How this word counter counts
A word is any run of letters or digits, optionally joined by apostrophes, hyphens or periods, so don't, well-known and 3.5 each count as one word - the same way Microsoft Word and Google Docs count them. Characters are counted as Unicode code points, so an emoji or an accented letter counts as one character, not two or three. "Characters (no spaces)" strips every space, tab and line break, which is the number most social platforms actually enforce.
Sentences are counted by terminal punctuation (a period, question mark or exclamation point followed by a space or the end of the text). A decimal like 4.5 does not end a sentence because no space follows the period, but abbreviations such as "Dr." or "U.S." will inflate the count slightly. Paragraphs are blocks of text separated by a blank line; lines are line breaks plus one. Unique words are case-insensitive, so "The" and "the" are one word.
Reading time, speaking time and keywords
Reading time uses 238 words per minute, the average silent reading speed for adults reading non-fiction in English found in a 2019 meta-analysis of nearly 200 studies (Brysbaert). Speaking time uses 150 words per minute, a comfortable pace for presentations and voice-over; TED speakers and news anchors land between 150 and 170. For a 1,200-word post: 1,200 / 238 = 5.0 minutes to read and 1,200 / 150 = 8 minutes to say out loud. Technical material and fiction with dialogue both shift these numbers, so treat them as estimates.
The keyword table lists the ten most frequent words after removing roughly 100 English stop words (articles, pronouns, prepositions, auxiliary verbs) and bare numbers. Density is the word's share of all words. For SEO, a primary keyword at 1-2% density in a natural-sounding article is typical; anything above 4-5% starts to read as stuffing. The table is also a quick way to spot words you overuse, like "very", "really" or "just".
Common length targets
Twitter/X allows 280 characters (far more for Premium subscribers); Instagram captions cap at 2,200 characters, LinkedIn posts at 3,000. Google typically shows about 60 characters of a title tag and 155-160 characters of a meta description. The Common App personal essay is limited to 650 words; a one-page cover letter runs 250-400 words; a typical double-spaced page is about 275 words in 12-point Times New Roman. Blog posts that rank well are often 1,500-2,500 words, but only because they answer the question thoroughly - padding to hit a number does not help.
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