To help establish well-defined standards and norms for proficiency at realistic typing tasks, this investigation sought to establish difficulty indexes for three major classes of such tasks and to provide an initial pool of normative data for the development of the difficulty indexes. To gather the needed data, various subsets of eight tasks from a battery of 64 typing tasks were administered to 3,134 typists. This data, in turn, provided equations for estimating the difficulty of office-typing tasks and for constructing typing tasks at specified levels of difficulty. The difficulty indexes resulting from the equations permit the eventual establishment of standards and norms for trainees and job-applicants. It was discovered that the correlational data on intelligence in relation to typing proficiency support the standard practice of offering beginning typewriting to all persons, but leave uncertain the propriety of offering advanced instruction to low ability students. Finally, low relationships between straight copy and office-typing proficiency confirm the desirability of reducing the conventional heavy focus on ordinary stroking skills and of increasing attention to realistic office-typing tasks. Decision processes applicable to the layout of such tasks on the page should also be emphasized. (Author/JS)