CPCT Hindi typing test practice

The commonly cited CPCT typing figures

CPCT (the Computer Proficiency Certification Test, run for Madhya Pradesh government recruitment) includes separate English and Hindi typing sections. We don't have the exam body's own instruction sheet, so the figures below come from an education portal, Entrancezone, and match what most exam guides repeat. Treat them as a starting point and confirm them in the current CPCT schedule or notification.

The exam computes net speed by its own formula. We don't reproduce that formula, and this site isn't connected with the CPCT or any government body.

What 20 net WPM over 15 minutes means

At 20 WPM, you type 100 characters a minute, so fifteen minutes is 1,500 correct characters. An average word in our Hindi list is 4.22 Unicode characters, about 5.22 with its space, so that's roughly 287 everyday Hindi words. Exam passages tend to use longer, formal vocabulary, so you'll type fewer words for the same speed.

Every matra, bindu and halant is its own character in Unicode, and our net WPM counts a word only if all of them are right. There's no lazy mode for Hindi. If you clear 20 net WPM here over the full fifteen minutes, you're past the commonly cited bar on a stricter measure. If you clear 25, you're covered even if the higher figure applies to you.

The metrics page explains the formulas with a worked example.

Remington GAIL or Inscript?

This is the biggest choice a CPCT candidate makes, and it's hard to undo later. The guide we checked doesn't name the permitted layouts, so confirm them in your CPCT instructions. These are the two Unicode layouts most Hindi typists choose between, and SSC's 2022 skill-test notice, for comparison, offered both.

Remington GAIL is a Unicode Hindi layout that keeps the typewriter-era key positions; Keyman, which publishes an implementation, calls it the Remington-GAIL typewriter layout for Hindi. Wikipedia's Devanagari article notes that the Remington typing method is similar to the Kruti Dev typing method. If you learned Hindi typing on Kruti Dev or a typewriter, it should feel familiar quickly.

Inscript is the Government of India's standard keyboard for Indian scripts, first standardised in 1986. It's built into Windows, macOS, Linux and Android, and its logic is the same for Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil and the rest, so the skill carries over. Beginners with no Hindi typing habit may find it the easier one to learn from scratch.

Our recommendation: if you already type Hindi on a Remington-style layout, stay with Remington GAIL. If you're starting fresh, try ten minutes of each on the Hindi typing test and pick the one that feels less awkward after a week. Don't switch in the final month before the exam.

Kruti Dev won't work, and why that matters for CPCT

Plenty of Hindi typists learned on Kruti Dev. It's a legacy font that stores Hindi shapes as ordinary Latin character codes; it isn't Unicode. Text typed with it can look identical to real Hindi on screen and still be a string of Latin letters underneath, so it never matches this test.

If Kruti Dev is what your fingers know, Remington GAIL is the bridge: the typing method is similar, and the output is Unicode Devanagari.

Setting up your computer

The test reads exactly what your operating system types. It doesn't emulate Hindi layouts, and the on-screen keymap won't show Hindi letters, so:

1. Add a Hindi keyboard in your system settings. Inscript ships with the operating system; Remington GAIL usually comes from an input tool you install (Keyman publishes one, for example).
2. Switch to it with the language shortcut before you click into the test.
3. Type a few words in a text editor first to check that real Hindi appears, not Latin letters.

Once that works, the test will accept your input.

Reading your results after a run

The results screen gives you more than one number, and for CPCT practice three of them matter most.

Net WPM is your headline: characters in fully correct words, divided by five, per minute. Compare it with 20 (or 25 if that's the figure your notification gives).

Raw WPM counts everything you typed, right or wrong. A large gap between raw and net means you have the speed but are losing whole words to single wrong matras or halants. Slow down slightly and watch whether net rises.

The per-word breakdown and most-missed keys list tell you where the time goes. In Hindi it's usually conjuncts such as क्ष, त्र and श्र, or the switch between ि and ी. Practice builds short drills from the words you keep missing, so run one before your next long run.

A fifteen-minute practice routine

Fifteen minutes in Hindi is a long time. A routine that builds up to it:

• Days 1 to 7: short tests on the 5-minute Hindi test. Note net WPM and accuracy each time.
• Days 8 to 14: alternate five-minute runs with the 10-minute Hindi test. Read the per-second chart for the point where your speed starts to fall.
• Days 15 onward: one full fifteen-minute run on this page per session, plus short drills in practice on the words you keep missing.

Don't do the English section blind. If your post needs both, rehearse English on the 15-minute typing test as well; the commonly cited bar there is 30 net WPM.