How Words and Characters Are Counted
- Words ??sequences of non-whitespace characters. URLs, numbers, and hyphenated compounds count as a single word.
- Characters ??every Unicode code point including spaces and line breaks; the "w/o" version excludes whitespace.
- Sentences ??split on
. ! ?followed by whitespace or end of text. Abbreviations like "Dr." may inflate the count slightly. - Paragraphs ??blocks separated by one or more blank lines.
Reading Speed Reference
- 225 words per minute ??average adult silent reading.
- 150 wpm ??average comfortable speaking pace (slower for presentations, faster for casual speech).
- 20 wpm ??average handwriting speed.
- 40 wpm ??average typing speed; professional typists exceed 70 wpm.
Keyword Density for SEO
Keyword density (a term's occurrences 첨 total words) was an explicit SEO signal in the 2000s. Modern search engines weight semantic relevance and topic coverage more than raw frequency, but density remains useful as a rough guide: 1??% for primary terms in long content is a common target, and unnaturally high densities (above 5%) read as keyword stuffing.
Common Limits
- Twitter/X post ??280 characters
- SMS ??160 characters (single segment)
- Meta description ??~155 characters before truncation
- SEO title ??~60 characters
- College essay (Common App) ??650 words
- Twitter bio ??160 characters