How Many Words? A Practical Guide to Word Counts and Reading Time
How long essays, blog posts, speeches and emails should be, how many words fit on a page, and how to estimate reading and speaking time.
“How long should it be?” is one of the first questions behind any piece of writing. Teachers set word limits, editors commission by length, conference organisers give you seven minutes, and readers decide in seconds whether an email is worth reading. Here are the numbers we use, and the reasoning behind them.
Pages and words
A page is not a fixed unit, but with a 12-point font, normal margins and single spacing, one page holds about 500 words. Double-spaced, about 250 words. Larger fonts, headings, lists and images reduce that quickly. If a teacher asks for “three pages double-spaced”, aim for roughly 750 words.
Reading and speaking time
Research on adult silent reading of English non-fiction puts the average around 238 words per minute, with wide individual variation. Comfortable presentation speed is about 130 to 150 words per minute. So:
- 1,000 words take about 4 minutes to read and 7 minutes to say aloud.
- A 5-minute speech is roughly 650 to 750 words.
- A 20-minute talk is roughly 2,600 to 3,000 words, but leave time for pauses, slides and audience reactions.
The word counter shows reading and speaking time live as you type.
Typical lengths
- Email that gets answered: 50 to 125 words. Longer emails get skimmed; put the request in the first two sentences.
- Cover letter: 250 to 400 words, under one page.
- School essay: whatever the assignment says, usually within 10 percent of the target.
- College application essay: often capped at 650 words.
- News article: 400 to 800 words.
- Blog post or guide: 800 to 2,000 words, depending on the topic.
- Product description: 50 to 300 words.
- Meta description for search results: about 150 to 160 characters, since Google shortens longer ones.
- Page title for search results: about 50 to 60 characters.
Is longer better for SEO?
Not by itself. Studies often find that top-ranking pages are long, but that is because thorough pages answer more questions, not because search engines count words. Google has said repeatedly that word count is not a ranking factor. Write as long as the topic needs and stop. A 600-word page that fully answers a simple question beats a 3,000-word page padded with filler.
Characters matter too
On many platforms the limit is in characters, not words:
- X (Twitter): 280 characters for standard accounts.
- SMS: 160 characters in the basic GSM alphabet; using an emoji or non-Latin letters switches to a format with only 70 characters per message.
- Instagram captions: up to 2,200 characters, but only about the first 125 are visible before “more”.
- LinkedIn posts: up to 3,000 characters, with roughly the first 200 visible in the feed.
How to hit a word count without padding
- Too long? Cut introductions that restate the question, adverbs like “very” and “really”, and sentences that start with “It is important to note that”.
- Too short? Add an example, a counter-argument or a concrete number. Each adds value, unlike repetition.
- Check repetition: the keyword list in the word counter shows words you overuse.
Our take
Word counts are a tool for respecting the reader’s time, not a target to game. Write first, then measure, then cut. Almost every first draft we write gets better when it loses 10 to 20 percent of its words.