Average Word Length
Measure characters per word, counting Unicode code points and ignoring edge punctuation.
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Average Word Length divides the total characters in a passage by its word count, giving a compact measure of how heavy the vocabulary looks on the page. Short words dominate ordinary prose; a rising average often means jargon, compound identifiers or a block of German nouns, and the number makes that visible without reading the whole draft. Words are Unicode letter and digit tokens with internal apostrophes and hyphens, so don't and well-known each count once, while punctuation at the edges is ignored. The characters are code points, which keeps an emoji or a CJK glyph at one unit rather than counting UTF-16 halves. The result is rounded to two decimals and shown with the word and character totals, so a surprising figure can be checked by hand. It is the tool for estimating label widths, spotting jargon-heavy copy, and comparing a translation's expansion against the source before it breaks a layout. Proper nouns, product codes and URLs pull the average up, so a figure that looks alarming may come from a handful of unavoidable identifiers rather than from the prose.
How to use Average Word Length
- Paste the text to measure.
- Read the average and the two totals.
- Copy the result or clear to start over.
What you get
- Characters per word, rounded to two decimals.
- The word count and character count behind the average.
- The tokenisation rule, so hyphenated and apostrophised words can be checked.
When to use Average Word Length
- Estimate how much wider a translated label will be than the source.
- Spot jargon-heavy copy before a readability edit.
- Compare the vocabulary weight of two drafts.
Frequently asked questions about Average Word Length
Does it count spaces?
No. Only the characters inside words are counted; spaces and edge punctuation are excluded.
How are hyphenated words counted?
As one token, including the hyphen. The same applies to apostrophes inside a word.
Why is the average different from my editor?
Editors differ on hyphenation, emoji and punctuation. This page states its rule so the figure can be reproduced.
Is my text uploaded?
No. Measurement runs in your browser; nothing is sent to a server or stored.
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