Short for "words per minute." It is a way of measuring how fast someone types on a keyboard — you count how many words they can type in one minute. So "70 wpm" means seventy words a minute. You see it in job ads (an office job might ask for 50 wpm), on typing-practice websites and games, and in typing tests at school or at work. It is almost always written small, wpm, and it goes after the number, with or without a space: 45wpm or 45 wpm. Note that a "word" here is not a real word — the standard is five keystrokes, spaces counted, so the number does not depend on whether you are typing long words or short ones. That is why the same test gives you the same kind of number no matter what text you type. People also use wpm for reading speed (how many words you read in a minute) and, in music, for other per-minute counts, but typing is what most people mean. In everyday speech you usually just say the three letters: "double-you pee em."