SSC counts a full mistake (1) when a word itself goes wrong: it is missing, wrong, extra, repeated, misspelt or left half-typed. It counts a half mistake (½) when the word is right but its form is off: spacing, capital letters, punctuation, two words swapped, or a paragraph started without Tab.
These rules come from SSC's "Revised Guidelines for Evaluation of Typing Test/DEST Scripts", which the SSC CGL 2026 and CHSL 2026 typing tests follow. The examples below use one sentence from a passage:
The Ministry will publish the revised list on 12 May.
Full mistakes (1 each)
- Omitted word: "The Ministry will publish the list on 12 May." The word "revised" is missing.
- Wrong word: "The Ministry will publish the revised last on 12 May."
- Spelling error: "The Ministry will pubish the revised list on 12 May."
- Extra word: "The Ministry will soon publish the revised list on 12 May."
- Repeated word: "The Ministry will publish the the revised list on 12 May."
- Wrong figure: "The Ministry will publish the revised list on 21 May." Numbers count like words.
- Incomplete word: "The Ministry will publish the revi list on 12 May."
- Irrelevant matter: anything typed that is not in the passage at all.
Half mistakes (½ each)
- Spacing: "theMinistry" (two words joined), "pub lish" (one word split) or extra spaces between words.
- Capitalisation: "The ministry will publish..." This applies to English only, since Hindi has no capital letters.
- Punctuation: a missing, extra or wrong mark, such as leaving out the full stop after "May".
- Transposed words: "The Ministry publish will the revised list..."
- Paragraph start: beginning a new paragraph with spaces instead of the Tab key.
A worked example
Suppose you type: The ministry will publish the the revised list on 12 May
| Slip | Type | Counts |
|---|---|---|
| "ministry" in small letters | Capitalisation | ½ |
| "the the" | Repeated word | 1 |
| No full stop at the end | Punctuation | ½ |
| Total | 2 |
The sentence has 10 words, so 2 mistakes here would be 20% of it. In a real test the count runs over the whole passage, so a few slips spread over hundreds of words make a much smaller percentage. The SSC CHSL 2026 notice says errors are worked out up to 2 decimal places (para 13.9.13.4).
How many mistakes are allowed
- SSC CGL DEST (2026 notice, para 16.2): UR 20%, OBC/EWS 25%, all other categories 30%.
- SSC CHSL (2026 notice): no category-wise error percentage is given; the notice leaves it to the qualifying standards fixed by the Commission.
What this means for practice
A full mistake costs twice as much as a half mistake. So when time is short, a missed comma hurts less than a skipped word. Read every figure carefully, keep your eyes on the passage rather than the keys, and never stop typing in the middle of a word. Our tests mark each slip by type after you submit, so you can see which kind you make most.
What to do next
Try the SSC CHSL typing test or the SSC CGL DEST, both checked with these rules. For relaxed practice, open English typing.