How is word count calculated?
Words are sequences of non-whitespace characters separated by whitespace. Leading and trailing whitespace are trimmed before splitting, so an extra newline at the top of the document does not inflate the count. Hyphenated terms like "well-being" count as one word, matching Microsoft Word and Google Docs conventions.
How is reading time calculated?
Reading time uses 238 words per minute, the average silent reading speed for adults reading non-fiction in their native language (Brysbaert, 2019 meta-analysis). For dense technical content drop to ~180 wpm, for light fiction expect ~250–280 wpm. Speaking time uses 130 wpm — the average pace for clear, audience-friendly presentation speech.
What is keyword density and what is a good number?
Keyword density is the percentage of total words made up by a given keyword. Modern Google does not have a target density, but keeping the primary keyword between 0.5% and 1.5% (and supporting phrases under 1%) avoids both under-optimisation and the appearance of stuffing. The bigram and trigram tables are usually more revealing — natural copy tends to repeat short phrases, not single words.
Why does the counter strip stop words from the keyword tables?
Words like "the", "a", "is", "and", and "of" dominate any English text and would crowd out meaningful terms. The keyword tables filter them out, and exclude n-grams that start or end with a stop word, so what surfaces is the topical vocabulary you actually want to audit.
What is lexical density?
Lexical density is the ratio of unique words to total words. A density of 0.6 means 60% of the words in your text are distinct. High density (above 0.6) reads as varied and information-dense; low density (below 0.4) reads as repetitive. Conversational copy tends toward 0.4; academic writing pushes 0.5–0.7.
How long should a blog post be in 2026?
There is no universal number. Featured-snippet candidates often run 1,200–2,500 words; thought leadership averages 2,000+; news posts thrive at 400–800. The right length is whatever fully covers the user intent without padding. Use this counter to track real-time progress against a chosen target.
Is the text uploaded anywhere?
No. All counting and n-gram analysis runs in JavaScript inside your browser. Drafts, internal documents, and confidential copy never leave your device. Verify in DevTools → Network — typing in the editor produces zero network traffic.
Can I count words in a non-English language?
Word and sentence counts work for any language that uses whitespace word boundaries — Latin scripts, Cyrillic, Greek, etc. The keyword tables use an English stop-word list, so for other languages the n-gram results will include common function words. Reading-time estimates are calibrated for English and are a rough guide for other languages.