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EXAM PREP

The typing test in Brazilian concursos: a mark out of ten, not a speed

Almost everything written about preparing for this exercise is aimed at the wrong target. The published FGV format is a printed passage of about 1,800 characters typed in eleven minutes, marked out of ten, with 0.05 of a point deducted for every divergent character - one more, one fewer, or one different. Speed is not scored. The eleven minutes imply a pace of roughly 33 words per minute, which most office typists already have, so the exercise is decided almost entirely on accuracy. A candidate typing 60 words per minute at 97 per cent accuracy scores worse than one typing 35 at 99.5, and no amount of extra speed closes that gap.

Requirements

Portuguese
33 words per minute implied by 1,800 characters in 11 minutes, though the exercise sets no speed of its own
Duration
11 min
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At a glance

Passage length
About 1,800 characters, printed and handed to the candidate
Time allowed
11 minutes; 17 for candidates granted extended time
Scored on
0 to 10 points, deducting 0.05 per divergent character
A divergent character
One more, one fewer, or one different from the original
Speed implied
About 33 words per minute, which is the pace needed to finish, not a threshold
Environment
Microsoft Office on Windows, as named in the published rules
Pass mark
Set by each edital, not by the rules document. Check your own notification

Figures checked September 2026. Exam formats are revised between cycles, so confirm against your own notification.

What the exercise actually is

A printed passage of about 1,800 characters, typed into a computer running Microsoft Office in eleven minutes. Candidates entitled to extended time are given seventeen. That is the whole exercise: there is no dictation, no second passage, and no software task attached to it. It is marked out of ten. Every divergent character deducts 0.05 of a point, and the rules define a divergent character plainly as one more, one fewer, or one different. Nothing else is measured. Speed is not scored, presentation is not scored, and finishing early earns nothing. That definition is stricter than it sounds. A missing accent is a different character. A doubled space is a character more. A line that stops short leaves every character after it missing, which is why an unfinished passage is the worst thing that can happen in this format.

The arithmetic, which is the whole exam

Ten points, at 0.05 a character, means two hundred divergent characters take the mark to zero. On a passage of 1,800 characters that is a shade over eleven per cent wrong. Work back from a mark instead. Twenty divergent characters cost a full point. Forty cost two. To hold nine out of ten you may be wrong twenty times in 1,800 characters, which is an accuracy of about 98.9 per cent. Now compare that with the speed the format implies. Typing 1,800 characters in eleven minutes is about 164 characters a minute, or roughly 33 words per minute, which is a pace most people who type at work already have. The exercise is not asking whether you are fast. It is asking whether you can be almost perfect for eleven minutes, and it is unusual among typing exams in saying so this openly.

Why the usual advice is the wrong advice here

Almost every typing site, this one included until you read this page, is built around raising a speed number. For this exercise that training is close to useless and can be actively harmful, because the way most people raise a speed number is by tolerating more errors. The candidate who types 60 words per minute with 97 per cent accuracy finishes the passage in about six minutes with roughly 54 divergent characters, and scores 7.3. The candidate who types 35 words per minute at 99.5 per cent finishes in ten and a half minutes with 9 divergent characters, and scores 9.55. The slower candidate wins comfortably, and there is no mechanism in the format by which the faster one can catch up. The only speed that matters is the speed needed to finish inside eleven minutes, and there is not much margin: at 33 words per minute you finish exactly on time. Aim to finish with a minute or two spare, and spend everything else on being right.

What varies between editais, and what does not

The format above is FGV's, and it recurs across the concursos it runs. Other banks run the practical typing test differently, and even within FGV an edital may change the passage length, the time or the pass mark. The pass mark in particular is not set by the rules document at all: it is set by the edital for each concurso, and it is the single figure a candidate most needs and is least often told by preparation sites. What has been stable is the shape: a fixed passage, a fixed clock, a mark out of ten, and a deduction per divergent character. If you prepare for that shape you are prepared for most of what you will meet, but read your own edital for the numbers rather than trusting any page, this one included.

Tips that actually help

  • Train accuracy at a fixed pace, not speed

    Set a metronome pace that finishes 1,800 characters in about nine minutes and hold it exactly. The skill this exercise rewards is the ability to type at one unvarying rate without drifting upward when a sentence is easy, because the drift is where the errors come from.

  • Practise finishing, every single time

    An unfinished passage is catastrophic here: every character you never typed is a character fewer, and 200 of them is a zero. Always type to the end even if you know you have made mistakes, and never restart a paragraph.

  • Type from paper, not from a screen

    The passage is printed. Reading from paper and typing without looking at either the paper or the keyboard is a different skill from copying text on the same screen, and it is worth rehearsing with an actual printout beside the keyboard at the height it will be on the day.

  • Rehearse the accented characters cold

    Every missing or wrong accent is a divergent character worth 0.05. Portuguese carries acute, circumflex, tilde, grave and cedilla, and an ABNT2 keyboard puts the cedilla on its own key. Drill the words your fingers hesitate on until there is no hesitation left.

  • Decide your correction policy before the day

    Because the mark is on the text you hand in and not on the keystrokes you made, a correction costs only time. Given the generous clock, correcting is almost always right. Decide this in advance so you are not weighing it up mid-passage.

  • Read your own edital for the pass mark

    The rules document sets the format but not the mark needed to pass, which each official notification sets for itself. Preparation sites quote figures for this that they cannot source. Find yours before you plan anything.

What costs candidates marks

  • Training for speed because every other site does

    Raising a speed number usually means accepting more errors, and in a format where errors are the only thing measured that is a straightforward way to score worse. Speed matters here only up to the point where you finish in time.

  • Treating an accent as optional

    A word typed without its accent is not almost right, it is a divergent character, and Portuguese prose of 1,800 characters contains a great many of them. This is the single largest avoidable loss for most candidates.

  • Leaving the passage unfinished

    Candidates who realise they are behind sometimes stop and check what they have. Every character not typed is a deduction, so stopping early costs far more than the errors they were worried about.

  • Double spaces and stray formatting

    A second space between words is a character more. So is a trailing space at the end of a line. Autocorrect and autoformatting features can introduce characters you never typed, which is worth checking before the clock starts.

  • Assuming the pass mark is high

    Some editais pass candidates at marks that sound low, and some do not set the bar where preparation sites claim. Guessing in either direction changes how you should prepare, so read the official notification rather than a forum.

A four-week plan

  1. Week 1

    Establish a steady pace

    Forget speed entirely. Type 1,800-character passages with no clock and aim for zero errors, however long it takes. Note which characters you get wrong; for most Portuguese candidates the list is dominated by accents.

  2. Week 2

    Drill the characters that cost you

    Take the error list from week one and drill only those: the accented vowels, the cedilla, the tilde. Short daily sessions of a few minutes each are worth more than one long one, because this is motor memory.

  3. Week 3

    Introduce the clock, generously

    Now time yourself, but set the target at thirteen or fourteen minutes rather than eleven. The point is to learn an even rhythm under a clock without the pressure that produces errors.

  4. Week 4

    Full rehearsals at eleven minutes

    Print the passage, sit at a keyboard like the one you will use, and run the whole exercise end to end. Score yourself honestly at 0.05 a divergent character and see what the mark actually is.

  5. Week 5

    Fix what the rehearsals exposed

    By now the errors are specific and few. Work only on those, and keep running full rehearsals twice a week so the eleven minutes stay familiar rather than becoming an event.

Questions candidates ask

How long is the typing test in a Brazilian concurso?
In FGV's published format the passage is about 1,800 characters and the time allowed is eleven minutes, with seventeen minutes for candidates granted extended time. Other examining boards use other formats, so the official notification for your own concurso is the figure to trust.
How is the prova de digitacao scored?
On a scale of zero to ten, deducting 0.05 of a point for each divergent character. A divergent character is one more, one fewer, or one different from the passage provided. Speed itself is not scored at all beyond the need to finish inside the time.
How many mistakes can I make and still pass?
That depends on the pass mark your edital sets, which the rules document does not. Twenty divergent characters cost one point, so a mark of nine allows twenty and a mark of eight allows forty. Two hundred divergent characters take the mark to zero.
What typing speed do I need for a Brazilian concurso?
About 33 words per minute, which is simply the pace at which 1,800 characters take eleven minutes. It is not a threshold the exam sets, and typing faster earns nothing. Finishing with a minute or two spare and being almost perfect is what the format rewards.
Does an accent count as an error?
Yes. A vowel typed without its accent is a different character from the one in the passage, so it deducts 0.05 like any other divergence. For Portuguese prose this is usually where most of a candidate's lost marks come from.
Can I correct mistakes during the test?
The mark is taken from the text you hand in rather than from the keystrokes you made, so correcting an error removes the deduction and costs only the seconds it takes. With eleven minutes for a passage that needs about nine, correcting is almost always worth it.
Is the typing test the same for every concurso?
No. The format described here is the one FGV publishes and reuses, but other boards run the practical test differently and even FGV editais vary. Read the notice for the concurso you are sitting rather than assuming any published format applies to it.

EXAM PREP

Common questions about this exam

Short, direct answers to what candidates ask most.

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Practice for another exam

Same locked 10-minute format, different exam corpus.