How Many Words Should It Be?
Typical targets: a college essay runs 500–5,000 words, a cover letter ~250–400 words, a standard blog post 1,500–2,500 words for SEO, a short story 1,000–7,500 words, a novel chapter 2,000–5,000 words, and a dissertation 10,000–20,000 words per chapter. Paste your draft into the word counter to see exactly where you stand and how many words you have left to hit — or cut to reach — your target.
Words Per Page & Reading Time
As a rule of thumb, one double-spaced page holds about 250 words and one single-spaced page about 500 words (12pt, standard margins). So a 2,000-word essay is roughly 8 double-spaced pages. Reading time runs at 200–250 words per minute silently and about 150 wpm read aloud — meaning a 5-minute speech needs roughly 750 spoken words. The word counter shows live word count and reading time together, and the reading time calculator fine-tunes timing for presentations.
Character Limits by Platform
When a platform counts characters rather than words, precision matters: an X/Twitter post allows 280 characters, an SEO meta description ~150–160, a title tag ~60, a single SMS 160, and an Instagram caption up to 2,200. Use the character counter to track characters with and without spaces against these limits in real time so nothing gets truncated.
Editing to Hit Your Target
Once you know your target, tighten or expand to reach it: cut filler words and redundant phrases to shrink a draft, or add examples and detail to grow one. Keep the word counter open as you edit to watch the number move, run the grammar checker for a clean final pass, and use the case converter to fix headings and titles fast.