How to use it
Paste an essay, an article, song lyrics, survey answers or any other text. The list shows each word with how many times it appears, its share of all counted words, and a bar to compare them. Use the options to skip common words such as “the”, “and” and “of”, which would otherwise take the top places and hide the interesting words; to set a shortest word to count, which is handy to ignore one- and two-letter words; and to count capital letters separately. Press Show more for the next 30 words, or copy or download everything as a CSV file for a spreadsheet.
What it is good for
Writers use it to spot overused words and repeated phrases in a draft. Students use it to check a keyword is not missing from an essay. Teachers and researchers use it to see which terms stand out in a set of answers. Website owners use it to check that the main topic word appears on a page without being stuffed in again and again. Words are counted by their letters and numbers; a word with an apostrophe or hyphen inside it, like “don’t” or “well-known”, counts as one word.
Questions
Which words count as common? A short list of about 80 everyday English words, such as articles, pronouns and common verbs. Does it work in other languages? It counts letters from any alphabet, but the common-word list is English only. Is my text sent anywhere? No. Counting happens in your browser. Your option choices are remembered on this device. For a score of how easy your text is to read, use the Readability Checker.