How is reading time calculated?

Reading time is estimated by dividing the word count by an average adult silent reading speed of 200–250 words per minute. The tool uses 238 wpm, which is the median from multiple research studies on adult reading speed. This is an approximation — technical content, complex sentences, and unfamiliar vocabulary all slow reading down; simple prose is read faster. The estimate is most useful for comparing documents of similar content type.

What counts as a word?

A word is any contiguous sequence of non-whitespace characters. Hyphenated compounds (like 'well-known') count as one word. Numbers (like '42' or '3.14') count as words. Punctuation attached to a word (like the period in 'end.') is stripped before counting. Multiple consecutive spaces or newlines are treated as a single delimiter.

What is the difference between characters with and without spaces?

Characters with spaces counts every character including spaces, tabs, and newlines — this is what most word processors call 'characters'. Characters without spaces counts only non-whitespace characters — this is relevant for platforms with character limits that ignore spacing, like some SMS or social media contexts.

How are sentences counted?

Sentences are counted by the number of sentence-ending punctuation marks: periods (.), exclamation marks (!), and question marks (?). Abbreviations and decimal numbers can cause slight over-counting (e.g. 'Dr.' or '3.14'). This is the same heuristic used by most word processors.

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