting numbers are not comparable between languages.
Text modes change the passage rather than the clock: common words, numbers, punctuation-heavy text, code, and a shorter pool for children. Switching mode is the quickest way to find out whether a particular kind of text is harder for you, though the diagnostic answers that question properly.