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Average Word Length Calculator

Paste or type your text to measure average word length.

How it is calculated

The text is cut into words wherever there is white space (spaces, tabs, line breaks). In each word the tool counts only letters and digits, in any alphabet, and ignores punctuation such as commas, full stops and hyphens. Then average = total counted characters ÷ number of words, rounded to two decimals; the word count and the character total are shown too. Two details matter: a hyphenated word like "well-known" is one word with its hyphen not counted, and a lone symbol with spaces around it, such as a dash, counts as a word with zero characters and pulls the average down. Empty or blank text gives no result.

Worked example

The sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." has 9 words. Their letter counts are 3, 5, 5, 3, 5, 4, 3, 4 and 3; the full stop is not counted. Total: 35 characters. Average: 35 ÷ 9 = 3.888..., shown as 3.89 chars. The tool reports 9 words and 35 chars as well. Changing the last word to "dogs" would give 36 ÷ 9 = 4.00.

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Common mistakes

  • Counting punctuation as part of the word length. The tool leaves out commas, quotes and full stops, so a hand count that includes them will be higher.
  • Leaving stray dashes, bullets or numbering such as "-" or "1." between spaces in pasted text. A dash counts as a zero-length word and lowers the average; a number counts as a word of digits.
  • Comparing results across languages without thinking. Languages that join words or use few spaces, and scripts without spaces, give very different averages for the same meaning.
  • Treating the average as a readability grade. It is one input to such formulas; sentence length matters too.
  • Expecting hyphenated or joined words to be split. "Mother-in-law" is a single word of 11 counted characters here.

About this calculator

Average word length — total letters and digits divided by total word count — is one of the simplest measurable properties of a piece of text, and it's a building block for several established readability formulas, including the Automated Readability Index and Coleman-Liau Index, both of which use average word (character) length alongside sentence length to estimate how difficult a text is to read.

This calculator splits a pasted text into words at spaces and line breaks, counts only the letters and digits in each word (punctuation and symbols are ignored, so a lone symbol counts as a word of length zero), and reports the average along with the word count and total character count. It's used by writers, editors, and content teams checking whether their prose leans toward short, punchy words or longer, more complex vocabulary, by students and linguists comparing writing samples, and as an input for readability scoring when evaluating text meant for a general or young audience.

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Comments (1)

  • Editorial team

    Because every word counts equally, short function words pull the average down hard. The sentence I am a cat who sat on a mat averages 2.11 characters over 9 words, while Extraordinarily complicated terminology averages 12.33 over 3. So compare drafts of similar length and type rather than chasing a target number. Pasting two versions of the same paragraph is the most informative use. What kind of text are you checking, and for which audience?

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