Word Counter – Count Words, Characters & Reading Time

At an average speaking pace of 130 words per minute, a 5-minute speech is approximately 650 words. TED Talks typically aim for 130–150 wpm, so an 18-minute talk = approximately 2,400–2,700 words.

With standard formatting (12pt Times New Roman, double-spaced), 1,000 words is approximately 4 pages. Single-spaced, 1,000 words is about 2 pages. Actual page count varies by font, margins, and spacing.

Word count counts space-separated tokens. Character count counts individual characters. "Hello World" has 2 words and 11 characters (including the space), or 10 characters without spaces.

In Microsoft Word: press Ctrl+Shift+C (or see the word count in the status bar). In Google Docs: Tools > Word Count (Ctrl+Shift+C). For plain text, pasting into any word processor gives an instant count.

Google typically displays 120–155 characters in search results. Write meta descriptions between 120–155 characters (not words) to avoid truncation. The optimal length is 145–155 characters — long enough to be informative but not cut off.